Boil-Water Notice Lifted After Water Main Repairs Made in Jackson

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — People in Mississippi’s capital city can once again use tap water without boiling it first.

Jackson Mayor Tony Yarber said Monday that boil-water notices have been lifted.

The notices were issued in parts of the city after workers replaced a broken water main in northwest Jackson on Friday and Saturday.

The city originally estimated 40,000 customers would be without water or would have low pressure because of the work. It ended up being about half that number.

Jackson is one of many cities across the U.S. dealing with challenges of aging infrastructure. The concrete pipe replaced in Jackson was 27 years old.

Portable toilets were stationed outside the Capitol and other state government office buildings as a precaution.

Water was cut off in parts of the city at about 3 p.m. Friday and was restored about 24 hours later. The repairs took about half the time that officials had predicted.

“They gave us a best-case scenario of 24-48 hours,” Hinds County Emergency Services Director Ricky Moore told The Clarion-Ledger (http://on.thec-l.com/2nmdnLR ).

Crews from two contractors worked around the clock. City data show water pressure stayed relatively normal through about the first 20 hours of work.

“It’s hard to say we’ll never do this again because we have three breaks a day,” Yarber said. “There were three breaks we fixed last week that we know would have been detrimental and probably we wouldn’t have been able to finish this work had we not fixed those breaks last week.”