FERRIDAY — Though the agreement was once hailed as a solution to Ferriday’s water problems, the board of aldermen voted Tuesday to terminate the town’s contract with Triton Water Technologies Inc.

When the contract to overhaul the water was signed, part of the agreement was that Triton was to get front-end funding for the project.

The problem is Triton never got that funding, and now Ferriday desperately needs the new water plant.

“We are six months into this thing and it is not going, and we have a water plant that is about to shut down,” Ferriday Mayor Glen McGlothin said at a special meeting Thursday.

“I want to get funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture or somewhere else instead of waiting for (Triton).”

The mayor said he feels the town has done due diligence when it comes to the Triton contract, and he had with him a draft of a letter the town would send to Triton of their intention to terminate the contract.

“We have waited and waited and waited,” he said. “We can’t wait any more.”

The water plant actually shut down briefly Thursday afternoon, dropping water pressure to a trickle and leaving only 250,000 gallons of water for Ferriday’s water customers before it ran out.

During the shutdown, it was discovered that a motor in the plant had thrown a belt, something that may have been caused by a blink in power, McGlothin said.

If the plant shut down again, McGlothin said it would leave the customers without any water, boil-order or not.

“I can’t do the people of Ferriday this way,” McGlothin said.

Alderman Gloria Lloyd moved to terminate the contract, and Jerome Harris seconded the motion. The motion passed unanimously.

But the situation still needs to be addressed, and the problem of repairs has been compounded by the fact that the Department of Health and Hospitals is requiring more repairs than were initially included in the Triton contract before the orders in place can be lifted for the new plant, driving the total cost of repairs to $2.3 million — money the town doesn’t have.

McGlothin said he has been in contact with the governor’s office and is seeking emergency money, and engineer Bryant Hammett will meet with the town’s bond attorneys today to see if it can get funding for the project.

Likewise, the mayor has been speaking directly with the members of the town’s congressional delegation, trying to get some kind of funding for the project, whether it be stimulus money or any other kind of federal aid.

“It’s everybody’s right in this country to have water to drink, except Ferriday,” McGlothin said.

“I told them, ‘If I was in Iraq, you would have already given me the money.’”

He has received several promises for help, but McGlothin said no one seems to want to take the lead.

“I don’t know what is taking so long to help,” he said. “It’s not like we’re buying a Cadillac so we can drive around and look good — this not a want, it’s a need,” he said.

“We are asking just to help us get water. It’s not like I am asking for a jet plane.”

McGlothin also informed the aldermen that the town would be purchasing $8,516 in radio equipment to help expedite work orders connected to the water system.

When the plant shut down Thursday, the town wasn’t able to find anyone who knew how to work the plant, and eventually an outside electrician identified the problem, McGlothin said.

The 11 mobile radios will be placed in the water works employee trucks, and speakers connected to the radios will be mounted to the outside of the trucks, he said.

“There won’t be any excuse, I don’t care if you have a cell phone or not,” McGlothin said.

The system will also help speed how work orders are completed when the situation returns to normal, he said.

Instead of water works employees going to Town Hall to pick up work orders, the town will be able to radio them the location of a problem so workers go directly to it.

“That way, if someone has a leak, they won’t have a $1,000 water bill by the time we get to it,” he said. “We’re going to move into the 21st century.”