Dear Pendleton Water Members,

As you may or may not be aware, the Louisiana Department of Health has instituted a grading system for all water associations both public and private. This grading system gives a numeric score along with a letter grade based on several criteria. Water system grades evaluate community water systems’ long-term sustainability to provide safe drinking water to Louisiana residents. Seven standards (categories) are evaluated for the water grade: federal water quality, state violations, financial sustainability, operation and maintenance, infrastructure, customer satisfaction, and secondary contaminants. Louisiana Department of Health (LDH) maintains data for all standards except standards financial sustainability and customer satisfaction.

A poor water system grade does not imply unsafe water and does not pose immediate health risk. A poor water system grade indicates significant concerns with long-term viability of a water system and requires major improvement/upgrade in order to continuously provide safe drinking water. Additionally, approximately 34% of the water systems with a grade of D or F have applied or have funding through the Water Sector Program and/or LDH Drinking Water Revolving Loan Fund Program to address their issues.

The bad news is Pendleton Water Association received a score of 51 on our initial evaluation. Many of the points that were deducted are a direct consequence of an aging water system that is in dire need of upgrades. That written, the last two boards along with the employees of Pendleton Water have worked extremely hard to secure funding to address the needed upgrades to keep our water safe and to make our system viable for years to come.

As a result of the efforts of several people, PWA received a grant in the amount of $1,770,000.00 to be used for system upgrades. These upgrades should solve many of the problems outlined in our grading report. We are in the preliminary phases of the grant implementation and progress will be slow during these beginning stages. The project is scheduled for three years and actually started when we received notification on February 22, 2023. You will notice that this date is after the date of when we were graded although the actual posting of our grade did not occur until May.

I encourage you to visit with board members and Pendleton employees about this project. For more information on our grade and the grading system please see https://ldh.la.gov/page/4563.

Thank you for being a valued member of our association.

Pendleton Water Association Board