WEST FORK -- The city has delayed plans for a pipeline to Fayetteville for its wastewater treatment for a year so it can fix broken pipes first.
The city submitted a revised schedule to the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality last month with a tentative completion date for the pipeline project of July 2018. The city's wastewater treatment plant, built in the 1970s, would be abandoned by August of that year.
Milestone schedule
• Sewer rehabilitation construction will be begin this month and be complete by January 2017.
• Sludge removal from the existing wastewater treatment plant pond will begin in October and be complete by December.
• Sewer main to Fayetteville construction will begin in July 2017 and be complete by July 2018.
• The existing wastewater treatment plant will be demolished and taken out of service by August 2018.
Source: McClelland Consulting Engineers
Sewer system rates
Fayetteville does billing and collections for other municipalities in Northwest Arkansas. The following rates are per thousand gallons treated.
• Elkins: $4.35*
• Farmington: $6.30
• Greenland: $6.85
• Johnson: $6.85
*Elkins does its own customer billing.
Source: Paul Becker, Fayetteville chief financial officer
The total cost -- engineering and construction of the pipeline and repairing the old pipes -- would be somewhere between $8 million to $10 million, said Nick Batker, the project engineer.
The city's wastewater plant is outdated and unable to meet West Fork's needs, said Mayor Charlie Rossetti.
State inspectors found in 2014 that during heavy rain, solid waste was overflowing into the White River, which goes into Beaver Lake -- the source of most of Northwest Arkansas' drinking water. The state ordered the city to stop unpermitted discharges and clean the plant area.
State officials found waste and other pollution from the plant in the west fork of the White River and noted violations of environmental permits and laws during more than a dozen inspections in the past decade, according to Environmental Quality's online reports. Its most recent inspection in March 2015 found the same problems.
Rossetti sent a letter to the department last year saying the city had removed the solid waste, clean the two ponds and manholes in the area near the plant and set up a barrier to prevent waste from entering the river.
It was a short-term solution to a long-term problem. The resolution to West Fork's woes will be to construct a pipeline to Fayetteville and connect to its wastewater treatment, such as other small cities have done, Rossetti said.
"We're doing what we have to do and what we're supposed to do in meeting regulations," he said. "We just have an outdated plant."
The project
The city hired McClelland Consulting Engineers of Fayetteville to design an 8-mile-long sewer pipeline, starting at the site of the wastewater treatment plant in West Fork and ending near the Washington County Detention Center.
Engineers determined connecting to Fayetteville is the most cost-effective plan, Batker said.
The city needs to address its pipes before any of the work on the Fayetteville line can happen. The work will begin this month using a $2 million loan through the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission. The commission will forgive $1.3 million of the $2 million, meaning that West Fork will have to pay back $800,000 as a low-interest loan.
The payback on the loan is about $330 a person for the town of about 2,400 people.
The city awarded a contract to Davis Construction of Harrison for the work. A separate bid will be needed to cover sludge removal at the wastewater treatment plant's south lagoon -- a project with an estimated cost of $537,500, according to Batker.
The Resources Commission is the primary financier of the project in its early phases. A significant portion of future funding is expected to come from loans through the federal Clean Water Act.
Past woes
The City Council has voted to raise water rates about 43 percent in recent years. The rate in 2008 was an $11 minimum for the first 2,000 gallons of water consumed. The rate rose to a $15.75 minimum in August 2015, which is about the same or less than other Arkansas cities of similar size, said Public Works Director James Scanlon.
The plant violations forced the city to address its wastewater situation, said Mark Bennett, wastewater development division manager with the Resources Commission.
"They pretty much have to do it, quite frankly," he said. "It's going to be expensive, but we're going to try to work with them to provide some additional assistance."
John Pennington, executive director of the Beaver Watershed Alliance, said other cities typically experience manhole overflows and sewer line breakage from time to time, but West Fork's problems have stood out in recent years. A management change at the plant has it going in the right direction, Pennington said.
"As far as I can tell, the people who are in place right now really are doing a good job and working hard to do West Fork and the White River right," he said.
Moving forward
Before West Fork begins easement acquisition for the land where the proposed pipeline would be, the Resources Commission will require another study to re-evaluate options, just to be sure the pipeline is the route the city wants to go. The only other feasible option would be constructing a new wastewater treatment plant because the existing plant is basically right on the banks of the river, Bennett said.
Fayetteville is waiting for West Fork to send a draft of an agreement in which Fayetteville would treat West Fork's wastewater, and West Fork would pay for the service, said Fayetteville Utilities Director Tim Nyander.
West Fork would be connecting to a more updated facility in Fayetteville, Nyander said, much like the cities of Elkins, Farmington, Greenland and Johnson already have done.
"It's a lot cheaper than building a wastewater treatment plant, of course," he said.
Once West Fork's sewage enters Fayetteville, Fayetteville would be responsible for ensuring its treatment meets federal and state requirements. The pipeline would be constructed and owned by West Fork, and Fayetteville's operation and maintenance of the pipeline would be part of West Fork's monthly bill, Nyander said.
Scanlon said he couldn't predict if West Fork's rates will go up.
"As we move closer and see where the cost is, we'll have a better idea," he said. "But, there's a lot of things that still have to be approved, and there are still plans that have to be reviewed. It's very difficult to say whether there will be a rate increase or not."
A key part of the effort to try to keep rates from increasing is to reduce groundwater infiltration into the system, cutting down on the flow to Fayetteville, which largely is what the rate is based on, Scanlon said.
The project is a massive undertaking and a lot of variables could pop up between now and when the project is finished, Bennett said.
"I've learned with construction and infrastructure, you know what it costs when you're finished with it," he said. "Things can change. You may find something you never anticipated."
NW News on 07/15/2016