HELENA-WEST HELENA, Ark. — Residents in an eastern Arkansas town have been without water for the past two weeks after the state was hit with subzero temperatures, lining up for bottled water due to a power outage. Being forced to refill water. People drink jugs of water and take showers in trucks brought in by the government.
The power outage affecting about 1,400 Helena-West Helena residents is the second in a year for the small Mississippi River town 52 miles (84 kilometers) southwest of Memphis, Tennessee.
The town faced a similar crisis last summer, with water cutoffs in the same areas of the city in June.
Local authorities are rushing to repair leaks across the city and restore water to residents, but face the long-term challenge of overhauling a system with decades-old infrastructure. It is said that there is.
“The problems we face today have been building up for decades,” said the former state lawmaker and executive director of the industrial park, who was appointed by the mayor to help address the water crisis. said John Edwards.
The outage affects one of the two water systems in Helena and West Helena, which until 2006 were two separate cities. One of the wells feeding the system failed due to pressure from leaks and dripping pipes during the winter weather that hit the state.
“It’s hit or miss,” said Russell Hall, director of the Phillips County Emergency Management Agency. “Depending on gravity and other conditions, one house may have a moderate pressure and another may have a moderate pressure.”
The National Guard deployed water trucks to provide drinking water, and 16 portable showers were also installed for residents to use. At water distribution sites, there are endless lines of people collecting water for household use every day.
“It’s very hard to wake up in the morning and not be able to take a bath or a shower,” Mack Williams, 59, said as he picked up a bottle of water from the county distribution center. “When you have five, six, seven, eight people in the house, it’s very difficult.”
Gerald Jennings uses yellow buckets to collect rainwater, boil it and use it for bathing and flushing toilets. He said he knows others are doing the same.
“We have to take advantage of what nature has given us: the rain,” said the 58-year-old retiree, standing outside his home. “We were lucky that it was raining at this time of year.”
Lapres Staton, a 40-year-old hairdresser, was collecting water at a water distribution site. She said her house has running water, but she was “a little yellow, a little discolored” because of the low pressure. She either boils the water or doesn’t use it at all.
She said she’s okay because she feels she hasn’t been affected as severely as others and said she doesn’t blame anyone for the problem.
“It’s no one’s fault,” she said. “If you own a car, she can’t keep it for 60 years without it wearing out. The pipes will wear out.”
Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders last week asked a state commission to facilitate a $100,000 emergency loan to renovate two city wells and replace valves in the city’s water system. The Arkansas Natural Resources Commission approved the second $100,000 loan the commission has issued to the city since last year’s crisis.
Sanders called the loan “part of my administration’s larger effort to retrofit the city’s water system and prevent future system failures.”
Hall, the county’s emergency management director, said he doesn’t know when water will be restored. He said the public generally has an understanding of the emergency water supply process.
“I think people are definitely frustrated,” Hall said. “Three-quarters of 911 callers don’t have water in their homes right now. They have to come to work and still have to go about their daily lives.”
The big question facing the city is how much long-term repairs to the water system will cost, and who will pay for them. Edwards said it will cost about $5 million to repair the broken well and repair water stations and other wells to prevent the city from falling into the same crisis within six months.
The city’s water outage comes as other towns are grappling with aging water infrastructure. Several other cities in Arkansas faced water shortages during the winter storm. And in the neighboring town of Mason, Tennessee, water was cut off for a week after subfreezing temperatures caused pipes to break and a neglected system to leak.
Residents in three rural areas along the Virginia border in far eastern Kentucky have also been without water for more than a week due to the frigid weather.
“What’s happening here can and will happen elsewhere,” said Edwards, director of the Industrial Park Supporting Water Crisis. “There are a lot of public facilities in this state that have aging issues, and I hope this will serve as a lesson for officials in other areas about what they can do to avoid finding themselves in this situation. .”
