JACKSON, Miss. (WJTV) – JXN Water officials are asking residents to conserve water until further notice.

After storms moved through Central Mississippi on Thursday, May 9, the O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant lost power. Power was restored to the plant around 7:00 a.m. on Friday, May 10.

JXN Water also issued a systemwide precautionary boil water advisory that will be in effect for the surface water system until lifted.

About 6,000 customers who are supplied water from the well system are not affected.

Ted Henifin, JXN Water interim third-party manager, said if these storms came last fall, JXN Water customers may have been is worse shape.

“As late as last fall, and even, you know, winter, if we had had this same situation, it would have taken the recovery would be days, not hours. I definitely think it’s a… it’s a again, a good sign of where we are and our progress. But it’s also indicative that there’s still a lot of projects that need to be done,” he said.

Among those projects include efforts to automate the power sources that keep O.B. Curtis running. There are currently no backup generators at the plant, which runs off of two power feeds from Entergy Mississippi. Those require hands-on attention.

“They could remotely open and close the switches, which would speed up the restoration of power much faster, switching from one feed to the other. This is a project we’ve put into the intended use plan. We just submitted that again this week, so that’s a $30 million electrical project,” said Henifin.

He said the earliest the boil water notice could be lifted is 3:00 p.m. on Saturday, May 10.