Fort Smith working with EPA
Directors told city being heard on ordered wastewater fixes
FORT SMITH — A meeting between the city administrator and representatives of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last week reportedly “went well.”
City Administrator Carl Geffken brought the city Board of Directors up to speed Tuesday on a meeting he had with Ken McQueen, EPA regional administrator for Region 6, in Dallas on Jan. 29 concerning the city’s consent decree.
Fort Smith officials signed the consent decree in 2015 with the EPA, the Department of Justice and the state, agreeing to make an estimated $480 million in repairs and upgrades to the city’s wastewater system over 12 years to clear up chronic violations of the federal Clean Water Act.
Geffken said the meeting was between just him, McQueen and McQueen’s chief of staff, Erin Chancellor. He made clear that it was not a negotiation, but rather a “sharing of information.”
Geffken said he provided information on such factors as the poverty rate, food adequacy and median household income in Fort Smith.
“Our point of view is one that says we’d like to work with all of [the agencies] to help us be able to continue to afford the consent decree without raising our rates so high that we put the city of Fort Smith at a disadvantage economically, for business and residents,” Geffken said after Tuesday’s city Board of Directors meeting.
“… It [the EPA session] was a very good meeting,” Geffken said. “We’re hoping to hear back very soon.”
He said he got a sense that the EPA officials listened and were “genuinely interested” in what he had to say. During the city board’s study session Jan. 28, Paul Calamita, chairman of the Richmond, Va., law firm Aqua-Law, who the city hired in 2016, presented the board four options to consider regarding renegotiation efforts on the consent decree. Those included:
■ Getting together with federal agencies and determining, out of the remaining requirements, what makes sense for the city to do through the life of the consent decree, which is the end of 2027.
■ Acquiring more time to complete all the requirements of the decree.
■ Taking additional time to implement some revised requirements instead of doing everything in the consent decree as written.
■ Going to federal court to modify the decree if the agencies will not agree to changes.