Water System Cleaning 8/13-9/01
8/13/2026
Water System Announcement: The City of Benton will be performing a regular maintenance item called Free Chlorine Conversion, or chlorine burnout. This is a slight change in the usual cleaning disinfectant for a couple of weeks. You may notice a slightly stronger smell of chlorine. This is the result of replacing chloramines and ammonia with chlorine, which is more affective for cleaning. Ammonia masks the smell of chlorine, so by removing this, the smell of chlorine becomes present even though the amount does not change. Think of this as our regular water disinfectant is like brushing your teeth and the burnout disinfectant is like going to the the dentist to get your teeth cleaned. Along with this will be some water hydrant flushing to keep this mix moving through the system. This is done by most water providers, and we found a good explanation of the process by a provider in Texas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-A-Sj8uWt8