The price tag to modernize Arkansas’ aging water and sewer systems will run into the billions, but the long-term problems of not updating the infrastructure could be catastrophic.
In addition to encouraging more use of surface water, Arkansas’ official Water Plan warns that about $9.5 billion will be needed over the next decade to maintain and replace the state’s aging water and sewer infrastructure.
As Exhibit A, officials with the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission (ANRC) point to the more than $480 million the city of Fort Smith has agreed to pay to fix its sewer issues. They also point to a number of small water and sewer utilities that have been taken over by nearby cities and water districts in recent years because they had failed to maintain their systems, typically because they didn’t have the necessary customer base or rate structure.
“All these systems have essentially reached a design life and are facing major rehabilitation, and the question is how are we going to pay for it?” said ANRC Executive Director Randy Young.
Arkansas isn’t alone in confronting the cost of delayed maintenance, but its needs are among the most dire. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that more than 73,000 water and sewer providers across the nation will need upgrades over the next 20 years, totaling about $384 billion. Arkansas, Nevada, and Iowa have the costliest needs on a per-person basis, according to Stateline.org
In Arkansas, the Water Plan estimates the cost to build, maintain and replace the required infrastructure for water providers at $5.74 billion and $3.76 billion for sewer providers through 2024. “Small water and wastewater providers pose a unique challenge when planning at the statewide level,” the plan reads. “Many of these providers also face the challenge of shrinking population and resulting in reduced revenue streams, following the national trend of urban dwelling.”
In the forward to the Water Plan, Young wrote that any “resolution of this problem will require the combined commitment and actions of citizens and elected officials who must identify creative financing solutions and take advantage of regional infrastructure opportunities and shared sources of supply.”
The author of the Water Plan also suggests the state consider regionalizing water districts rather than having so many small independent systems.
Some of the city’s underground sewer pipes, Gosack said, were built in the late 1880s. In the 1970s, the city upgraded its sewer system to meet U.S. Clean Water standards by separating storm runoff from sewage lines.
Until the mid-1960s, the city’s sewage and storm water had been collected in the same pipes and simply dumped into the Arkansas River, Gosack said. The sewage collection system “was completed in the ‘70s, but then after that there was no comprehensive maintenance done,” he said.
In the 1980s, sewage overflows again occurred during heavy rains and the discharges flowed into the Arkansas River. In 1989, the EPA placed the city under an administrative order to comply with the Clean Water Act. Six years of noncompliance later, the EPA turned the city over to the U.S. Department of Justice for enforcement.
An EPA news release in January said that since 2004, Fort Smith had more than 2,000 discharges of untreated sewage discharges from its municipal sewage system, resulting in more than 119 million gallons of raw sewage flowing into local waterways, including the Arkansas River.
Cosack said the city tried to address the problem, spending more than $200 million since the early 1990s in an effort to reduce sewage overflows during heavy rains, but it hasn’t been enough for the EPA.
Fort Smith Mayor Sandy Sanders said his city made the same mistake that many others continue to make: Failing to charge an adequate rate to cover the real costs of maintaining a sewage treatment system.
“City governments, municipal governments, have bent over backwards over the years trying to keep rates probably artificially low so that people don’t have to pay high rates,” Sanders said. “Well, that’s now what we’re all facing. At least it’s now something we are finally having to address.”
Sewer fees, which are included in Fort Smith’s water bills, were expected to rise May 1 from an average of $20 a month to $33 a month.
The 12-year federal consent agreement, which city officials agreed to in December, was filed in January following several years of negotiation.
Along with the capital improvements, maintenance, and operations costs, the agreement also requires the city to pay $300,000 in civil penalties and spend $400,000 on a program to help low-income homeowners pay for repairs and replacements costs on their property. The consent agreement requires private property owners to replace any old or leaking sewage lines on their property.
Gosack said what has happened in Fort Smith “may be an early sign of what’s coming” across the state. He said that 25 years ago the federal government funded the bulk of the mandates it imposed at the local level.
“It’s how things worked back then, but now … there’s no federal money,” said Gosack. “They still establish priorities; they just look to others to pay for them.”
In eastern Arkansas, a number of small water systems have been forced to merge with the larger systems of nearby cities.
“One of the issues we’ve had with systems is just demographic change,” said Edward Swaim, manager of ANRC’s water resources division. “You’ll have a system that has served an area that had a population big enough to support it and construct it. Then, as people move away, you just lose the customer base, and it’s very difficult to get a sustainable system going with grant money alone. You’ve got to have the ability to pay.”
The small community of Fisher in Poinsett County, Swaim said, could no longer afford the upkeep of its water system so the ANRC “helped them tie on to some other local systems to help with administrative costs, construction costs.”
“Just the whole economy of the little system is not healthy now,” Swaim said.
The city of Marion in Crittenden County also recently agreed to take over the small water systems in neighboring Sunset and Clarkedale, which no longer had the revenue for maintenance and replacement costs, Swaim said.
“Many of the systems were built in the ‘60s and ‘70s, so they are at the end of their useful life … and many of these communities can’t sustain them,” he said. “You are getting more and more elderly people in some of these small communities. The younger age group is having to move on somewhere to find employment, leaving the elderly and largely low-income behind.”
Sloan Hampton, a commissioner with the ANRC, said the bulk of most commission meetings involves hearing requests from cities and small utilities for loans or grants to address water and sewer infrastructure needs.
“People don’t realize how many meetings we sit through where requests for grant money are made,” he said. “We have a little money available, but many, many more requests.”
In 2014 alone, the commission approved nearly $7 million in grant funding for 13 water projects, $1.4 million for six sewer projects, and $21 million in loans for 22 water projects and $11.5 million for six sewer projects.
David Fenter, ANRC’s finance manager, said his office did not keep a list of all the requests and declined to estimate the total number of requests made annually. He did say that there are also grants and loans available from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Some cities, however, have found ways to make the needed improvements, or are in the process.
Willard Ryland, mayor of Cotton Plant in Woodruff County, said the city received $1.5 million in federal stimulus money in 2009 to upgrade its antiquated water system.
“Without the stimulus, I would say it never would have happened,” he said.
Daniel Rogers, the 32-year-old mayor of Paris in Logan County, said residents in his city approved a 1 percent sales tax increase to pay for water and sewer system improvements. While the bulk of the tax revenue is to be used to pay for the $4.3 million project, which includes a clarifier, new clear well, and repair and replacement of old pipes, the tax will also generate enough to provide the curbside trash pickup that was previously billed separately.
Rogers said the Paris water system provides water for the city’s 3,500 residents and for another 10,000 customers who live outside the city limits.
“For years the city just didn’t do anything except patch,” he said, and those repairs cost about $75,000 a year. “We’ve got to the point where we can’t kick the can down the road. We were just relying on monies coming from outside water sales, and we haven’t had a rate increase for water since the 1990s.
“This really is an economic issue for cities,” said Rogers.
Rogers also said he likes the Water Plan’s recommendation that water districts be regionalized, to reduce the number.
“There are too many, in my opinion, small water associations,” he said. “I think a lot of times they need to be regionalized so there’s less overhead because a city is making more money and has more volume and it is able to get that middle man out of the way and keep prices lower.”
Rob Moritz also wrote about the efforts to reduce consumption and recharge the state’s underground aquifers for the May/June print edition of AMP Magazine. Read the article here.