Prisoners and staff at the 532-bed Maximum Security Unit near Tucker remained under a boil order Thursday, a prisons spokesman confirmed, days after a water main break shut down the water system at the unit and another nearby prison.
The Arkansas Department of Health issued boil orders for the Max Unit and the nearby Tucker Unit on Monday, according to copies of the notices released by the agency.
The order was the result of a main break and subsequent loss in normal system pressure, which raised the "possibility that contaminated water may have entered the system," the documents state.
Bacteriological samples taken Monday and Tuesday at the larger Tucker Unit, which houses 1,126 prisoners, showed no signs of contamination, according to the documents. Those tests caused the boil order at the Tucker Unit to be lifted Wednesday, though it remains in effect at the Max Unit.
Prison spokesman Solomon Graves said both prisons were returned to full service Wednesday. Because of the boil order at the Max Unit, the water there may not be used for cooking or drinking without first "briskly" boiling it for one minute, according to the order.
Other operations, such as flushing and showering, were subject to "intermittent" interruptions before the water was brought back to full service, Graves said.
A 5,000-gallon tank truck was provided by the Arkansas National Guard to provide potable water to the prisons, Graves said, as well as four smaller tanks owned by the Department of Correction.
In August, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported that Health Department records showed that Tucker's water system was operating at more than 150 percent of its 590,000-gallon-a-day capacity.
It's unclear if the water main break was attributed to the system's capacity issues. Graves said he would check with maintenance at the prisons.
A $500,000 project was already underway to add filtration capacity at the Tucker Unit before the main broke, this newspaper previously reported.
The Tucker Unit and the Max Unit are two separated from each other by several fields near the town of Tucker in Jefferson County.