Hot Springs directors seek eminent domain

Condemnations would secure easements for the city’s water supply project

HOT SPRINGS — The city of Hot Springs wants to use its condemnation authority to acquire two easements for the Lake Ouachita water supply project’s 17-mile raw waterline.

Two ordinances authorizing eminent domain condemnation proceedings are on the Hot Springs Board of Directors agenda Tuesday night. The city said the easements would complete right of way acquisition for the large diameter line that will gravity feed water from Lake Ouachita to a new treatment plant on Little Mazarn Road.

It acquired the other easements without having to use its condemnation powers.

The city offered property owners $1 a foot for the easements, which extend across the roughly 200 parcels the raw waterline will traverse.

“The folks out there in western Garland County where we’re putting this 42-inch line, they’ve all been real cooperative,” Major Capital Projects Manager Todd Piller told the board at the Sept. 14 agenda meeting. “They see the benefit to the city and the county.”

One of the condemnations would secure a 30-square-foot piece needed for a 90-degree elbow bending the line to the east of the Deer Valley Subdivision off Pittman Road. The line will cross Pittman Road and proceed east, north of the subdivision, before turning south across Marion Anderson Road.

“I need a little 30-foot square in that corner to turn 90 degrees and go straight south,” Piller said Friday.

The other condemnation would secure a 297-foot easement across a property west of Pittman Road.

Another ordinance authorizing eminent domain proceedings for a 4,592-foot easement across two parcels in the Kight Trail area was on the agenda the board reviewed Sept. 14, but Piller said Friday that the easement had been secured. The ordinance was pulled from the agenda the board will consider Tuesday night.

Part of the easement is needed to cross Little Mazarn Creek. Once across the creek, the line will proceed due east to the new 15.75 million-gallon a day capacity plant.

The easement, along with the two the city is seeking to acquire through condemnations, are part of the 4.5-mile segment the board contracted to Kajacs Contractors Inc. of Little Rock in May. The $9,235,000 contract will take the line from the intersection of Airport and North Moore roads to the new plant.

“Right now they’re in the submittal phase and the surveying phase where the line is going to be located,” Piller told the board. “The clearing of the timber and construction will start very soon. We need to get through [the condemnation] process to keep our project on schedule.”

Three of the five contracts for the more than $50 million raw waterline have been awarded, including the contract for the 2-mile segment Belt Construction completed in July from Blakely Mountain to the Ouachita Water Treatment Plant on Cozy Acres Road. The plant treats water collected by the city’s intake on upper Lake Hamilton.

The city expects to bring its more than 20 million-gallon a day Lake Ouachita allocation online by 2023. Revenue bonds the board authorized in 2018 and 2020 are financing the more than $100 million project.

The new rate structure the board approved in 2017 is securing the debt, increasing minimum monthly rates for ⅝-inch meters inside the city from $5 to $13 over a four-year period that expires at the end of the year.

The minimum rate for meters outside the city increased from $7.50 to $19.50. Annual 3% increases will take effect at the start of next year.