Some Saline County residents are fed up with an old sewer system that leaks sewage onto the roads and are working with state agencies to secure a federal grant to connect the neighborhood’s system to one in Bryant.
Residents of Collegeville Heights Mobile Home Park,just northwest of Alexander past Interstate 30 in Saline County, are hoping to connect with Bryant’s sewage system to ensure clean drinking water, after Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality inspections showed fecal and E. coli contamination in their water. The Central Arkansas Planning District is helping residents gather federal housing grant funds to pay for the connection, officials said.
The neighborhood has been rife with sewage problems dating back about 42 years, as past managers of the system racked up “flagrant violations” and fines, according to a department memorandum.
“There’s busted lines everywhere,” resident Robert Kirtley said. “There’s sewage running down every road.”
Environmental Quality Department officials surveyed the neighborhood June 27 and again July 8 after a resident contended that untreated sewage from a nearby waste pond was overflowing into the mobile-home park and contaminating drinking water. Department officials snapped photos of the waste pond, its outfall and a sanitary sewer overflow that is part of the facility’s collection system and took samples, according to a water division complaint report.
Lab analyses of the waste pond and two residents’ property pipes showed fecal and E. coli collections in the samples, the complaint states.
Currently, most of the homes in the neighborhood are plumbed into an “antiquated sewage system” that drains into the on-site waste pond, the department said. Houses that aren’t connected to that system instead use “their own makeshift waste disposal systems” with pipes that release sewage onto the surface, according to the report.
According to the complaint report, the Environmental Quality Department and the state Department of Health have tried since 1971 to either condemn or update the system, but “there is no evidence of success.”
When Environmental Quality Department inspectors checked out the area in July, they didn’t find any discharge. But they said there was “little to no free board,” meaning the sewage would likely release onto the surface during a “significant rain event,” the report states.
The original lines weren’t designed to last as long as they have, said Kirtley, who owns half the property where the pond sits. The sewer system has been in bad shape, he said, prompting him to go to Saline County Judge Lanny Fite, who then pointed him to the planning district.
Since the Environmental Quality Department’s visits, the district has sent out surveys to 107 neighborhood homes, polling them about the possible sewage changes, district grant administrator Amanda Adair said. Surveys collected information including the number of residents in the household and the family’s income.
Polling results showed the neighborhood was split in half about the decision -with higher-income residents in brick-and-mortar homes opting out and lower-income residents wanting to connect to Bryant’s sewage system, she said. The planning district will likely apply for service for the low-income area, which has about 45 houses, she said.
Adair said the planning district is waiting on an engineer to assess costs of the infrastructure to connect to Bryant’s line, along with the fees residents will pay. Once the cost estimates come in, Adair said county officials will apply for U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development community grant funding through the Arkansas Economic Development Commission or the Arkansas National Resources Commission. The Natural Resources Commission will pick the projects to fund with the grant money, and the Economic Development Commission monitors the federal money.
The owner of the Owen Creek mobile-home park, down the road from Collegeville Heights, recently paid to build the necessary infrastructure and a new pump station to connect that area to Bryant’s sewage and water system, Bryant Public Works Department Director Monty Ledbetter said. He said that neighborhood will likely be connected to Bryant’s system by the end of the month.
“Those little satellite sewer systems, they never work really well,” Ledbetter said. “Once they build them, they start off working fine, but they’re not maintenance-free. There’s no one there to maintain them.”
That neighborhood’s system won’t affect Collegeville Heights since they’re permitted separately, the Environmental Quality Department said.
If the grant is awarded, Adair said, officials will order the money from the Economic Development Commission, which will then request the money through a federal system. The county would have to bid out the line’s construction.
If Collegeville Heights residents connect to Bryant’s utilities, the sewage will be pumped out of the waste pond, Kirtley said, adding that he’d still have to remove the contaminated dirt from the pond on his property.
“I been waiting for city water for years,” he said. “I’m tired of my white clothes being brown and yellow from the well water.”
Arkansas, Pages 13 on 01/26/2014