FERRIDAY, La. – Just a few days after Concordia Waterworks District No. 1 officials asked customers to conserve water, the district was dealing with another setback.

The water system lost 400,000 to 500,000 gallons of water — roughly 40 percent of Tuesday’s daily demand — when a transmission line developed a leak early Thursday morning. Waterworks crews, who discovered the leak around 5:45 a.m., had fixed it four hours later.

&uot;It’s hard to tell what demand (was Thursday) due to that leak,&uot;&160;said waterworks Manager Charles Renfrow. &uot;We’ll just have to watch demand in the next couple of days to see whether it’s made that much of a difference.&uot;

A 10-inch transmission line that runs from the district’s Louisiana 15 wells to U.S. 84 and Levens Addition Road developed a leak Thursday morning. That leak was caused by the ground shifting due to dry conditions.

Since the system didn’t lose pressure, no boil-water notice was issued, and few customers were affected by the leak since water was still in the transmission line, Renfrow said.

But customers of Concordia Waterworks District No. 1 still need to conserve water until the district tells them otherwise, Renfrow said.

On Monday, waterworks officials said the district was in danger of running out of water due to rising water usage and drought conditions. So in a notice issued that day, they asked customers to cut back on washing cars, watering lawns and filling swimming pools.

&uot;At least, we haven’t had customers call with complaints,&uot;&160;he said.

But Renfrow added the loss of so much water because of the leak underscores the importance of conserving water.

He said it is still too early to determine whether thunderstorms on Tuesday and Wednesday will help curb the demand for water.

And while Natchez got a little more than 2 inches of rain from the storms, according to the Adams County Civil Defense Office, and Vidalia got about 1.5 inches, some areas of Concordia Parish got barely a drop of rain.

Since rain can take months or years to filter down to an aquifer, or underground formation saturated with water, more rain would help the water shortage more by reducing demand than filling up the aquifer, said engineer Bryant Hammett. &uot;It would reduce the amount of water people use rather than affecting the aquifer all that much,&uot; Hammett said.