Water quality and service issues have plagued Marion’s water system since last year. At their first March meeting on Monday night, March 7, the city’s mayor and council heard from water customers in the West Cornelia Street neighborhood who said water pressure in their area had dropped to the extent that the service was becoming unusable. “The pressure has gone way down. It’s very low. It takes a good 5-10 minutes to fill up a pitcher,” said Veselee Jackson, who had come before the council to represent her neighbors’ concerns that night. “My son can’t even get water to rinse his toothbrush out and get ready for work,” she said. “…we’re trying to find out what all you are going to do about it.” “We’ve been over on West Cornelia Street trying to fix the issue,” said Mayor Dexter Hinton. We’ve fixed some leaks but that hasn’t solved the issue.” Hinton said that if the repairs the city’s water department had made failed to resolve the issue, it meant the line would need to be completely replaced. “We’re having to look and see if we’ve got enough material, and see if we can get some more material in,” said Hinton. He said that supply chain issues meant that supplies and materials for repair work were taking a particularly long time to be delivered once ordered. “We’re working on it, Mrs. Jackson. We’re going to do the best we can,” Hinton said. “Okay. If not, I’ll be back,” she said. Hinton said he would make sure citizens in that area would be supplied clean water for drinking and cleaning while issues continued.
