Beaver Water District Celebrates 50 Years of Clean Drinking Water

Every glass of water filled from a tap tells a story about the development of Northwest Arkansas.

The Beaver Water District recently celebrated is 50th anniversary and its leaders want residents and businesses to understand the significance of the area’s water supply.

“We want people to know the history and have a greater appreciation for the foresight that the business leaders and concerned individuals had for the future of the area,” said District CEO Alan Fortenberry. “Without that foresight, this area would not be the prosperous area that it is today.”

Before the construction of Beaver Dam was completed in 1966, Northwest Arkansas got its water from wells and springs.

The water supply was not sufficient to support the budding agricultural industry in Springdale.

Joe Steele, founder of Steele Canning Co. (now known as Allen’s Canning), had a vested interest in establishing a long-term source of water for the city.

His efforts led to the formation of the Beaver Water District, which now supplies drinking water to more than 250,000 people and industries in Northwest Arkansas. Walter Turnbow was an associate at Steele Canning when the Beaver Water District was established, and remembers times when the canning facility would have to stop operations and ration its water supply. 

“We did not have a sufficient water supply during the hot summer drought season to take care of the needs of Springdale,” he said.

 

Building the Water Supply

After World War II, the Beaver Dam Association formed to promote the construction of a dam on the White River southwest of Eureka Springs.

At the time, dam construction was only authorized for the purpose of flood control and hydroelectric power, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers could not demonstrate a sufficient cost-benefit ratio based only on those uses.

In 1958, the Water Supply Act recognized that the federal government needed to play a role in the development of water supplies, and the Corps of Engineers was authorized to build a dam. 

In 1959, the Beaver Water District was established to pay for the drinking water supply allocation of the lake once the dam was built.

The district executed agreements with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for storage of water supply in Beaver Lake to provide an average of 120 million gallons of water per day.

The construction of the reservoir and the first water treatment plan was completed in 1966.

Springdale was the first city to sign on with the Beaver Water District and Bentonville, Fayetteville and Rogers followed.

Turnbow, who served on the district’s board of directors from 1977 to 2006, said Northwest Arkansas would not be what it is today without the foresight of Steele and other community leaders.

“We could not have developed the poultry industry if we had not had an efficient water supply,” he said. “There was absolutely no other source of water in Northwest Arkansas to supply the population, much less any growth in the population.”

 

Protecting the Source

Because Beaver Lake is the only source of drinking water for Northwest Arkansas, stakeholders are determined to protect it.

“It is absolutely the lifeblood of the area,” Turnbow said. “It’s the most important asset that we have.”

While the district’s allocated storage space in Beaver Lake has not changed since the dam was built, Fortenberry said studies have shown the storage will last until 2050.

The district will then have to go back to Congress, he said, and ask them to reallocate storage.

Currently, the Southwestern Power Administration controls about 80 percent of the storage space and the rest is shared between the Beaver Water District and three other regional water suppliers.

There’s plenty of water in the lake to sustain the area, Fortenberry said.

The challenge is in maintaining the water’s quality.

As the population grows, there is more opportunity to pollute the lake, he said.

It is predicted that more than 800,000 people will populate Benton and Washington counties by 2025 and as many as 1.2 million people could crowd the two-county area by 2050.

 “It’s critical that everybody join together just like they did to build the lake in the first place,” Fortenberry said. “Everyone has to do their part to protect the water quality.”

The Northwest Arkansas Council is taking on the task of organizing those efforts by developing a regional strategy for maintaining water quality.

On May 7, the Beaver Lake Watershed advisory group endorsed a five-part lake protection strategy that includes creating an organization modeled after the Illinois River Watershed Partnership.

In 2007, the Northwest Arkansas Council hired Tetra Tech, a national environmental consulting firm, to help develop a strategy for protecting water quality in Beaver Lake.

Tetra Tech’s strategy for Beaver Lake includes voluntary participation from landowners, developers, and other users to manage their impact on the watershed.

The strategy also includes creating a voluntary certification program that trains developers and contractors on reducing their impact on water quality.

An education and stewardship program will be created as a part of the management strategy as well as a monitoring program.

Mike Malone, executive director of the Northwest Arkansas Council, said the organization will be an inclusive, stakeholder-driven process through which interested parties will have a say in how the uses of the lake are maintained.

In The Source, a quarterly publication of the Beaver Water District, Malone said the council wants to make sure that stakeholders in the region are working together to maintain the lake for future generations.

“Beaver Lake is the single source of drinking water for one in eight Arkansans,” he said. “None of the growth we’ve experienced in this region over the past 40 years would have occurred to the extent that it did without Beaver Lake.

“That said, it’s easy to understand why the council is committed to helping maintain Beaver Lake as a source of reliable, affordable and high-quality water.”

 

Educating Consumers

Fortenberry said the first step toward protecting water quality is getting people to understand the value of water.

Most people are apathetic when it comes to water.

“As long as it comes out of the tap and it’s clean, they don’t care where it comes from,” Fortenberry said.

The district wants to change that perception.

In May, Beaver Water District launched a promotional campaign called “Consume, Conserve, Connect.”

Amy Wilson, director of public affairs, said the purpose of the campaign is to teach consumers to appreciate Beaver Lake and take ownership of their drinking water source.

“Beaver Lake is a really good source of drinking water that will last us for a long time,” Wilson said. “We want people to drink the water, we want them to help us conserve and use that water wisely and we want people to connect what comes out of their tap with Beaver Lake.”

Part of educating consumers involves teaching them how to build rain barrels and rain gardens as well as handing out reusable water bottles.

Wilson said society as a whole has lost some of its knowledge about water and has come to take it for granted.

 “We’re now trying to rebuild that knowledge base,” she said. “People need to realize that this is not a commodity without worth, it is extremely valuable.”

Part of the district’s education efforts are taking place in the public schools.

Wilson said the district teamed up with the Springline Consulting Group of Fayetteville to develop an education program called “Building Blocks to Water Education.”

The purpose of the program is to educate students about the treatment of drinking water and the protection of the Beaver Lake Watershed.

Wilson said the idea started about six years ago when the board of directors, particularly the late John Lewis, realized that people needed to grasp the value of drinking water.

Lewis, the founder of The Bank of Fayetteville, thought that bringing programs into the classroom would be a great way to create that awareness.

For first through third grade classrooms, the program uses an interactive model of the watershed and Beaver Lake. Fourth through sixth graders learn about the water cycle by using a board game based on the region.

The seventh and eighth grade programs will we be based on the district’s new administration center.

Students will tour the facility in Lowell, which features a creek fed by recycled water, a drinking water plant model and a wall sized watershed map. The grounds include a bioswale, native landscaping and permeable pavement.

Fortenberry said the facility, which will eventually be LEED certified, provides an opportunity for students to learn about sustainable development.

The idea, he said, is to show students that well-planned development can have less impact on the watershed.