BENTONVILLE -- A gap in the wastewater connection at 8th Street Market sent sewage about a quarter mile down Town Branch Creek earlier this month.
"They had a sewer issue. It's been repaired, fixed, and the creek cleaned up," said Mike Bender, Bentonville public works director. "Basically, they failed to connect their service line."
8th Street Market
8th Street Market is a community-focused food hub where anchor tenants and merchants serve each other as well as the community. The developers aim for it to create economic growth by supporting small and midsize farmers and food entrepreneurs. Northwest Arkansas Community College’s Brightwater culinary program is a main tenant.
Source: Staff report
Nabholz Construction was the general contractor overseeing the renovation of the former Tyson Foods plant to 8th Street Market at 801 S.E. Eighth St.
Nabholz is doing an internal investigation into what went wrong, and more details will be known once the process is completed, said Greg Fogle, midwest operations president for Nabholz.
"At the end of the day, it just got missed," he said, explaining countless changes occur within the utility installation and thousands of activities happen on a daily basis on a construction site.
Newmark Grubb Arkansas, The Velocity Group and Community Development Corp. are developing the market. Food Hub NWA, a company backed by members of the Walton family, is financing the project.
It's unclear if a fine will be imposed.
"As far as any enforcement matters, that is still under review at this time," said Kelly Robinson, public information officer for the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality.
A city employee noticed a strong odor and dark discharge on the Town Branch Trail just north of the property around May 26, according to Bender and the ADEQ incident report.
City crews inspected sewer mains and drainage pipes and didn't find the source of the leak. A dam was installed downstream of the spill near Southeast Fifth Street to mitigate the contaminated water, according to the report.
City crews did several camera inspections through the public utilities over several days without finding the source of the problem. On June 12, they discovered a line on the building's west side wasn't connected, Bender said.
"There was a gap between what the site utilities contractor put in and what the plumber put in," he said, explaining the ine had a temporary cap installed. The liquid seeped through the cap and flowed into the creek.
"The owners and the contractors jumped on it and got it taken care of once we found what it was," Bender said.
Sewage drained into the storm drain leading to the creek for two weeks, according to documents attached to the incident report. It doesn't say how much sewage was believed to have made it into the creek.
Fogle said it was the first time he's seen this happen, and Nabholz remedied the situation within 12 hours of it being discovered.
The area was excavated and the disconnected line was attached. The affected area was flushed with about 40,000 gallons of water and removed by a vacuum truck downstream of the spill site, according to the incident report.
A test showed the affected area was clean of "fecal coliforms," Bender confirmed to ADEQ in a June 19 email.
Fogle said the internal investigation will be used to make sure the error doesn't happen again.
The city did four sewer line inspections on the 8th Street Market project, and they all passed, said Annette Brightwall, with the city's building inspection department. Brightwall said she had limited information on the specifics and referred other questions to Lance Blasi, chief building inspector, who's out of the office this week and didn't return a message left at his office June 23.
NW News on 06/30/2017