After literally decades of putting up with sometimes murky, sometimes downright nasty water, residents of Ferriday finally had reason to celebrate last week.

Water began flowing into residential and commercial service lines from the town’s new, state-of-the-art water plant.

The change should eventually provide a bit of comfort for residents that, quite frankly, had learned to look suspiciously at their faucets.

In the 1990s, long periods of time passed when the town’s old plant produced water that had to be boiled for months on end.

The military was called in to provide potable water for residents in what appeared to be a natural disaster response. The reality was a manmade one.

The old water plant was a bad idea from the get-go. It collected water from a surface source — Old River.

The new, $6.9 million, USDA-funded plant draws water from a groundwater well.

The new plant is long overdue and should eventually provide some confidence again from Ferriday residents, but given the long woes from the past, that confidence will take time to build.