FERRIDAY — Ferriday town officials are coming one step closer to knowing what they need to do to improve Ferriday’s water quality.

Mayor Glen McGlothin said he has a plan to meet with Concordia Waterworks officials next week to see about tying the town’s water system into the larger waterworks system, which serves the unincorporated areas of the parish, instead of continuing to use the current intake system on Old River.

Water quality tends to decline when the water level in Old River drops because the intake system begins to take in more and more organic matter.

If the town is unable to reach an agreement with Concordia Waterworks, the town will have to go to plan B, which is to build a 30-acre retaining pond outside the water plant.

“That pond was originally in the plans for the plant, and I don’t know why it was taken out,” McGlothin said. “You would let the water sit in that pond for 48 hours and let all the particles drop out, and then you just skim the water off the top so that you’re just pulling water off instead of treating organic matter.”

Regardless of what method the town uses to improve its water quality, it is going to have to replace a number of broken or inaccurate water meters in the near future.

The Louisiana Legislative Auditor’s office conducted an investigation into the Ferriday water system after it lost money for a number of years, and it found that some water customers were not paying water bills because of the antiquated system that has five different types of meters.

The town has a tentative agreement with Triton Company to replace 1,910 meters on the town’s water system, and they are currently working on a financing agreement, McGlothin said.

The town will go before the bond commission later this month to find out for certain if they can borrow the money, McGlothin said.

The deal with Triton will replace the five existing types of meters with electronic meters, and will include improvements to the existing water plant by replacing the extant tank and building a second one so that they will have twice the water storage capacity.