A day after Jefferson County Mayor Mark Potts declared a State of Emergency due to Jefferson City Utilities inability to deliver water, city officials say the game plan they initiated is showing improvement but the situation is far from fixed.

The issue is with a faulty filtration membrane at the water plant and led to low tank levels. Jefferson City Utilities asked its wholesale buyers, the Shady Grove and New Market utility districts to minimize flows into their tanks.

Customers across all three utilities were asked to conserve water.

Subsequently, the city reached out to its filtration membrane supplier for replacements but the news was not good.

“We are in a 10-year contract with Veolia for our ZW1000 filtration membranes. After issuing an emergency purchase order to replace our faulty membranes, the initial estimated lead time for delivery was 16 weeks (4 months), but would work on expediting delivery,” the city said in a release. “We’ve heard back today that they can reroute 1 membrane to us sometime next week. Second membrane replacement delivery is still to be determined.

“Our team is actively working on sourcing a portable water filtration system to assist in boosting water production to refill our tanks quicker in the short term.”

Thursday afternoon officials said the game plan is working and they hope to be able to begin to deliver water to Shady Grove and New Market later in the day.

“Game plan enacted yesterday by our Utilities Division has helped our water tank system improve drastically. This afternoon we will be working with our wholesalers to reconnect and slowly begin drawing water from our system,” the city said. “We will maintain a close watch on our tanks and our flow to wholesalers to properly discern what is sustainable while we continue to source options to boost production as we await delivery of replacement membranes.