FERRIDAY, La. – Ferriday has hired an interim supervisor for its water plant and is requiring all plant operators to attend classes to become certified in their jobs, said Mayor Odeal Montgomery.

&uot;(The State Department of) Health and Hospitals … has directed that all of our operators must become certified,&uot;&160;Montgomery said during Tuesday’s Town Council meeting.

A boil-water notice was in effect for Ferriday from Aug. 20 — when the water plant kept shutting down, apparently due to lack of maintenance and operator error — until Dec. 22.

To get the notice lifted, crews had to complete dozens of repairs, from working on filters and chemical pumps and installing a new operations computer to making electrical improvements.

Later in Tuesday’s meeting, Councilman Billy Rucker asked that each council member bring to the Feb. 15 meeting the name of person in his or her district to serve on a committee to find an alternative source of water for the town.

&uot;We need people who are really concerned about this and that will … be totally open-minded,&uot; Rucker said.

Ferriday currently gets its water from Old River.

A possible alternative would be to drill wells near Lake St. John and send the water to the town through a Concordia Waterworks District No. 2 transmission line.

But first, Town Engineer Bryant Hammett and hydrologists working with him must see whether the aquifer would be able to supply Concordia, Lake St. John and Ferriday customers. Test wells would have to be drilled. Once that study is completed, Hammett would talk with U.S. Department of Agriculture officials to get permission for Ferriday to spend some of a more than $1.1 million grant it got in July for the project.

Ferriday would then have to strike a deal with Concordia Waterworks to use a transmission line.

In other business, the council voted to raise the fine for illegally parking in a parking space for the disabled from $150 to $275 to comply with state law.