AR town receives help from National Guard during water shortage
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Residents in West Helena, Arkansas are again depending on donated water after finding their homes have little or no water coming from faucets.
In June 2023, West Helena’s antiqued water system went down for weeks, sparking outrage from customers. Now, the system is failing again at the worst possible time.
Betty Brown came to the Phillips County Justice Complex Friday to get donated water.
“You have to run your pipes. You gotta keep your water dripping, keep it from freezing, so that makes the situation a little worse, but we’re going to survive,” said Brown, a West Helena, Ark. resident.
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The latest problem centers on well number nine, which is struggling to meet the need.
“It’s beginning to not be able to produce water at all. The well is running dry. It’s producing about three hundred gallons a minute. It used to do twelve hundred gallons a minute,” said James Valley, Chief of Staff with the City of Helena-West Helena, Ark.
Valley says there are four 60-year-old wells in West Helena. Age and cold weather are now to blame for the failure.
“More people are at home during the day, more people are using more water during the day than we would normally have to happen,” said Valley.
Phillips County made a verbal disaster declaration to the State and water resources arrived Thursday.
“As you can see the National Guard has two thousand gallons of potable water, drinking water certified, and then we have a thousand gallons of non-potable water for flushing and whatnot,” said Russell Hall, Director of Phillips County EMA.
Limited supplies of canned water are also being handed out, and because many roads are still ice-covered, volunteers are delivering water to shut-ins.
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Mary Jenkins got a supply of canned water and potable water.
“Well, I don’t have any water right now. My water’s not working,” she said.
Jenkins is worried about her neighbors as well and wonders why the system can’t be fixed.
“I think they need to try and work on getting a new tank. Period. We have been talking about it long enough. Do something about it,” said Jenkins.
The Phillips County EMA Director says the distribution site will open Saturday at 10 a.m. Persons needing potable or non-potable water should bring their own containers.
In the meantime, engineers are working on a plan to share water from Helena’s water system with West Helena.
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