BONO - Craighead County Judge Ed Hill checks on the water level at the newly constructed Bono Lake every two days, hoping rain will continue to fill a basin carved out of the Crowley’s Ridge mountainside just north of Bono.
He drives along the dusty dirt roads of Craighead County Roads 333 and 361, looking at the muddy water that covers the basin of the proposed 80-acre lake. After more than 15 years of discussions, plans, remodeling, construction and tests, the lake is beginning to hold water.
In April, officials closed aspillway on the southwestern edge of the earthen dam just in time for about 5 inches of rainfall. The deepest water is 10 feet near the dam. When completely filled, the lake should be about 40-50 feet deep.
“If we get two or three more big rains, it’ll fill up pretty fast,” Hill said. “It’s not come up much the last three or four days, but I’m satisfied with how it’s going.”
The process has been a long one.
Officials first discussed building a lake just north of Bono in western Craighead County in the 1990s as a means to stop flooding in the town of 2,148. Water rushing off the hills to the north would back up in ditches near U.S. 63, flooding several homes.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency bought six houses on South Deborah Street for $300,000 in 1999 and tore them down after rising waters damaged them.
A year later, engineers conducted a feasibility study that showed that damming a natural valley would stop the rainwater runoff, end the Bono flooding and create a recreational area the county could use to attract tourists.
In 2001, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission bought 275 acres from Craighead County farmer Steve Stevens and developed the lake.
“It was done first to help on the flooding,” said L.M. Duncan, an administrative assistant to Jonesboro Mayor Harold Perrin. Duncan served as the Bono mayor during the lake’s development. “We wanted to help hold the water back.
“Then we looked at it as a revenue project,” Duncan said. “People can come here to go fishing, camping and having picnics. They’ll buy gasoline, food and other things while here.”
Originally, Duncan thought the lake would be ready by 2003. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, though, said the dam’s design wouldn’t work. Environmental concerns and a lack of federal funding set the project back, too.
During a special election in June 2007, Craighead County voters favored a three-month, 1 percent sales tax that raised about $2.5 million for the lake project.
“Then, the lake was supposed to be ready in October 2011,” Hill said. “I took office in January 2011, and it was still dry.”
Finally, officials closed a spillway beneath the dam two weeks ago and waited for rain.
“Our success now depends upon the weather,” Hill said. “We’re still in the rainy time. Maybe we’ll get more soon.”
Forecasters say there’s a chance of rain this weekend.
But while Hill looks for rain, Carolyn Curtner hopes it will stay away. Curtner lives on South Deborah Street in Bono and fears the rainfall will bring more flooding that has plagued the area for years.
“Every time it rains, I pray,” she said. “I’ve lived here since 1979. I’ve seen water come up to the [electrical] plugs in my home.My kids had to sleep on the countertops once to keep from walking in the water in the house.”
City crews cleared debris under a train trestle at the southwestern edge of town, and that has helped facilitate draining the water, but it still pools in Curtner’s and others people’s yards when heavy rain falls.
“It still comes close,” she said. “I’m walking the floors whenever it rains.”
When told the lake is supposed to hold back the water that floods her area, she scoffed.
“Yeah,” she said. “Until the dam breaks, and then there won’t be a Bono anymore.”
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 05/06/2014