Water Projects Keep Flowing

When Northwest Arkansas needs water, it usually connects to the Beaver Water District.
One of the most notable, or at least visible, projects doing just that is Bentonville’s 14-mile pipeline, which is now crossing under Interstate 540 south of Pleasant Grove Road. Bentonville awarded the project to Garney Construction Inc. of Kansas City for about $15.1 million.
Garney works nationwide and completed $300 million in projects in 2006. Garney gets its share of Northwest Arkansas projects as it specializes in larger diameters of piping — 48 inches in this case.
“It’s just a matter of key relationships, and that’s what our specialty is,” said Tony Kempf, senior project manager.
“It takes larger excavators and loaders to handle the larger-sized pipe. We have a fair fleet of our own for those sized jobs. That’s another reason we’re more competitive, that we own a lot of that equipment, where someone else may have to go out and rent it.”
The type of pipe being used is called pre-stressed concrete cylinder pipe. It consists of a steel pipe wrapped in pre-stressed wiring, which is then coated with concrete.
The Bentonville pipe is shipped on truck in 20-foot segments from Hattiesburg, Miss. They are shipped three per load due to weight. The segments weigh 900 pounds per foot, making each segment about 18,000 pounds.
The segments slide into each other to fit in a bell and spigot, and a rubber gasket completes the seal. A hydrostatic pressure test after completion will test the line’s fortitude.
Placing the line at a depth of five feet requires a 10-foot trench. In optimal conditions, the crew can lay 20 segments, or 400 feet, each day, Kempf said. In poor or rocky conditions, the job can slow to 5 segments, or 100 feet per day.
Kempf said the contract calls for completion in June, but he hopes it’ll be earlier.
Garney has also worked on a few projects for the Beaver Water District, which is rounding out a $100 million expansion.
The facility will improve and expand the Steele Water Treatment Plant at an estimated cost of $23.4 million. A contractor has not been named.
Once online in 2009, the Steele plant will bring BWD’s total supply to 140 million gallons per day, sufficient capacity until about 2020. BWD’s on-site capacity, through future expansion, is 220 MGD, which would last until about 2050.
BWD also looks to build a $4 million administrative building at the site. Bids will begin in May.
So far, BWD has left it up to the cities, like Bentonville’s new pipe, to connect to the water facility. Alan Fortenberry, CEO of BWD, said the district will throw out a life line, of sorts.
With the population growth in Northwest Arkansas, Fortenberry said he’s concerned cities could have difficulties in the future securing paths to hook up to his water facility.
BWD is in the planning stages of constructing a western corridor, which would consist of a pipe that would extend west across I-540 where a terminal could be built. This would allow two access points for city hookups.
The pipe, Fortenberry estimated, would be about 60 inches in diameter, about 70 MGD. As a comparison, BWD saw maximum draw in 2006 up to 80 MGD in the summer, which slows during the winter to 40 MGD.