No water taps available for Lafayette; supply chain problems persist | News

The council’s vote was 4-2.

“We’ve been in this shape going on two years, maybe a little over two years,” Lafayette Mayor Jerry Wilmore said. “You would have thought we could have gotten manufacturing back in this country with the essential things we need.”

The city has been searching for parts that would allow for issuing taps to customers, but so far has been unsuccessful, either because the parts are in such demand and unavailable or are promised contractually to another city, which was the case while shopping in Nashville, Wilmore said.

“We’ve got enough for 10 water taps, but if any existing customer has trouble and we have to replace it, we don’t want to use it all up for new construction,” he said. “We’ve called everybody in existence that we know of, and they just don’t have the parts.”

The COVID-19 pandemic shut down or slowed much manufacturing, and the nation continues to reel from supply shortages. China has evolved into a dominant supplier of goods, something Wilmore says is not good for the U.S.

“When you rely on a foreign country, especially one that is not friendly to us, they can control us,” he said. “The supply chain with everything is in bad shape.”

Builders and developers are in a waiting game. Chris Crowder, of Chris Crowder Construction, said there’s not much anyone can do, save for maybe using taps without electronic chips in them used for reading the meters.

His company, he said, also does remodels and other construction projects not related to the need for additional taps, but he has a 24-home residential project upcoming near Key Park.

“I got a subdivision in town that I am doing, it’s supposed to be ready in about another month,” Crowder said. “I don’t know, I don’t have a clue right now. It don’t make any sense to me. I don’t know why they can’t use the taps they used to use for temporary. Now they use the ones with chips in them so they can read the meters by electronics.

“They used to read them manually. I don’t know why they can’t do that for the time being.”

For now, it’s just a waiting game.

“There ain’t nothing we can really do, just hope that something changes and get the material in stock and we can all continue on,” Crowder said.