Friday, September 21, 2018

(News 12 at 6 O’Clock / NBC 26 at 7)

AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) – Remember opposite day in school? Maybe you would wear your socks on your hands or shoes on the opposite feet? It sort of feels like opposite day when you drive along Riverwatch Parkway these days. Expensive lights are seen

on

during the day, and lights

off

at night.

200 lights line a four-mile stretch along Riverwatch Parkway, and people in the city want answers to why some of these new lights aren’t lit up anymore.

Comments flood through Facebook asking the same question in different ways – “Is the city unable to pay the light bill for those lights?”, and “we are paying the light bill that's not the reason the lights are off."

It took a few bulb changes along Riverwatch this summer before the light bulb went off in Ron Lampkin's head.

"No this is the first time I've seen this happen anywhere," Lampkin said.

Blame the 70 bulbs out along Riverwatch on Mother Nature and "technical difficulties."

"I have never seen bulbs fill up with water the way these are-it's really something."

He says the light fixtures turn into fish bowls after rain storms. The water then shorts out the bulb.

"We drain the water out and replace the bulb, then rain came and lights out again."

The city has stopped changing the bulbs until the manufacture figures out the problem.

"It may be the seal or the way the lights were built. They weren't put in correctly."

The state chose the lighting, which is the same lighting installed along Calhoun Expressway and Walton Way. But it's only the lights along Riverwatch Parkway that keep filling up.

"We are the lucky ones. This is the first problem this manufacturer had, so they're anxious to find out what happened as well."

This doesn't seem like the brightest idea at first, especially when commissioners just increased the street light fee.

But city workers turned on the lights during the day this week, which helped them find the problem lights. They removed two to send back to the manufacturer for testing.

In just a few weeks they hope to know exactly why the lights went out in our city.