The Friends of Little Sugar Creek substituted its federal lawsuit Tuesday over the authorization to allow Bentonville to rebuild the Lake Bella Vista dam.
The first, 21-page complaint was filed Dec. 21 against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It claimed the dam is not serviceable and is therefore ineligible for federal money the city wants to use to rebuild it.
The amended, 31-page complaint adds claims that members of the Friends of Little Sugar Creek would suffer injury and harm to their interests of seeing the creek return to a free-flowing stream if a new dam was built, that a supplemental environmental assessment should have been conducted after the December 2015 floods and that the Emergency Management Agency failed to comply with the Council on Environmental Quality regulations to ensure that the agency performing the environmental assessment has no financial interest in the project's outcome.
Both suits were filed in the U.S. District Court in the western district of Arkansas in Fayetteville.
CP&Y Inc., of Austin, Texas, is the city's engineering consultant on the project. It prepared the environmental assessment then was hired to prepare the new dam design plans, the complaint states.
"As such, it has a financial stake in the outcome if the project is permitted by the USACE (US Army Corps of Engineers) and funded by FEMA," the complaint states. "Conversely, its financial interests are adversely affected if the project is not authorized."
Friends of Little Sugar Creek is a nonprofit organization, which has been advocating for the 100-year-old dam to be removed and for the creek to be restored.
The Association of State Dam Safety Officials declared the dam "failed" in March 2008 after it was topped during a storm. It was topped again by flooding in 2011, 2013 and December 2015. The lake has been drained, and dam gates have remained open since the last flooding.
The dam replacement is expected to cost $3.5 million. FEMA has committed $2.7 million to the city for the project. The remaining money will come from the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management and Arkansas Department of Economic Development. The city will not have to contribute.
Bentonville's City Council approved a $478,800 design contract with CP&Y in December 2015 for a new dam.
NW News on 03/15/2017