The July 5 meeting of the Webster Parish Police Jury was relatively brief and routine with the majority of the time spent discussing water sectors and the recent storm damage.
The emergency declaration is still active and will continue to be for the next month or so. The application for the debris site has been renewed, and the public works department has permission to burn debris which has been collected. So far 21 citizens have registered storm damage through the Damage.La.gov site. Due to the relatively low amount of damage, Webster Parish will not qualify for individual assistance, but Brian Williams of the Office of Emergency Preparedness and Homeland Security encourages everyone who did have damage to report it through the above website in order to provide information for other potential benefits.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is compensating families who lost power and therefore lost food during the power outages.
“In Webster, all you have to do is submit your address, and they can look it up through the Public Service Commission to verify that you lost power for more than 48 hours. Most of south Doyline was without power for seven days,” said Williams.
Over 800 households in Jenkins had lost water due to the power outage, however, Williams believes that they have generators on their wells, and he is going to investigate this situation.
“We need to find out what the deal is,” said Jim Bonsall, president of the police jury. “There is absolutely no reason at this day and time for them to be without water. It’s bad enough to be out of power, but it’s terrible to be out of water.”
Lisa Balkom, secretary-treasurer, stated that there were three water systems that went down after the storms, “It was Horseshoe, Palmetto, and Jenkins.”
“The only two water systems that were reported to DHH were Jenkins and Pleasant Valley,” said Williams. “And we know what happened to Pleasant Valley; their generator went down, and their backup went down, and then y’all got a generator for them. The only other one that was reported in the state list that I got every day was Jenkins.”
Brad Graff, president of Cothren, Graff, Smoak Engineering Inc., addressed the board, saying that the Jenkins water sector is soon going to consolidate with the Horseshoe water sector, making some upgrades as well. “They’re making some pretty major improvements to that system,” Graff said.
A large number of households south of Doyline went without water for close to eight days because there is no municipal water system in that area, they use individual water wells instead. Anyone who didn’t have a generator to run their well had no water available the whole time they were without power. The police jury did arrange for pallets of water to be delivered into that area to help, and now they are hoping there might be a way to get municipal water into that area in the future, though that process will take a while and will depend on the interest of residents in that area.
The board members of the Webster Parish Police Jury showed concern for residents who have been struggling without water and hope to find more permanent solutions to this problem. The board will next meet on August 1 at 10:30 AM.