FRANKLIN, La. (KLFY) — A water outage in Franklin caused closures for government buildings and schooling for Foster, Franklin Junior High, and Franklin Senior High school students today.

News 10 spoke with the Mayor Eugene Foulcard, who shares how the city is trying to get federal funding to help repair a over hundred-year-old water distribution system.

“This particular line that ruptured over the weekend is about a 100-year-old line that ruptured. That line may have been put down maybe in 1908,” said Foulcard.

Foulcard talked about the severity of the waterline break.

“The thing about this particular line; it is a ten-inch line that is a very major artery of water distribution for the city. So, it caused our water plant to really deplete our water supply,” said Foulcard.

Since he took office in 2018, Foulcard said the city has been dealing with water issues.

“The infrastructure system in Franklin has been down for well over 125 years, and it didn’t happen like this overnight and won’t get fixed overnight, but we are addressing it,” said Foulcard.

He says they are doing about 2.4 million dollars worth of repairs throughout the city to address the ongoing water infrastructure concerns.

“We did a study to see what would the cost projections be to repair our entire system and it’s in the neighborhood of $40 million,” Foulcard explained. “So that is an astronomical figure. So what we’re doing, we’ve taken one bite out of the elephant out of time. We’re addressing what we can through different grants, community water enrichment fund projects.”

The mayor says the boil advisory will remain in place until further notice.

“Water is a quality of life. So we’re doing the very best we can to ensure that all the residents of franklin are taken care of,” said Foulcard.

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