After much of Colquitt County High School was dry for three days due to burst pipes, county school officials anticipate having the water back on today for the entire campus.

Two three-inch pipes were damaged over the weekend, and water has been cut off to several areas of the school, including the football field house, where players were unable to take a shower or use toilets.

The water supply also was down at the school’s achievement center and 10th-grade wing.

“We had a hole in two three-inch pipes where they rubbed against each other and put a hole in each other,” Rick Gehle, Colquitt County School System facilities director, said Wednesday afternoon.

The PVC pipe had been glued back together and was drying, said Gehle, who anticipated it would be ready by 6 a.m. today.

“It was challenging to put back together,” he said. “Plastic pipe goes together real well when you’re building from scratch.”

Patching the pipe when it springs leaks is not so easy, he said.

“We’ll have water back first thing before children get there first thing in the morning,” Gehle said.

A different pipe burst about two weeks ago.

A fire alarm that sounded Sunday actually alerted the system to the problems, Schools Superintendent Samuel DePaul said, and the three areas have been without water all week.

Students were allowed to go to the main campus to use the restroom and the system was looking to place portable toilets near the affected areas.

 Those apparently will not be needed as the work has been completed.

“It’s been an ongoing problem,” he said of the pipes at the school.

“This is just one more issue that have been numerous for that school.”

Prior to DePaul’s tenure, the system announced in 2011 that it was looking to have a new school constructed in about five years.

The current school opened in 1979.

Work on a new high school is scheduled to begin next month adjacent to Packer Park on Doc Darbyshire Road.

The roughly $40 million campus is scheduled to be completed for the opening of classes in fall 2015.

Some have expressed criticism of the proposed site, citing the proximity to a railroad line as their main objection.

The system has issued $24 million in bonds, to be paid back with special a 1 percent local special option sales tax approved by voters.  The state has allocated about $19 million toward the project.