The City of Oakdale faced water issues this past week after its biggest well on Beck Street stop producing.
Oakdale Mayor Gene Paul said the city has four wells and the Beck Street is its biggest. The one on 17th Street has been out of service for some time, and the two other wells are at 50 percent capacity – one on North Matthew and one on South Matthew. That’s all the city had when the Beck St. well went down. At 100 percent, each well probably produces at least a 1,000 gallons per minute.
“These wells are over 75 years old,” Paul explained. He said the city is presently undergoing a $4 million water upgrade project and a $4 million sewer project upgrade over the next few months. However, the project has been delayed, because the contractor is having difficulties acquiring the parts necessary to refurbish the wells.
Paul said it wasn’t the best time for the city to lose the well. It wasn’t the pump or motor that stopped working. He said the last maintenance on the Beck St. well was probably in 1992, and this time when they pulled the casing on Thursday, August 26, they learned there were multiple problems.
“The shaft was bad,” he said as he explained the part came in on Saturday. He said the storage supply under the ground has to fill to a certain line so water can be distributed. “When the well went down, it wasn’t able to reach the fill line to distribute water to customers. It’s about 700 feet below the surface, if you can understand that,” Paul said.
“It wasn’t shut down by management because of the hurricane,” he said. “It had nothing to do with the threat.” (The mayor is referring to last week’s warning Hurricane Ida may have caused issues for Allen Parish when it was still a few days out from making landfall. Hurricane Ida, which made landfall as a Category Four, ended traveling more east and missing this area.)
“It’s unreal when you are trying to get parts,” Paul said. “We can’t get computer chips for a car. How are we going to get a shaft for a well.”
Paul said Sheriff Doug Hebert III and Representative Dewitt Carrier were able to assist with water supplies. He said water supplies were limited when Hurricane Ida entered the Gulf of Mexico. That water was distributed Friday. He also thanked Homeland Security/Task Force Director Chuck Hurst with the Louisiana Sheriffs’ Association for his assistance in securing water. He said they were able to send a truck and trailer to Camp Beauregard to pick up the water and bring it to Oakdale.
On Saturday, the Food Bank of Central Louisiana in Alexandria brought water to be distributed to the area.
“If it hadn’t been for that, people would not have had drinking water,” Paul said. “Most of the stores were completely out due to the hurricane.”
Meanwhile Paul said residents were notified that the water was turned on for certain time periods through the manpower of city personnel. He said workers were able to run the well until the shaft got hot. Then they would turn it off and let it cool down at different times in the day.
“Overall people were real good handling the situation,” he said. “Many understood, and it seemed to work.”
They were able to get the well working, and Paul hopes it will last until upgrades are made. He said there are no plans to turn off the water again, unless something happens.
“We should be good to go,” he said.
Paul did say, because of the situation, an emergency situation has been declared. They are hoping parts will be here within two weeks and the upgrades can begin to secure the city’s water source. He knows once the upgrade projects are complete, the city should be good for several years into the future.
On Monday, the city went to Lake Charles to secure the testing supplies to gather samples and send them in for analysis. Until those results are returned, the city remains under a boil advisory. Paul was hoping those results would be received by Wednesday, September 1. He said because of the hurricane, the samples are having to be driven to Shreveport. Usually they are taken to Lake Charles or Baton Rouge. He said a city employee was taking them personally to be analyzed. He said the information would be on Facebook™ as soon as the city received it.
