Lake Intake Pipes Near Capacity

The intake for the Benton-Washington Water Association is along Beaver Lake about 2 miles east of Prairie Creek park.
The intake for the Benton-Washington Water Association is along Beaver Lake about 2 miles east of Prairie Creek park.

The monitors told Scott Borman the story on a hot July day. The massive intake pipes buried in the shoreline of Beaver Lake can draw in up to 24 million gallons a day, and they were pulling 23 million gallons into the Benton-Washington Regional Water Authority’s treatment plant.

More than 30 miles south and west, huge pumps shot water toward a 5 million gallon tank in Lincoln, which was draining as fast as the machinery could replenish it.

Fast Facts

Beaver Lake

Beaver Lake is a man-made reservoir in the Ozark Mountains of Northwest Arkansas and is formed by a dam across the White River. Some facts about the lake:

w There are an estimated 3.1 million visitors to the lake annually.

w The lake has some 487 miles of shoreline.

w Beaver Dam, about nine miles northwest of Eureka Springs, was authorized by the Flood Control Act of 1944.

w The lake is about 50 miles in length and covers about 31,700 acres.

w The majority of the lake is in Benton County and stretches into Carroll, Washington and Madison counties.

w Since its creation, the lake credited with preventing $52.5 million in flood damage.

Source: Army Corps of Engineers

This summer’s drought tested water systems in Benton and Washington counties like they have never been tested before. Droughts are nothing new, but this one broke records set last summer. The strain highlighted some needed changes, but those changes will come at a cost, administrators said.

Shipping Gallons

Water flows from the intake pipes at the lake through large lines to cities and rural water providers, which run smaller pipes to the kitchen sink, sprinkler heads and hose connections at homes and businesses throughout Northwest Arkansas. Demand for water rises with the temperature, exposing the limits of delivery systems.

Thirsty cows and chickens, browning lawns and even highway construction need water, and most of it comes from Beaver Lake.

“Four or five days during July, we hit above 23 million gallons per day during peak times,” Borman said. “We’ve got 40 million gallon capacity in our pipeline, but only 24 million at the intake. It was close to bottlenecked.”

Summer spikes are normal, but the abnormally dry weather started earlier than usual this year, said Alan Fortenberry, director of Beaver Water Authority, the other bulk water supplier pulling water from the lake.

“Last year, there was a hot summer, but April and May were very wet,” Fortenberry said. “This year, we saw water use jump starting in April, and it never quit climbing.”

Beaver Water’s intakes, expanded several years ago at a cost of just more than $100 million, didn’t face the same capacity issues Borman did.

Both water wholesalers ship water to cities and rural water systems, who in turn sell it to residential, commercial and agricultural customers.

Supply-Side

“We’ve shattered every record out there,” said Larry Oelrich, utilities director for Prairie Grove. “Last summer was well above average, but this year has been extraordinary.”

Lawn irrigation and a highway project were the two biggest draws on Prairie Grove’s system this summer, Oelrich said.

“Between dust mitigation and seeding the right of ways, the Highway Department has used a ton of water this year that we won’t see repeatedly,” he said of the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department.

The city of Lincoln runs rural water lines outside city limits and into agricultural areas. Poultry farms require thousands of gallons of water each day to keep chickens alive, and many stock ponds dried up, leaving cattle thirsty.

“Most poultry farms use well water as a primary source, with our water line as a backup,” said Chuck Wood, water and sewer manager for Lincoln. “We can tell when the bigger farms start drawing off the line, particularly when they’re located on a small-diameter line.”

Fire trucks also took on plenty of water this summer, as dry weather increased both the number of fires and the amount of water needed to put each out, said John Luther, director of emergency operations for Washington County.

“The crews are having to completely saturate fire scenes to prevent them re-igniting, because everything is so dry,” Luther said. “We’re a foot or more low on rainfall, and on top of the dryness, there’s still a lot of concern about wildfires because the fuel load is still high with all the debris from the 2009 ice storm.”

Most rural water lines are designed to carry about 50 percent more water than they need at the time of construction, said Jay Stallard, grants manager for the Northwest Arkansas Economic Development Commission in Harrison. The commission helped design and fund several water projects in Northwest Arkansas.

“The problem is, if you run a two-inch or three-inch line to an area that has one or two residential customers, that’s plenty of capacity,” Stallard said. “Five years later, though, you could have a dozen homes and a couple of big agricultural users on that same stretch of line, and it’s stretched pretty thin.”

For that reason, most systems have quit installing two-inch lines, he said.

Fixes, Costs

The drought highlighted some changes that could help next time around, officials said. Those pumps laboring so hard in July were pushing water not just to Lincoln, but also to the split where the Washington Water Authority pulls water for its system in southern Washington County. Installing a new connection for the Washington Authority further up the line, before the pumps, would lessen the strain on the far end of the system, said Josh Moore, manager of the Washington Water Authority.

Back at the lake, Borman hopes a proposed rate increase this fall will allow him to expand the intake from 24 million gallons per day to 40 million or more. The authority’s board will vote Sept. 27 on a 15-cent per thousand gallon increase, bringing the price paid by utilities to $2.20 per thousand gallons. An existing $1.50 per meter charge will be continued and dedicated to capital projects, Borman said.

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