LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Doing something as simple as washing your hands can actually use up to about four gallons of water. Now imagine if there were tens of thousands of people using that amount or more all at the same time.
That's a real possibility here in Arkansas as more than 1 million visitors are expected to come watch the total solar eclipse.
"A lot of prep work and hours have already gone into this. Not just for the water treatment proper, but just the entire system, just ensuring that everything is up to speed. All the tanks and everything are in the right shape and the pipes in the ground," said Doug Shackleford, the Public Affairs officer for Central Arkansas Water.
He explained that CAW services most of Central Arkansas which, includes cities like Little Rock, North Little Rock, Maumelle, and even wholesale customers like Bryant, Jacksonville, and Cabot.
"The Wilson plant is our largest plant it can produce right around 133 million gallons of water a day and then the Ozark port plant can do about 24 million gallons of water a day. So both plants will be running pretty much at capacity we expect," Shackleford described.
With the influx of people expected to be in Central Arkansas, he said they don't expect customers to have to conserve water as their hours of preparation behind the scenes should keep everything running smoothly.
"We have a really resilient system, and that preparation and resiliency is why we're so confident and that we will not see any issues on April 8," he said.
Their staff will treat the eclipse like high demand day just as they would in the summertime when more people would typically start filling up their swimming pools or start mowing their lawns.
"[We're] keeping all the tanks filled all around the community, just to ensure that you know [we're prepared] if demand is really truly high with all these people coming in," Shackleford said.