Central Arkansas Water is one step away from acquiring a new water source that officials say will allow the utility to serve customers for hundreds of years to come.
At the end of January, the utility sent a water-storage agreement for DeGray Lake to the office of the assistant secretary of the army in Washington, D.C., said Dale Kimbrow, manager of planning, regionalism and future water sources, at a Central Arkansas Water board of commissioners meeting.
The reservoir on the Caddo River outside Arkadelphia is under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Central Arkansas Water has paid about $150,000 annually for 30 years to retain rights of first refusal to 120 million gallons of water per day from the lake, so the lake has been a water-source option since 1989.
For several years, the utility has been trying to own the water rather than pay interest on it. Hot Springs pays Central Arkansas Water for the rights to 20 million gallons per day, so the net amount the utility has paid each year is closer to $130,000.
Central Arkansas Water officials hope the agreement will be signed by the end of March. If the deal were approved, the utility would pay about $4.5 million over four years to buy the water.
If approved in the first quarter of 2019, the purchase would add about $985,000 in debt service to the year's budget, which currently anticipates approximately $67 million in revenue, $46 million in operating expenses and $8.5 million in debt service.
Having DeGray Lake as a water source helps the utility ensure that it will have the resources it needs to anticipate growth in the future. Central Arkansas Water currently serves more than 450,000 people in the Little Rock metropolitan area and bills about 120,000 customers each month.
"It'll be great comfort to know that we'll have the water we'll need for hundreds of years," Kimbrow said.
Central Arkansas currently gets its water from Lake Winona in Saline County and from Lake Maumelle in western Pulaski County.
The utility bases its projected infrastructure and water-source needs on population demographics and water-use trends.
Water use has declined in recent years because of the availability of more environmentally friendly appliances and a trend of families having fewer children. Still, the utility wants to be sure that it has access to DeGray Lake since the state has a finite number of raw water sources.
Central Arkansas Water was created in a merger between the Little Rock and North Little Rock water utilities in 2001.
Little Rock Municipal Water Works developed Lake Winona as its first municipally owned raw water supply in the 1930s. Lake Maumelle was acquired in the 1950s.
The utility serves customers in Pulaski, Saline, Grant, Perry, Lonoke, White and Faulkner counties.
Metro on 02/18/2019