Arkansas approves $79 million for upgrades to aging water systems statewide - KATV

Arkansas approves $79 million for upgrades to aging water systems statewide

LITTLE ROCK (KATV) — Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders and the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission on May 15 approved $79 million in assistance for 25 water and wastewater infrastructure projects around the state.

“Arkansans are counting on their local water utilities to deliver consistent and safe drinking water. In my administration, we’re proud to help communities provide that critical service,” said Governor Sanders. “The $79 million in assistance we’re announcing will help us improve water infrastructure for more than half a million Arkansans, keeping faucets, showers, and plumbing running all across our state.”

The release of the financial aid comes amid the Natural Resources Commission's reworking of Arkansas' water plan.

"A lot of these communities have significant water loss and have significant issues with their systems and everyone's trying to get it fixed," said Chris Colclasure, director of the Arkansas Natural Resources Division.

The $79 million of financial assistance consists mostly of low-interest state loans, about $5 million of it are federal grants. The money is part of a wider effort by the state and utilities to modernize aging water infrastructure.

The city of Helena-West Helena has among the oldest and faultiest water systems in Arkansas and several months ago was approved for an $11 million loan from the state as well as an emergency loan of $100,000, after the system failed during winter storms earlier this year. The loan is direly needed for the long list of needed repairs.

"Our system is aged—and a lot of deferred maintenance. And so, we're going to build new wells, we're going to repair some of the aged lines and replace some of the pumps and things of that nature on both water and sewer," said James Valley, chief of staff to the mayor of Helena-West Helena.

Valley says Helena-West Helena simply couldn't save its water infrastructure without the state's loan.

"It's been a real lifeline to our community," he told KATV. "There's no way we could raise the kind of money that we need quickly just through rate increases on our own."

But the money doesn't come as fast as some would like. In Helena-West Helena, the $11 million loan is expected to arrive in a month or two.

For the Cross County Rural Water System, they have been waiting on their loan of roughly $900,000 since last August. The delay has been attributed to the unprecedented number of water projects the state is assisting.

"There's probably more active water and wastewater projects right now than, really I know, for the history of our agency," Colclasure said. "I think right now we have 320-some odd active projects, where you go back a couple years, it probably would have been 50."

And it's not just aging infrastructure around Arkansas that's forcing the state to assist municipal and county water utilities, it's also inflation and in certain regions, population shift. For example, a population decline means fewer ratepayers to support the largely static cost of operating a water utility.

"One of the big things that we see is population shift. With some counties really growing substantially in population...if you look at Benton County, I think they've had about a 28 percent increase from 2010 to 2020—but take Phillips County, they've seen a 23 percent decline over that same period. And so, that brings up issues when you look at how do you fund infrastructure at the local level if you've lost population,"Colclasure said.

Colclasure told KATV the effect of population shifts will be one of the focuses of the updated water plan, the state's overarching policy for water management.

"The stage that we've been in up to this point is really scoping, kind of setting the goals and objectives of the plan and really looking at what we predicted in 2014 and the analysis that was done leading up to that and what do we need to do different," he said.

In late July, the Natural Resource Commission says it intends to deliver to the Governor a project work plan including the projected cost of updating the state's water plan.

The projects receiving funding approved May 15 are below: