West Helena residents are dealing with water issues after two major water line breaks over the weekend.
“We have to go to Dollar General and things just to buy bottles of water,” said West Helena resident Adrion Matthews, “to take a little wash ups and things to eat and drink and all of that, and then we have kids here, you know what I mean.”
John Edwards, General Council and economic development Director for Helena Harbor, says that the water leaks have been a persistent problem in West Helena’s infrastructure for years, but have been worsening recently.
“At one point this past summer, they were leaking as much as 73% of the water that was being pumped from the wells and being treated by the plant; that is just unacceptable and unsustainable,” Edwards said.
To help families experiencing the water outage, Helena West Helena School District and Phillips Community College are opening up their facilities for free showers.
According to the mayor’s Facebook page, a new well could be up and running by the end of this week to help with the outages but a developer says that a permanent solution is needed.
WebReadyTM Powered by WireReady® NSI