Water service is maintained in Altheimer following a drop in temperature from 36 degrees Friday afternoon to 19 Saturday morning, two days after residents noticed their water wasn’t running.
The cause of the water loss still has not been determined, Mayor Zola Hudson said. City officials turned the water system back on before 9 p.m. Friday, having turned it off for hours at a time to take pressure off the aging Altheimer Waterworks utility.
“Praise the Lord! Everyone still has water,” Hudson said via text Saturday morning.
Hudson first received notice of water being out at 4:40 p.m. Thursday, when she said she received a call at home from a neighbor asking her: “What’s going on?”
“The water’s not on,” she was told.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
“I ran to the faucet and told the neighbor, ‘You’re right. It’s not on,'” she said. “I called the guys (at the utility) about it.”
Due to the limited capacity of the utility, water was turned off at 10 p.m. Thursday and back on at 8 a.m. Friday, then off again at 4 p.m. and on again before 9 p.m., Hudson said. Altheimer has 113,000 gallons in its storage tank, she said.
Hudson reached out to Jefferson County Judge Gerald Robinson, who provided two 1,000-gallon tanks of water to the city, as soon as she learned of the outage. Robinson said Saracen Casino Resort and community volunteers partnered with the county to send water.
“All of Jefferson County has been supportive, the different churches and individuals,” Hudson said.
Representatives from the Arkansas Rural Water Association, based in Lonoke, were called in to assist Altheimer Waterworks in trying to determine a cause for the water system’s failure, Hudson said.
“It’s something causing the water to not keep up with the plant,” she said. “When people run their water – we’ve got water leaks from the ice, I’m sure – it’s too much water lost. The demand is so high, the capacity of the plant is not keeping up with the demand. We have to shut down to restore ourselves.”
Hudson said she won’t be able to get to the root of the problem until the ice is gone.
The problem has never happened before in Hudson’s 12 years as mayor. She said Altheimer recently applied for state funding to help with a new water tank to replace its century-old system, but the town was not selected.
Altheimer received a $700,000 grant from Jefferson County and an $800,000 grant from the Delta Regional Authority toward replacing the tank in 2020, but those funds must be spent before the end of this year, Hudson said. The city may come up with additional purposes for the funding as allowed, she added.
“When it was time to bid for the tank, (the cost) became $2.5 million,” Hudson said. “This tank was built in 1925. They made some good material back then, but it’s time to replace it.”
Robinson suggested Altheimer, with an estimated population of 651, and its neighboring towns in northeast Jefferson County consider forming a water cooperative or enter into a partnership with Liberty Utilities, which serves Pine Bluff and White Hall.
“That has been addressed numerous times, and it was addressed when I first became mayor,” Hudson said, adding not all the mayors agreed to it. “We never have been able to do it.”
For its part, Liberty Utilities this past week avoided a water system failure in Pine Bluff like the one the city experienced following back-to-back snowstorms in February 2021. The city sustained numerous water line breaks and leaks resulting in low water pressure in the immediate aftermath. In January 2022, Liberty agreed to a settlement with the Arkansas Public Service Commission and state Attorney General’s office to make significant investments in its infrastructure.
“Liberty’s water systems in the area performed well throughout Winter Storm Fern,” said Kelli Price, Liberty communications and marketing director. “In recent years, we have strengthened our system against extreme weather. We have implemented better system monitoring, so we can spot and respond to issues faster, and installed backup generators to keep facilities running during power outages. We’ve also expanded our customer outreach to share simple steps people can take to protect their own pipes from freezing.”
The number of calls regarding leaks this past week, Price said, was not out of the ordinary, but Liberty expected more calls as any frozen lines began to thaw. The utility, however, did not provide a number of calls when asked a follow-up question.
Pine Bluff Mayor Vivian Flowers said earlier this week she was satisfied with how the city’s water system held up from the winter storm that began the night of Jan. 23.
“We’ll have to see after the weather event because everything is frozen, but I do know things are better and because (Liberty was) required to do a great deal of work and they got a small rate increase to pay for the work, it should be almost at a 180-degree status from where we were before,” Flowers said.
Robinson, who conducted many meetings involving Liberty leadership in the aftermath of the 2021 system failure, said Liberty has improved greatly.
“They have good community outreach, and they’ve improved it,” Robinson said. “They’re driving home the customer service part.”
Price said anyone who sees a leak at home or in the neighborhood is encouraged to call Liberty’s Customer Care team at 855-382-6508 or its emergency line at 855-382-6511.