PARKS, La. (KLFY) -- The Village of Parks is set to enhance its water system, aiming to provide residents with a more reliable water supply.

The village has secured over a million dollars in grants to fund the upgrades, which include the installation of a new large water well and the addition of water meters in five areas.

Parks Mayor, Kevin Kately, says engineers have already submitted plans for the new well to the state for approval.

Kately says the upgrades are all about making sure residents have a stronger and more dependable system for years to come.

"We received $400,000, and two years ago we received another $400,000, so we hopefully we our grants together, we probably say it's a little over a million," said Kately.

The Village of Parks currently has four water wells, one large well and three smaller ones. However, Kately says the council plans to add another large well. The new water well is expected to address long-standing issues of water discoloration and low pressure experienced by some residents.

"Once we get the new well, it's going to give us the opportunity to put more people on the line, subdivisions, adding lines where people have well water put in a well, the well we building is actually going to be big enough to where we can probably put another 3,000 or 4,000 customers on it," said Kately.

Kately says the Village of Parks has over 5,000 customers. The village is also installing new water meters within five sectors of the village, it will cover 1,000 customers at a time. The first section in Cypress Island is nearly complete. The mayor says the new meters will better detect usage for residents' water bills.

"I think right now we're probably 99% all the meters are installed, so all we doing is tweaking the system and now it's going to be to the point where we drive by," said Kately.

Kately expressed optimism about the future growth of Parks, noting the potential for new subdivisions and residents moving away from well water.

"We're excited, there's a lot of people who want to build subdivisions, a lot of people want to get off the well water, so it's just a process, like I tell everybody, just pray for us and hopefully very soon we'll start digging the well, once we put the well we're going to have a bigger well that can produce water at a faster rate," said Kately.

With these improvements, the Village of Parks aims to ensure a more dependable water system for its residents, supporting future growth and development.

Kately says he and the council hope to have all paperwork finalized by the end of the year so they can move forward with construction of the new water well.

All facts in this report were gathered by journalists employed by KLFY. Artificial intelligence tools were used to reformat from a broadcast script into a news article for our website. This report was edited and fact-checked by KLFY staff before being published.

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