SLIDELL, La. — For years, residents in the Eden Isles subdivision have been filling up their glasses and bathtubs with murky water.
“You could fill your tub, and it was so dirty, you could actually write your name in the residue like people say wash me on a dirty car,” Longstreet said.
Longtime resident Lee Longstreet says even dogs won’t drink the water.
“You could fill your tub, and it was so dirty, you could actually write your name in the residue like people say wash me on a dirty car,” Longstreet said.
On Tuesday, Magnolia Water held a ribbon cutting for the neighborhood’s new water filtration system. Now, murky water should be a thing of the past.
According to residents, the water turned brown after Magnolia Water bought the system five years ago.
“There was debris in this system from Hurricane Katrina,” Magnolia Water CEO Josiah Cox said. “It was really in bad shape.”
Company CEO Josiah Cox claims they had to decrease the chlorine levels in the water for safety reasons, leading to discoloration.
“That caused the naturally occurring tannins not to be bleached, so they could start seeing them,” Cox said.
In the new facility, Cox says they’ll use safer chemicals to treat the water.
“We’re using chloramine which doesn’t have byproducts that are cancer-causing,” Cox said.
As for Lee Longstreet, he’s viewing his glass half full.
“I took a glass of water this morning and it was okay,” Longstreet said.
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