(The Center Square) – A major water main break at Shreveport’s treatment plant near Cross Lake is causing a public health emergency across the city.
Disruption to the city’s municipal water supply at the Thomas L. Amiss Water Purification Plan is expected to last through Friday.
“We are gonna have about a week of crisis,” said Shreveport Mayor Tom Arceneaux.
The break was discovered inside the facility early Sunday morning at a concrete transmission pipe that services a large portion of the city.
Many residents, businesses, hospitals and schools are experiencing either no water pressure or low water pressure. Health care providers rely on water for medical procedures and to cool buildings.
There are other transmission lines still operating at the treatment plant, which is why there is some water reaching homes “but the issue is water pressure,” said Arceneaux.
All Caddo Parish public schools located south of Northwood High School are not holding regular in-person classes today and are instead conducting virtual instruction. The fire department is filling fire tankers so it is able to respond to an emergency.
Water distribution sites are being organized and there is a voluntary boil advisory in effect for the entire city for the next two weeks. “The water supplied by our distribution system may be of questionable microbiological quality due to the loss of pressure in portions of the system,” according to the Department of Water and Sewage.
City officials are unable to determine the cause because “the line is under water, so we really can’t necessarily assess it. We can figure out about 95% of what we need to do to fix it, but we can’t actually see what caused it yet,” Arceneaux said.
Crews are working to reroute water flow by bypassing the break. After that, Arceneaux said, they will pump out the area and complete a permanent fix. He encouraged residents to delay doing their laundry this week and to try to avoid watering lawns.
“The water system is old. We anticipated this but we did not get there quickly enough. The voters approved $82 million in bond improvements for the water system in 2024. Several of those projects are under design and they will address these issues. Unfortunately, we did not get them in the ground before this event occurred,” Arceneaux said.
