Fort Smith water leaks down more than 80% in 2026

The city of Fort Smith is down to just a few water leaks to fix, which is a big and welcome change from just a few years ago when the city was struggling to address more than 2,500 known leaks.

According to the city’s April water leak report posted Friday (May 1), there are just 15 known active leaks, down 80.7% compared with 78 leaks at the end of December.

Following is the April water leak report from the city.
• Leaks repaired this month: 193
• Leaks repaired this year: 716
• New leaks reported in April: 165
• Active leaks at the end of April: 15
• Change from previous month: down 28

The city of Fort Smith reduced the number of water leaks by almost 90% in 2025. December numbers from the city show that 1,941 leaks were fixed in 2025, which is roughly 5.3 leaks repaired a day. The number of active leaks at the end of 2025 were down 89.4% compared with the end of 2024.

The work marks major progress from just a few years ago when active water leak numbers were rising. City officials began to more aggressively tackle the leak issue during and after 2022 when the number of leaks totaled 2,575, which was 43.4% more than in 2021. The city reported 1,135 confirmed leaks in January 2024, with that number falling to 739 in December 2024.

The city has five crews focused on addressing water leaks, with the crew size varying between three and four people, according to Matt Meeker, director of Public Works for the city. He said with water leaks now more under control, some of the crews are being assigned to other projects, including the department’s work to identify lead and copper lines. As part of its “Lead and Copper Rule” (LCR) program, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is requiring all cities to create an inventory of water lines to determine which need to be replaced and in what order.

“We have already begun LCR verifications and are preparing to move a couple of crews to work on broken hydrants next week,” Meeker said. “We’re also continuing to install new services while all of this is going on, and we’re making preparations to begin line replacement work in areas where we have had issues.”

Not all leaks reported to the city are on city infrastructure. Leaks from the water meter to the residence or the business are the responsibility of the home or business owner. The city urges residents to report leaks by texting “water leak” to 479-777-8311 or by calling the public works department at 479-784-2360.