Deadline for group’s water rate petition draws near

The group circulating a petition in support of a referendum on the city’s water rate increase said its signature drive is behind schedule as the submission deadline approaches.

The Concerned Citizens Coalition said Thursday it didn’t know how many signatures its canvassers had collected since the group launched the referendum campaign late last month, but acknowledged that a sense of urgency was needed to meet the deadline. The city code established a 30-day deadline after passage of any ordinance or resolution for filing a referendum petition.

“We’re behind the eight ball on this, but there’s still time to do it if we do it quick,” Doug Jones, president of the Watchmen of Garland County, one of the local activist groups behind the coalition, told those who gathered for

the group’s presentation Thursday night at the Garland County Library

The ordinance raising the minimum monthly charge for a residential five-eighths inch meter inside the city from $4.99 to $13 by 2021 and from $7.50 to $19.50 for residential meters outside the city was adopted by the Hot Springs Board of Directors Nov. 21, making Dec. 21 the submission deadline.

The signatures of 1,425 registered voters residing inside the city, or 15 percent of the 9,500 votes cast in the 2014 mayoral race, are needed for the city board to schedule a referendum election.

The group continued to question supply concerns informing the city’s push for rate increases financing $95 million in capital improvements for the 23 million-gallon average day Lake Ouachita allocation it wants to bring online.

An updated draft of the city’s water supply study shows a 15 million-gallon a day plant to treat the Lake Ouachita allocation is critical to securing the city’s water needs through 2037.

The group pointed to a June 2010 letter from the Arkansas Department of Health to former Deputy City Manager Steve Mallett. The letter, a copy of which The Sentinel-Record obtained through an Arkansas Freedom of Information Act request, encouraged the city to make improvements to the Ouachita Plant on upper Lake Hamilton before building another treatment plant.

The city’s withdrawal agreement with Entergy Arkansas Inc. allows it to take up to 30 million gallons in a single day, but its average use calculated over a 90-day rolling period can’t exceed 20 million gallons a day. The Health Department letter said plant improvements would increase the city’s production capacity to 35 million gallons a day.

The Health Department’s most recent survey of the system said the city’s average day production was 15 million gallons last year, with peak production reaching 18 million gallons.

“It would appear that these improvements alone would provide adequate additional treated water quantity for a 15-to-25 year planning period before the cost of an additional treatment plant, at the upper Lake Hamilton site, would need to be incurred,” the letter said.

The improvements, according to the letter, would give the city time to add finished water storage capacity, address problems with the formation of disinfectant byproducts linked to increased rates of liver and kidney cancer, decrease lost water rates and more precisely model growth patterns the city cited in support of its need for an additional plant.

The Health Department rates the Ouachita Plant’s capacity at 22.33 million gallons a day, but the rating doesn’t account for the $3.89 million in improvements the city board authorized at the plant earlier this year. They include $2.29 million for filter improvements and $622,000 for a sodium hypochlorite facility that replaced the chlorine disinfection system.

Other improvements include the rehabilitation of sediment basins.

The group questioned why the city would incur almost $100 million in debt for a new treatment plant and related infrastructure before completing the measures outlined by the Health Department.

“If we thought we were having a water crisis, and we foresaw a shortage coming in the future, the first thing we would do is make sure our storage, transmission lines and treatment capacity were operating at optimum capacity,” Matt McKee, District 9 justice of the peace, told the gathering.

“You would have a conservation plan in place. I guess what makes this most frustrating is they’re not doing even the most simplest stuff.”

The city board adopted a conservation policy in 2009 that can be implemented voluntarily or at the city manager’s discretion. It limits irrigation uses and prohibits the filling of swimming pools and fountains and only allows car dealerships to use water for car washing.

It’s never been put into effect, even in 2012, when the city said daily production exceeded 80 percent of capacity more than 50 times.

The Health Department’s letter expressed skepticism about the city’s ability to project water needs over a 50-year period, but the demand model in the U.S Army Corps of Engineers’ Lake Ouachita reallocation study showed the city had a legitimate need for more supply.

The Corps said it forecasts future needs based on population growth, weather patterns, economic trends and other factors. The modeling is required before the Corps will repurpose water from its congressionally-mandated purpose, which on Lake Ouachita is flood control and power generation.

The group said the Lake Ouachita allocation could be treated at the Ouachita Plant or a new plant closer to the intake site, rather than 20 miles away in the Amity Road area. That’s where the city’s water system consultant, Crist Engineers Inc., has recommended the plant be built.

Crist has said locating the plant on the south side of the water system will decrease water age for customers on the eastern and southern edges, reducing their exposure to disinfectant byproducts that have been linked to higher rates of kidney and liver cancer.

It’s also said a southern plant location, which will require an estimated $30 million, 42-inch raw water line from Lake Ouachita, will improve the distribution system’s hydraulics. Feeding the system from the south and the two existing plants on the north and northwest ends will put less stress on aging distribution and transmission lines and reduce leaks, Crist said.

The group said a plant south of the city, near the Hot Spring County Line, will facilitate the sale of water from the city’s Lake Ouachita allocation to other systems by placing finished water closer to the preliminary right of way for a Central Arkansas Water pipeline.

The city’s DeGray Lake Joint Use Agreement with CAW, the water provider for Little Rock and most of its metropolitan area, requires it to purchase an 80-foot wide easement to accommodate raw water lines for both parties.

The city assumed the obligation as part of its 2013 acquisition of the right of first refusal to a 20 million-gallon a day allocation from DeGray Lake. A draft agreement with the Corps doesn’t allow the city to access the storage until October 2037.

CAW’s draft agreement doesn’t allow it to begin using its 100 million gallons a day of storage until October 2067.