LR airport levee work set to begin in January

Work on improvements to a levee protecting the state’s largest airport should begin by the first of the year, the chairman of the levee board said Tuesday.

The upgrades to the four pumping stations on the nearly 8-mile long levee will include electrical improvements to the breaker panels, control panels, generator switch disconnects, pump switches and interior and exterior lighting as well as levee stabilization work, said Larry Alman, chairman of the Little Rock-Pulaski Drainage No. 2 Improvement District.

The work is being subsidized by state grants totaling almost $350,000, he told the Little Rock Municipal Airport Commission.

The levee protects Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport, the Little Rock Water Reclamation Commission and businesses and residences in a 2,500-acre area east of downtown and along the Arkansas River.

After Alman spoke, the commission approved its third annual payment of nearly $78,000 to the district for the benefit it derives from the levee.

The district levies a fee on landowners’ property tax assessments and that revenue pays for operation and maintenance of the levee, pumps and 14 drainage structures.

Until 2018, the airport hadn’t made any financial contribution to the district. While it maintained it had no legal requirement to pay the assessments and that such payments would violate its agreements with the Federal Aviation Administration, the airport said it would find a way to help the district.

The airport as well as the Water Reclamation Commission account for about half the parcels in the district. As a result, levee district officials and its lawyers say it has struggled over the past several years to generate enough money to maintain the levee, pumps and drainage structures.

In 2018, the FAA concluded payments could be made if the airport could show it directly benefited from the levee district. The FAA also decreed the payments could only be made on a “going forward” basis beginning Jan. 1, 2018, and the methodology used to determine the payments must be nondiscriminatory and identical to that being used to charge other ratepayers.

Airport officials came up with the $77,901 figure to pay the levee district. It is based on the insured value of airport property as of September 2017 — reasoning that flood insurance is available to the airport because the levee that protects the airport is federally certified — and the improvement district’s fee of 2.3 mills.