Initial phase on creek project to begin after agreement amended

BENTONVILLE — Approving an amended agreement between the city and the Watershed Conservation Resource Center allows the first phases of a stream restoration project on Little Sugar Creek to begin, a city project manager said Tuesday.

City Council approved adding $35,000 to the contract for the center to take responsibility for the flooding analysis, a task that was initially the city’s.

The project will provide habitat restoration, improve water quality, reduce stream bank erosion and enhance the aesthetics of the stream, according to officials.

Little Sugar Creek is a stream within the Elk River watershed.

“We don’t have the personnel to do the floodplain analysis,” Brian Wick, city project manager, said after Tuesday’s meeting. “We were going to have to hire that out. We felt it was in the best interest to shift that scope from the city of Bentonville to the [Watershed Conservation Resource Center].”

The money was already in the project budget so it doesn’t increase the overall cost. It’s just being moved, according to meeting documents.

The city is partnering with the center to restore up to 1,500 feet of stream bank. The project is just south of Lake Bella Vista and just north of where Little Sugar Creek and McKissic Creek converge. The focus will be where the creek — heading north — takes a sharp turn to the right.

The Watershed Conservation Resource Center is a nonprofit organization in Fayetteville whose primary activity is “to provide technical and planning services for the protection, conservation, and restoration of watershed resources,” according to its website.

The city agreed to partner with the center for $372,150 for the stream restoration project on Little Sugar Creek in October. The amended agreement increases that to $407,150.

The project also includes creating a wetland north of the stream restoration site. It will be between the trail and U.S. 71.

The city received $560,000 for the project through two grants. One was from the Environmental Protection Agency for $ 299,822 and the other was from the Walton Family Foundation for $260,178.

The project wouldn’t be done as quickly if the grants weren’t awarded, Mayor Bob McCaslin has said.

The project is in the second of the five years it will take to complete. The EPA-required quality management plan, quality assurance project plan and now the amended memorandum of understanding have been approved.

“Now we’re able to move into the data collection phase,” Wick said, adding it will take about a year.

The stream restoration and wetland will be designed after the data is collected. Construction may start as early as summer 2018, Wick said.

There will be a long period of monitoring water quality and other factors after the project is finished.

Wick said the stream restoration project has nothing to do with Lake Bella Vista dam other than the stream flows into the lake.

The failed dam has been a point of controversy, and the city is considering three options for a long-term solution — to rebuild the dam, to remove the dam or to remove the dam but create a pond adjacent to the creek, according to a draft of the Parks and Recreation plan.

“If anything ever happened to Lake Bella Vista (dam) or it didn’t happen, it’s not going to influence this project whatsoever,” Wick said.

NWA Democrat-Gazette/ANDY SHUPE Damage from recent storms is shown Tuesday around the support structure of a bridge spanning Sugar Creek along the Wishing Springs Trail, a part of the Razorback Greenway in Bentonville.