City of Sulphur replaces two out of eight filter media vessels at Verdine Street Water Plant

Lake Charles, LA (KPLC) - An ongoing problem for Sulphur Water customers is one step closer to being fixed.

“This is a long-anticipated day, we’re in a multi-step process to update our Verdine Street Water Plant,” said Sulphur Mayor, Mike Danahay.

Crew members, trucks, and cranes were just a part of the action as they replaced and installed two of its filter media vessels.

“Today, we received two, we put them in place and began to pipe those in, of course, and fill them with media, so we put them into service,” he said. “We will continue to do this throughout the remainder of this year, possibly the end of the first part of the year to place all eight filter media vessels.”

Something that Danahay says would improve the water that is being distributed in affected areas.

“We do anticipate that this will clear up a lot of the problems that our residents have been experiencing this last year,” he said.

One of those residents being Terry Anderson, and this is what she had to say.

“Thank god that some are coming in,” Anderson said. “It’s been over two years now that they are supposed to be bringing the filters in. However, speaking with different environmentalists and cities and people talking with the city, it is just a quick fix we have to have a new well.”

Something that Danahay tells me is a work in progress.

“We are anticipating this to start the drilling of a new well, at the end of this month, in addition to having the filter vessels replaced, they’ll start that well at the end of the month, and hopefully within a few weeks have it completed,” he said.

But for Anderson, she says this can’t come fast enough.

“I won’t feel hopeful until the new well is dug, and they have the problem completely resolved,” she said. We have been told, I have personally, for over two years that they were working on this.”

The plan was formulated in 2019, but the projects were delayed because of covid and the hurricanes.

The plans had to be submitted to the Louisiana Department of Health for approval of the filter systems and then go through the procurement process, which also takes time.

The next step after the well will be the installation of a pretreatment system that will remove a lot of the iron content before it goes into the filter system.

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