Officials say one of the reasons Hyundai chose the Bryan County Mega- Site as home to its first U.S. electric vehicle manufacturing plant was the promise the company would be able to set up shop quickly.

Economic development officials call it “speed to market.”

That expectation, part of an agreement bringing more than $5 billion in investment and 8,100 jobs to the region in what is being called the largest single project of its kind in Georgia history, means pushing through infrastructure projects that usually take much longer.

For Bryan County, one such item on its list of promises to keep is providing water and sewer to the nearly 3,000-acre Bryan County Mega-Site.

That single project alone could cost upwards of $220 million in state, regional and local funding before everything is said and done, officials say.

While a single well is proposed for the Mega-Site, because Bryan County is in the Georgia Environmental Protection Division’s yellow zone limiting groundwater withdrawals, plans call for sinking four wells in nearby Bulloch County, another of the four counties in the Savannah Harbor Interstate 16 Joint Industrial Authority and party to the agreement with Hyundai.

Workers will then lay more than 13 miles of pipe from the wells to the Mega-Site, running them along Highway 80, Eldora Road and Old Cuyler Road.

Also in those plans is a water treatment plant – called a water reclamation plant in county terminology –

capable of treating up to four million gallons a day and of serving all North Bryan, county plans show.

Current timelines show construction on the water and sewer project should begin early in 2023, now only two months away, and finish up in the first quarter of 2025, which is when Hyundai expects to begin production.