HOT SPRINGS -- The Hot Springs Board of Directors has moved the city closer to getting its Lake Ouachita water allocation online, unanimously approving a rate increase critical to financing the $95 million project.
The board acknowledged that increasing the minimum monthly charge for a residential five-eighths-inch meter inside the city from the current $4.99 rate to $13 by 2021 could be a hardship for customers on fixed incomes.
But concern for current ratepayers notwithstanding, the board said late last month that it is also responsible for ensuring the long-term viability of a system serving more than 35,000 meters, half of which are beyond the corporate limits.
Getting the 23 million-gallon-a-day allocation online will allow the city to meet demand until at least 2037, according to an updated study the city's water system consultant, Crist Engineers Inc., presented earlier this year.
The minimum charge for customers outside the city, who pay a 50 percent premium for service, will increase from the current $7.50 rate to $19.50 by 2021. Rates for residents and nonresidents will increase 3 percent a year after 2021.
The minimum charge is assessed on the first 1,000 gallons of usage. Volumetric charges are applied to usage exceeding 1,000 gallons.
Customers will see the increase on January bills, with the minimum monthly charge increasing $3 for resident customers and $4.50 for nonresident customers.
Deputy City Manager Bill Burrough told board members posterity will thank them. The capital improvements financed by four bond issues planned to be sold over five years include a 15 million-gallon-a-day treatment plant, which would be the first built by the city since the Ouachita Plant that opened in 1967.
It treats the water derived from an agreement with Arkansas Entergy Inc., providing up to 30 million gallons a day from upper Lake Hamilton. In the 2005 agreement, the city's usage cannot exceed a 20 million-gallon-a-day average calculated over a three-month rolling period.
The city previously relied exclusively on the Lakeside Plant that went online in 1947. It treated water from three small lakes that are no longer in service. It currently processes raw water from the reservoir at Lake Ricks.
The small-capacity plant can treat up to 5 million gallons a day, Burrough told the board.
"This is a huge decision and accomplishment in my opinion," Burrough said, noting the decision was the culmination of a process that began in 2004, when the city first approached the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers about reallocating part of Lake Ouachita's hydropower pool for municipal supply.
City Director Karen Garcia told the board she's committed to implementing the H2O Help to Others program instituted by other water systems that she said would provide relief for low-income ratepayers through contributions customers can choose to add to water payments.
City Director Larry Williams said he voted for the rate-increase ordinance despite city staff members' unwillingness to explore decreasing the $4-a-month storm-water charge customers inside the city pay.
Eight people spoke in opposition to the ordinance, many of whom were part of a coalition that organized successful referendum petition drives earlier this year against annexation ordinances the board adopted last December.
They pledged to do the same for the rate-increase ordinance, which won't take effect until 30 days after the ordinance is published in the newspaper.
In that time, petitioners can collect signatures in support of a referendum on the ordinance. The signatures of more than 1,400 registered voters residing inside the city are needed to trigger a special election.
Diane Silverman of the Garland County Tea Party told the board a public meeting needed to be convened before the city went ahead with the rate increase. She and other speakers who addressed the board in November questioned the urgency the city has shown in pursuing the additional water supply, explaining that the current supply and treatment capacity could be better leveraged to meet future needs.
Metro on 12/03/2017