Upgrades To Lincoln Wastewater Plant Finished

LINCOLN — The expensive upgrades to the Lincoln wastewater plant have been completed, according to Chuck Wood, city business manager.

The city financed the additions and upgrades to the plant with a $2.39 million bond loan through the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission. Payment for the upgrades to lower phosphorus levels will be $11,000 a month.

“We had to do it,” Wood said. “It was mandated.”

Wood was referring to a dispute between Oklahoma and Arkansas over the water quality of the Illinois River, which flows from Arkansas downriver for 100 miles in Oklahoma.

The dispute ended in a lawsuit that reached the U. S. Supreme Court in the 1990s, according to a University of Arkansas website. The U.S. court ruled that downstream water quality must be met at a state line.

Oklahoma claimed chicken plant producers in northwest Arkansas were polluting the river causing an excessive phosphorus problem.

In 2003, Oklahoma established standards for allowable levels of phosphorus released into the Illinois River from water treatment plants, farming operations and other sites that deposit excess

levels of phosphorus into the river before it leaves Arkansas, according to the website cherokeephoenix.org.

Northwest Arkansas cities were grappling with meeting a 0.037 milligrams per liter of phosphorus level for water crossing the Arkansas- Oklahoma line that some leaders had doubted was achievable, according to the Springdale Morning News in March when a new agreement gave the two states three years to study phosphorus and improve- ments that have been made.

“It has cost the state, especially in the northwest, a lot of money,” Wood said. “We are a little town to have to incur debt like that but we’ve just had to roll with the punches.”

Despite the money factor, Wood was pleased to say the plant is operating very well.

Wood explained the wastewater plant helps to keep phosphorus from going back into the environment in the Illinois River Watershed, which includes Lincoln.

“The plant is just doing a fantastic job,” Wood said.

COURTESY PHOTO Lincoln Wastewater Plant’s new filtration system to lower phosphorus levels. The city financed the additions and upgrades to the plant with a $2.39 million bond loan through the Arkansas Natural Resource Commission.