BENTON - Benton’s public utility commissioners are still awaiting word on whether trustees of a local water authority will sell a 16-inch water line to the city.
During a meeting Monday, City Attorney Brent Houston said he hadn’t heard from the Southwest Water Users’ trustees or their attorneys since December. At that time, an attorney for Southwest Water Users, a public water authority in Benton, wrote to Houston expressing the board’s interest in pursuing the sale.
Southwest offered to sell Benton Utilities the water line, which would run to a soon-to-be-developed area known as the Exit 114 properties, for $303,000 plus bond interest during a meeting with Benton Utilities General Manager Terry McKinney in August. McKinney didn’t relay the offer correctly to the city’s utility commission the next month.
The main holdup is whether Southwest can legally sell the line.
“My suggestion is we hang tight just a little bit longer and see what the response is,” Houston said during Monday’s meeting.
If trustees can release the line, Houston said they will have an independent engineer inspect the line and negotiate a sale agreement, he said. If they don’t release the line, he said, officials will need to consider alternatives.
Other questions of how much of the line’s capacity Benton would own and stipulations attached to the offer remained unanswered as well.
Arkansas, Pages 11 on 01/07/2014