Water on the way to 2 dry areas

Officials: Pipeline to serve Newton, Searcy counties by spring

Monday, December 24, 2012

Water from a new pipeline will begin flowing to associations in the southern portions of Newton and Searcy counties by early March, offering hope of a summer without worries of water shortages and restrictions on outdoor watering, water officials said.

Crews working on the pipeline are clearing and pressurizing water lines and checking for leaks around Arkansas 74 and Arkansas 7, near Jasper, said Ivan Reynolds, water operator for the Mockingbird Hill Water Association and the Mount Sherman Water Association, both in Newton County.

“We’ll have an unlimited quantity of water,” Reynolds said. “We won’t be in a conservation situation any longer. We won’t have any radium.”

A $72 million project is nearing completion to provide a plentiful, safe source of drinking water to 18 cities, towns and rural water associations in Boone, Newton and Searcy counties, said Andy Anderson, chairman of theOzark Mountain Regional Water Authority.

Anderson said he anticipates that by March the authority will have all 18 members online to receive water from Bull Shoals Lake. The authority, working with engineers and construction firms, built 120 miles worth of ductile cast-iron lines to send lake water to communities that have historically relied on wells.

The lines were completed in March of this year, followed by the completion of a water-treatment plant in June, Anderson said. Water from the lake began flowing to Diamond City and Lead Hill in September. Valley Springs and Western Grove were expected to begin receiving water from the lake any day. Over the next several weeks, the process will continue for communities in Newton and Searcy counties.

“Our main purpose is to keep their tanks full of water,” Anderson said. “The areas in southern Searcy County and southern Newton County every summer, they have water issues.”

Those counties struggle to keep enough water in their tanks, he said. The water from wells tends to have elevated levels of naturally occurring contaminants, including radium and excessive amountsof fluoride.

Engineering Services of Springdale has worked on the project for at least 10 years, said Jason Appel, an engineer for the firm. The system is designed to supply roughly21,000 people with water.

“It’s needed. There’s a lot of communities that have bad sources and have contaminants in their water,” Appel said. “We’re really just excited about getting everybody online so that everybody has a good, consistent source of water and good quality of water.”

Discussions about building a new water system go back to the 1980s, Anderson said. Momentum built enough that in 200, communities joined in an alliance and determined that connecting to Bulls Shoals Lake offered the best solution, he said. The alliance became the Ozark Mountain Regional Water Authority in 2006 and worked with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Arkansas Department of Health and other agencies to make plans.

The authority worked with the state and federal agencies to find the money to pay for the project, Anderson said. The project was propelled in 2009 by the announcement of federal stimulus money, with $36.36 million in grants and a $19.37 million loan through the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The project received other federal and state sources of revenue to pay the entire cost.

“I call it luck,” Anderson said. “We have a board of directors, nine members, three from each city. Several of us have been on it the whole time.”

Anderson receives water at his house from Lake Bull Shoals Estates Water. Theauthority began supplying the organization with water from the lake in September. Though not all of his neighbors agree, Anderson likes the taste of the water better.

“If you put it in a glass, it’s crystal clear,” he said. “It’s much better quality.”

The Mockingbird Hill Water Association depends on a 3,300-foot deep well for water for 284 mostly residential customers who live south of Jasper, Reynolds said. At one time, the association could pump 60 gallons of water per minute, but that rate fell to 35 gallons per minute because the water level in the well has dropped.

By comparison, water flows out of a single water hose at about 20 gallons per minute, he said.

“In the summer, we’re asking people not to water their gardens and not to do any outside water in order to have water available for everybody,” Reynolds said.

The Ozark Mountain Region Water Authority started because the Arkansas Department of Health directed the Mount Sherman Water Association to find an alternate source of water, Reynolds said. The health department was concerned because of the amount of radium in water that came from the association’s two wells. The association shut down one of two wells that had higher levels of radium and began searching for a different source of water.

Reynolds explained that radium is produced by the decomposition of naturally occurring uranium into bismuth and then to lead. The radium is radioactive. Treating the water for radium would require the collection of quantities of radium,which would be dangerous, he said.

“We’re all anticipating the delivery of new water,” he said. “Hopefully we can keep our systems going without any major expense.”

Water from Bull Shoals Lake began flowing into faucets in Diamond City in September.

“I really believe it was for the best,” Diamond City Mayor Shari Marshall said. “We’re guaranteed a clean, fresh water system forever.”

For more than 30 years, Diamond City, with 780 people in Boone County, relied on water from a well, Marshall said. The well is approaching the end of its lifespan and a new well would be expensive, she said.

The switch to the lake as a water source means that the city no longer has to maintain its water system, including monitoring water quality and paying electric bills for water pumps, she said.

However, the city for the first time is buying water at a cost of $7,000 a month, Marshall said. Residents pay $14.95 for the first 1,000 gallons of water and $7.50 for each 1,000 gallons after that. She anticipates residential rates will increase between 6 percent and 8 percent next year.

Marshall said she likes the taste of the lake water, which is treated with chloramine, but some residents have said they prefer the taste of well water, which was treated with chlorine.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 12/24/2012