Bossier City water: At least five years before the end of chlorine burns
“I know we get chlorine complaints. If we didn’t have to do it, we wouldn’t."
This article appeared in the October 29, 2025, BossierNow morning email. We offer free and paid subscription plans.
Consulting engineer Ben Rauschenbach was asked at the City Council infrastructure committee meeting if improvements to the City’s water system would mean the end of chlorine burns in Bossier City.
“We’ve gotten beat up in the press the past couple of days,” committee chair Brian Hammons said. “Will this alleviate what we always still have to do, the chlorine burn?”
“It will help,” Rauschenbach replied. “To swap completely over to a chlorine-only system and then dial that disinfectant back, we really need something to take the organics out of the water completely, so that’s the future.”
The nanofiltration system that’s being tested, which would ultimately reduce the need for chlorine cleansing of Bossier City water, is years away from being funded and constructed.
“I know we get chlorine complaints. If we didn’t have to do it, we wouldn’t, but it’s something that we monitor very closely,” Rauschenbach added. “We turned the ammonia on today, and we’ll be doing a flush Monday through, you know, the better part of next week, swapping everything back over to chloramines and completing this year’s cycle of that. So it’s just something we have to do. We’ve been doing it since 2018.”
Rauschenbach told BossierNow after the meeting that phase one of a three-step process to complete the nanofiltration upgrade would take “at least a year.”
BossierNow: “So what’s your best guess for when all three phases would be completed?”
Rauschenbach: “I don’t have a good answer to that. I know we were with Senator Bass today and talking through funding. That project, I think, makes the most sense if the city can partner with state and federal dollars to get it done. Otherwise, the city customer has to pay for that.”
BossierNow: “So five years?”
Rauschenbach: “I think if we were inside of five years, that’d be a major win. But I don’t think that’s out of the question.”
What the Erin Brockovich team said about Bossier City water six years ago
Six years ago, Erin Brockovich’s representative held a town hall meeting about the Bossier City water system and the presence of brain-eating amoeba.
Here is BossierNow’s coverage of that meeting.
