There are concerns over contamination of water after the city of New Orleans faced a water outage on Sunday due to a malfunction in the immense steam generator that powers pumps for the city's water treatment plant.

Marcia St. Martin, executive director of the city's Sewerage and Water Board said that the water outage continued for 20 minutes on Sunday morning. Mayor Mitch Landrieu had written on micro blogging site, Twitter that the officials are working to resolve the matter. Water pressure at the main gauge had never fallen below the state's threshold of 15 pounds per square inch for boil advisories.

It is believed that the malfunction leading to the loss of pressure might have resulted in contamination and thus water samples are being collected from across the city. The samples collection is set to be completed by Sunday afternoon and results are expected in 24 hours' time. The officials have advised more than 300,000 residents on the Mississippi River's east bank to boil water before drinking, brushing their teeth, preparing food and other uses.

The treatment plant on the east bank provides about 135 million gallons of drinking water a day to the city residents.