Utility corridors considered in city
The ever expanding construction of subdivisions in the city has prompted city officials to look at the need for cleaning up some of the process of serving those subdivisions with various utilities.
Multiple utility companies provide services to Pea Ridge including Carroll Electric Company, Southwestern Electric Power Company, Black Hills Gas Company, Cox Cable Company and CenturyLink. Representatives from those companies met with city utility departments and planners Tuesday, Aug. 16, to discuss the city adopting plans for placement of those utilities.
Currently, according to city Street Department superintendent Nathan See, the placement of utilities is within a utility easement and the placement of the lines is inspected by the utility company or its contractor, but not by the city. That has resulted in some lines crossing other lines.
“We have lines crossing other lines. That’s been a problem for a long time,” See said, explaining that repairing one line may be hindered by another line too near or even over. He said a gas line was recently found beneath a house in the Woodbridge Subdivision.
See presented a plan adopted by the city of Centerton specifying where each utility may be placed within the right of way, hoping to avoid any overlay of lines.
“In our current manual we, obviously, don’t do any of this. Everybody just goes wherever,” See said. “I think this will be a cleaner project for everybody at the end of the day.”
“If we do this, do you guys usually see this on a final plat?” See asked. “Where do you guys see this corridor map?”
One utility representative said in Centerton the corridor map is given to the utility company representative when a permit. He said there is also a city inspector who oversees the utility line placement.
Several utility company representatives said the Centerton plans are helpful and make placement of lines more simple.
“My contractors love it. We wish every city would do the same thing,” one man said.
Derek Thurman, manager, engineering support, for Carroll Electric Cooperative Corporation, said Centerton recently changed and is putting water and sewer under the street.
“Speaking for the Pea Ridge Water and Sewer Department, we won’t put water and sewer in the streets,” Mike Nida, utilities manager for Pea Ridge Water Utilities, said, adding that putting the fire hydrants in the green space — we try to avoid fire hydrants in green space. We do try to keep them on the property lines.”
“There’s too much risk of them getting damaged if they’re that close to the street,” Nida said, adding that the his department likes to see 36-inches of coverage
over water lines rather than 30 inches.
Dustin Burnett, engineering support supervisor for Carroll, said some cities require seeing the design before final approval “to make sure there’s no conflict there.”
“The developers don’t like, because it delays process, but it gets all utilities’ eyes on it before process,” Burnett said. “I don’t think there’s any review from you on our electric, is there?”
See said the city does not now inspect the utilities except for city assets which are water and sewer lines.
“The biggest push we get from developers is hurry up and let’s get it done, get a final plat so we can get it submitted for Carroll or SWEPCO so they can get it built out so we can get houses started. We can’t do final plat, from what we’re hearing, until lift stations are powered,” See said.
“We won’t run power to a subdivision until we have a final plat,” Burnett said. “Hopefully we can implement … what we need.”
“We’ve got to have all infrastructure in until we provide power,” Burnett said.
“This is fluid right now,” See said of the proposed plans. “Are there any other cities that have corridors?”
Thurman said Bentonville does.
“We’re trying to get every city to go to this,” Josh Knight, Black Hills Energy, said. “It makes it so much simpler for all of us.”
“We want to go to this. We want to try to have things work correctly in our city,” See said. “We’ve had instances where utilities were way off their right of way and in someone else’s right of way.
“There are two planning commissioners here — that legislative branch will be ultimate determinant,” See said. Before the meeting concluded, two more Planning Commission members arrived.
Nida said there needs to be room for discussion and variances as sometimes issues are encountered in the field that necessitate a change. He queried whether the city should go to 40-feet setbacks instead of 35 feet.
“If we go to this, we really want to do it right the first time,” See said.
Knight asked whether the city is able to hire an inspector to “make sure” it’s done right.
“Is the city able to hire an inspector just to look over projects and make sure the electric is where it needs to be, Cox is where it needs to be?” Knight asked.
“Eventually yes, currently no,” See said. “As northwest Arkansas growing pains are happening, we have to get ready. We will have to get another person on staff.”
“It would be good to go to a regional plan,” See continued. “If we can keep it as uniform as Centerton is, it would be good to go to a regional plan… get with Regional Planning.”