FALLSVILLE — A mile east of the junction of Arkansas 16 and 21, a Newton County family loaded six pails of water into their car Friday morning.
Kelly and Curtis Tindel got the water from an Arkansas National Guard potablewater tanker, just as they’ve done two or three times a day since their spring-fed well ran dry Monday.
They’ll use the water for cooking, washing and drinking. One of the blue bucketsholds enough water to flush a toilet once at day’s end.
Kelly, 25, worries that her three children aren’t getting clean enough. Her family has been taking showers at a neighbor’s house.
“If we’re the people in the shower the last time the water runs out, I’m sure he’ll be upset,” joked Curtis, 30.
Water is scarce for the Tindels and about 750 other families across rural Newton County in the Boston Mountains because maintenance problems and drought have strained rural water associations in the area. In the past, the network of connected water providers could help one another if one had problems, but not this year.
“All three of us are in trouble now,” said Mockingbird Hill Water Association board President John Meyer. Pumps and pipes connect the Mockingbird Hill, Deer-Wayton Water Association and the Nail-Swain Water Association systems.
“We don’t have the option to help out our neighbors right now because we’re all in the same boat.”
For each, water is eitherlow or unavailable.
At Nail-Swain, the pump motor broke on the 1,700-foot-deep well June 27, slowly shutting off customers from their main, if not only, water supply, operator Lynn Spradley said. He said it’s the biggest water crisis since he arrived in 2005.
The well won’t be fully operable until crews replace its pump and motor, which could come as early as Friday, Spradley said. He estimated the replacement would cost $96,000.
Customers wouldn’t re-ceive water until at least two days after that, he said.
Meanwhile, residents have drawn 1,000 gallons out of the 5,000-gallon tanker the National Guard sent to Fallsville on Monday, Spradley said.
Most of that water went home with customers in pails and buckets. The National Guard also rigged a hose to the tanker, allowing families to fill heavy-duty, hundredplus-gallon portable water tanks.
Late Friday, Gov. Mike Beebe approved Nail-Swain’s request to pump 25,000 gallons into its well instead of continuing tanker use, governor’s spokesman Matt De-Cample said.
“You can turn the tap, and if water comes out, you’re ahead of the game,” said Jim Winnat, who serves on the Nail-Swain Water Association board.
That’s largely been the reality for Deer-Wayton and Mockingbird Hill customers who have had to conserve, but not haul, water.
Utility officials for the two say that water supply is low, not critical, but not enough to safely share.
The situation in the Boston Mountains area has some residents a little on edge.
Candy Reynolds at the Boston Mountain Rural Health Center in Deer said she worries the family practice center might have to close because of the area’s water shortage.
“It’s not lookin’ good,” Reynolds said.
The health center draws from Deer-Wayton’s tank, which water superintendent Kenny Stone says has been overworked lately.
Lately, the utility pumps 55,000 gallons per day from its shallow wells, a jumpfrom an average 45,000 gallons per day, Stone said.
Three to four inches of rainfall could give his tanks enough water for six months, Stone said, but it seems “as soon as the [rainy] weather patterns hit the Arkansas state line, they dissipate.”
Unable to wait on the weather for replenishment, Meyer and Stone’s associations have discouraged outdoor water use and encouraged conservation efforts.
So far, those efforts have stabilized water levels, they say. For example, Mockingbird Hill customers have taken their dirty clothes to nearby Jasper coin-operated laundries, Meyer said.
The Tindels’ children, 8, 5, and 3, can’t comprehend the water scarcity, their parents say. Kelly Tindel said shehad a hard time telling them they couldn’t fill up water balloons, she said.
It’s hot in their house and everyone is cranky, but the Tindels plan to take the children to their grandparents’ home in Ponca for some relief this weekend.
“I think we made it through the worst part,” she said.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 13 on 07/08/2012