HELENA-WEST HELENA, Ark. — It has been about a year since the city of Helena West Helena went an entire week without having running water.
Now, people there have been going through a similar situation after city officials announced that they experienced two major leaks over the weekend.
This crisis caused outside entities like the Arkansas Rural Water Association (ARWA) to step in and assist crews up north to help get the water back to functioning properly.
Dennis Sternberg, the CEO of ARWA explained that they currently have five people that are onsite and actively working to get the system back up and running.
He said it will be a difficult task to complete because they've had several instances where their water system has gone down due to their aging infrastructure.
Sternberg explained how the town's main water supply is a 70-foot standpipe tank full of water. Since the leaks, it has been drained completely which has left many people on the west side without water.
The Arkansas Rural Water Association is not the water provider for west Helena, but rather it is a resource that is available to help things get back on track.
"We've started isolating off the system so we can feed water directly to the storage tank and try to get the capacity back up in the tank, to have pressure to start opening back up the different section," Sternberg described.
He also there is only so much that they can do. Especially with the older systems that Helena West Helena and several other cities have in place.
Getting the water back on and functioning can take a couple of days,
For now, this is only a band-aid, but if the city doesn't update its systems then there could be bigger problems later on.
"They've got to get everything submitted and the proper manner with engineering, and then go forth. You have to go to bids, and nothing happens overnight, so this is something that could happen again, even when we get them up and running," Sternberg explained.
The Arkansas Rural Water Association said that once water is back up and running, the city will be placed on a temporary boil order.
Until then, the superintendent of Helena-West Helena Schools has opened up the gym at Central High School so that families can have a place to shower.