Under bright afternoon skies, a shiny silver tanker truck labeled "potable water" rolled up at the Killian town well Wednesday to begin restoring water pressure lost about an hour and a half earlier.
Workers hooked up the truck's 6,500-gallon tank to a pump that would then suck water from the 18-wheeler and refill the town's water tank.
A top Livingston Parish official said a planned test of the water well would be delayed a day and, in the interim, the town's sole groundwater well is not producing water. Tankers would have to keep shuttling in deliveries of water Wednesday and Thursday to keep Killian supplied with water, the official said.
"This is now a 24-hour operation," said Chris Anderson, Livingston Parish's homeland security director.
The well serves around 330 customers and an estimated 990 people in Killian. The rural eastern Livingston community along the Tickfaw River is home to many vacation and retiree homes built on or near the water.
Anderson said town officials reported that Killian usually goes through 5,000 gallons per hour, but the rate ramps up markedly in the afternoon and evenings when people get home from work. The town water tank holds 44,000 gallons.
'Now it's an emergency'
Town officials on Monday warned residents they might lose pressure temporarily Wednesday as the well was disassembled. Contractors had planned to run a camera down the well to see why it has been producing brown, silty water for more than a week.
But, Anderson said that after workers got the water pump off the top of the well Wednesday, a well head was stuck. Without it being removed, workers can't get a camera down the well to see what the problem is and, with the pump removed, the well can't produce water for the time being.
The town and parish have already declared states of emergency, and the town has been under a boil water advisory since shortly after the silt and other material began showing up in homes on April 22 and 23.
The parish is paying for the water currently, but Anderson said the parish has asked Gov. Jeff Landry for an emergency declaration to open up access to funds set aside for emergency water when a water system fails. In addition to the tanker truck, parish officials are also seeking additional pallets of drinking water.
Anderson said that, before Wednesday, the town still had water, but circumstances have changed.
"So, now it's an emergency," he said.
Bottled water has been available for pickup at the fire station at the town hall along La. 22 between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., with a limit of two cases of water per person in each household.
Town officials said Livingston Parish officials were able to get 20 more pallets of water from the state for delivery Wednesday afternoon.
Steven Carver, 68, of Killian, was at the fire station Wednesday afternoon to pick up his latest allotment of bottled water. He has made several trips in recent days, he said.
Carver said he believes the town's water system has been put on the back burner for a long time, despite problems. He said a lot of people he knows in town are "very upset about all this" and that it has taken this long for something to happen.
"I hope they get it fixed. Personally, I think it should have been dealt with a long time ago before it got to this," Carver said.
Killian Town Councilman Brent Ballard, mayor pro tem, said the town contractors planned to come back early Thursday with a larger crane than they brought Wednesday to pull off the well head.
Once the well head is off, they plan to install a submersible pump to begin sending well water back into the town water tank, a move that could mitigate the need for tanker trucks of water.
"We should be able to do that by 7 in the morning (Thursday), is what they are expecting," Ballard said.
The Governor's Office did not immediately return an email for comment Wednesday.
The state Department of Health, which is in charge of regulating water systems in Louisiana and ensuring their quality, was still preparing to provide a comment Wednesday afternoon following a request on Tuesday.
How big is the problem?
Town contractors, PEC and H&H Construction, had been preparing since early Wednesday morning to open up Killian's water well and peer down the 550-foot-deep bore hole to find out why residents have been getting brown, silty water, town and parish officials said.
A crane loomed over the well site next to town hall off La. 22 midmorning as workers, and local officials prepared for the entry until stymied by the stuck wellhead on the old well, which was first drilled in the early 1990s.
Town officials had Livingston Parish sheriff's deputies hand-deliver residents a warning letter Monday. It explained how the circumstances of the brown water's spread and its persistence despite line flushing have led them to focus on the well. The letter also laid out their concerns about a short-term outage during the inspection process Wednesday.
"The inspection of the well will identify what, if any, problems we have within our well so that they can be adequately addressed," the letter says. "During this inspection process, there is potential for total loss of all water pressure to the system."
Councilman Ballard said town officials worry what contractors could find once they do get inside the well is that a screen that sits deep in the well could have failed, a potentially costly and slow fix because the replacement must be custom made.
Work could take about two weeks, Ballard said.
He added that the experience with the stuck well head has raised fears that something may have broken inside the well, preventing the well head from being removed.
Ballard said town officials also harbor a fear that the metal-and-concrete casing that lines the outer walls of the well could have a breach, another costly and time-consuming repair.
The absolute worst case could be that a new well would have to be dug, Ballard said.
"If this well goes down, we are in catastrophic event," he said Tuesday night.
Killian has no other well. Ballard said if the town had to drill a new well, it would try to go far deeper, 2,100 feet, to layers of the Southern Hills aquifer that are known for purer water.
But Ballard said the town has received an estimate that such a well would cost $4.5 million to drill.
"We don't have that kind of money," he said.
The town water system took in $115,220 in user fees and other revenues in fiscal year 2022 but had an operating loss after equipment depreciation.
The town water fund ended fiscal year 2022 with nearly $500,000 in one-time surplus dollars after dedicated state and federal grant dollars were excluded, the latest town audit says.
Former seven-term Mayor Gillis Windham said the well was drilled in 1990 and 1991.
Two other town wells went down in 2014. Livingston Parish officials recently explored trying to bring one of those wells back into service, but Ballard said its condition was too bad to restore.