Water Project Almost Done

SUNSET — The opening of a few large valves next year will spread water service as far as it’s likely to go in Northwest Arkansas.

Once a 75-mile project in southeastern Washington County is completed next spring, only a few sparsely populated areas of Benton and Washington counties will not have treated, piped water. This will end nearly three decades of scrambling by planning groups to identify, pay for, dig and install water lines in rural areas.

“Unless growth takes off again, I don’t expect we’ll see the need for major lines in new areas,” said Scott Borman, manager of the Benton-Washington Regional Public Water Authority. “The individual providers might run small projects off existing lines to very specific pockets, but major expansion from a geographic footprint is likely over for the foreseeable future.”

Two types of water lines crisscross the region: transmission lines, which pull water from Beaver Lake and deliver it to various cities and areas; and customer lines, which branch out from transmission lines to provide water to homes and businesses in a given area.

Water suppliers such as Beaver Water District and Benton-Washington Regional Public Water Authority — often called by the nickname Two-Ton — operate the intakes on the lake and the transmission lines, while individual lines and home service is run by smaller groups like Mount Olive Water, the Washington Water Authority and cities.

The last big project under way is the second phase of the Southeast Water Project, running lines mostly east of Winslow. Those lines will belong to the Washington Water Authority and serve about 400 customers.

“Once those lines are in, everything will have been run out about as far as economically feasible in that area,” said Jay Stallard of the Northwest Arkansas Economic Development Commission. “There will always be a handful of areas in Benton and Washington counties that won’t be served, but they’re very rural in nature and a long way out.”

The commission has helped several projects, including the Southeast, apply for federal grants and loans. It took five tries and three versions before the Southeast Project was approved. Construction began last month, although planning for the project started in the early 1990s.

Many rural projects were proposed during that era, and they’ve been completed one by one, said Herman Jones, former chairman of the Washington County Rural Development Authority. The authorities in each county oversee planning and construction for most rural projects, then turn them over to the water providers once they’re completed.

“We saw more people moving to the rural areas, which increased demand for water service, because many of them couldn’t get a good well and had to haul their water from a clean source,” Jones said. “For some people, that was just drinking water because their wells were contaminated. For others, it meant bringing in literally all the water they use at home.”

Most of the wells and springs in Northwest Arkansas aren’t a safe source of drinking water because they contain coliform bacteria, which can sicken anyone who drinks it, said Rick Johnson, a former Arkansas Department of Health inspector and current environmental coordinator for the Washington County Department of Emergency Management. Other wells simply can’t handle the water demands of a modern home.

“There are people who can do one load of laundry, then have to wait for the well to fill back up before they can do a second load,” he said. “In a dry season, the wells often dry up completely.”

Dan Schweider knows that fear. In the dry summer of 2006, he paid $10,000 to drill each of the wells on his Cincinnati farm deeper. Water lines coming north out of Lincoln end about a mile south of his place, while lines running south from Siloam Springs stop nearly a mile north.

“I didn’t have a choice at that point. I had to drill,” Schweider said. “There wasn’t a lot of interest around here when Lincoln and Siloam came by about eight or 10 years ago asking people if they wanted rural water, but I think that sentiment has changed now, especially with the number of poultry houses that have gone in since then.”

In addition to providing water in his own home, Schweider’s six chicken houses each require about 5,000 gallons of water every day.

“If the line came in, I doubt it would make sense to pay for the 30,000 gallons each day for the chickens, but it would be nice for my home, and a good backup for the chickens if my well ever did fail,” he said.

Water projects by nature don’t happen quickly, and the completed version often looks little like the original plan. When Lincoln first mapped a rural system in 1994, planners expected about 300 customers. That number grew to 450 by 2001 when federal money was acquired based on that number. By the time crews started laying the 135 miles of pipe in 2004, the cost increased to $7.2 million, more than $3 million higher than original estimates, but the project already had about 700 customer sign-ups.

The Evansville project in southwest Washington County, completed in 2005 after more than a decade of planning, encountered similar size/cost inflation, said Josh Moore, manager of the Washington Water Authority, which owns the lines.

The Southeast project, originally proposed as a single-stage project of $9 million to $10 million, will end up costing nearly double that amount, but will serve more than twice the number of customers originally anticipated, said Wayne Blankenship, grants coordinator for Washington County.

“You look at what’s out there, and you know growth generally follows water lines, so you have to try to guess how much demand there is now versus how much there will be by the time the line is complete,” said Jeff Hawkins of the Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission.

Once the Southeast project is complete, most expansions will be smaller, piecemeal lines run toward small pockets the bigger projects missed. Usually, that means looking at small clusters of homes or businesses not there when the original project went through, Jones said.

“Running a line a quarter-mile to serve three or four homes just can’t be done economically. The cost of running the line is more than the revenue you’d get from those customers,” Jones said. “Now, though, that cluster might be eight or 10 homes, and the economics could make sense.”

Smaller expansions can also be completed using cash reserve or small grants, eliminating the need to take on debt larger expansions have required, Jones said.

Moore, the Washington Water Authority manager, ostensibly runs the existing system. In reality, he’s been dealing with expansion issues constantly for 15 years. The North-Central project, completed in 2002, filled in a coverage gap from north of Prairie Grove, past Tontitown and into areas around Cave Springs. The Evansville expansion followed, wrapping up just as the Southeast got under way.

“It’s going to feel good just running a system, instead of dealing with constant expansion,” Moore said.

At some point, growth will mean more expansion, but will likely involve running more pipe down existing lines to increase capacity, said Alan Fortenberry, director of Beaver Water District. Each of the four major cities in the region has several parallel transmission pipes, some as big as 4 feet in diameter.

“We’re fairly static right now because growth has slowed,” Fortenberry said. “Still, eventually we’ll see the need for more capacity. It doesn’t make sense to rip out existing pipes to replace them with bigger ones when we can always run another line next to the ones already in the ground.”

Most area planners agree another boom in Northwest Arkansas will likely be concentrated along the Arkansas 59 corridor, on the western edge of both counties.

“If and when that happens, there will be some more projects in that region, because the demand would ramp up quickly,” Fortenberry said.

Nearly all faucets in Northwest Arkansas — except those on individual wells — lead back to Beaver Lake. The one exception is parts of Winslow, where the Highway 71 Water Users’ Association bring water north from Lake Fort Smith.

Beaver Lake has plenty of water to service Beaver Water District, Benton-Washington Water Authority and smaller suppliers such as Madison County Water Association and Mount Olive Water District, said Alan Bland, an Army Corps of Engineers ranger at Beaver Lake.

“The lake is allocated so much water for each water supplier, so much for recreation, so much for power generation,” Bland said. “Most people don’t understand just how big the lake is, how much water there is available. We’ve got more than enough for everybody.”

So much, in fact, that even Missouri has looked toward Beaver Lake, said Larry Oelrich, a member of the Benton-Washington Water Authority board.

“We’ve had some discussions before about running transmission lines north of Gateway into Missouri, providing water to the Seligman and Monett areas,” Oelrich said. “It seems to come up every few years, but so far, it’s just been an idea.”

Missouri officials are trying to find a longer-term solution by developing a water source closer to home, said Gail Melgren, director of the Tri-State Water Resources Commission.

“Right now, we’re looking at several scenarios, but Beaver Lake isn’t one of them,” she said. “We’ve identified several possible water sources, but the cost of running the line all the way from Beaver Lake means it’s not an economically feasible alternative at this point.”

Back in Sunset, heavy equipment digs steadily, dropping about 500 feet of new line into place each day.

In Cincinnati, Schweider continues to keep an eye on his wells.

Jones, retired to his farm just outside Fayetteville after 12 years helping bring water to the furthest reaches of Northwest Arkansas. He still makes several trips a week to the water tap on the far side of his 600-acre spread.

“I know what it’s like for people to haul water, because I’ve been doing it since we moved out here in 1944,” he said.