PLAQUEMINES PARISH, La. (WGNO) — Some of the reverse osmosis systems needed in Plaquemines Parish have arrived.
The conversation around reverse osmosis started about two weeks ago and on Thursday, Sept. 28, two of the units arrived in Plaquemines Parish, and are in the process of being installed at the east Pointe à la Hache water plant.
“Basically, yeah, we brought in two units, and each of these units do 200 gpm (gallons per minute), and in combine, that does 500,000 gallons a day for this particular municipality,” said Onsite Water Manager Rodney Merritt.
Merritt, with the onsite water management company that delivered the reverse osmosis machines, explains how they work.
“So, basically, the water comes from the Mississippi, comes into this municipal plant, gets treated by the plant. This plant is unable to get the salts out with its filtration system, so what we’re going to do with the reverse osmosis systems is intercept it, filter out the salts and send it back to those cisterns to be redistributed to the community,” said Merritt.
Merritt hopes to have the clean water pumped out by Oct. 4.
“So, we’ll obviously have to assemble it, do some preliminary testing, take some water testing, get that approved, and then we’re ready to go,” said Merritt.
In the meantime, Plaquemines Parish President Keith Hinkley says they will continue to distribute water at the Rev. Percy M. Griffin Community Center in Braithwaite.
“We don’t want to stop the distribution of water because we have to make sure that all of these processes that we’re doing are going to work, and they’re going to work, but we just need to make sure,” said Hinkley.
Fresh water will be available even sooner than next week. Hinkley says the Army Corps of Engineers will be bringing in the water barges along the river by Sunday.
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