Fort Smith Director seeks ‘comprehensive’ plan for water system work

With funds in place to address a federal consent decree on the City of Fort Smith sewer system, there now is pressure to fix an aging water system. Director Christina Catsavis wants a “comprehensive plan” to better focus on more than $600 million in suggested work.

The Fort Smith Board of Directors on Aug. 26 was told by Utilities Director Lance McAvoy that upgrades to the Lake Fort Smith Water Treatment Plant and completion of a 48-inch water line between Lake Fort Smith and the city has an estimated price tag ranging between $328 million and $585 million.

The city has planned and worked for more than a decade toward a 48-inch water transmission line that will extend 33.56 miles from the Lake Fort Smith Water Treatment Plant in Mountainburg to Fort Smith. Water from the new line would service the area south of Zero Street in Fort Smith, according to McAvoy.

The city’s Lake Fort Smith Water Treatment plant in Mountainburg was built in 1936, upgraded in 1963, with the last “major” renovation and upgrade completed in 2012. The plant produced 71% of water in the system in 2024, with the Lake Fort Smith transmission line’s maximum pumping capacity being 40 million gallons a day (MGD). Estimated cost for a 15 MGD upgrade is between $90 million and $180 million, and the cost for a 30 MGD upgrade is between $180 million and $360 million, McAvoy said.

The board on Aug. 20 rejected a plan put forth by city staff to begin the process of replacing water meters in the city. The estimated cost for that project ranged between $20 million and $48 million. The city has just under 40,000 residential, commercial and industrial water customers.

Also, the city has spent millions in recent years to address ongoing water leaks. 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. As of June 2025, the city reported 643 known water leaks.

‘CRISIS MODE’
During a Sept. 2 board meeting, Director Christina Catsavis called for a study session to address the myriad issues with the city’s water infrastructure.

“You know, we’ve also got water leaks, we’ve got meters, we’ve got pipe replacement, we do have the consent decree, we do have the day-to-day operations,” Catsavis said. “I feel like maybe we need to think about hiring an outside firm to come in and create a comprehensive plan so that we can make small incremental changes, so that we’re not operating in crisis mode, so we’re not looking at a new tax, we’re not looking at rate increases.”

She said one idea could be to review the capital improvement project budget “to see what can be paused or resequenced without jeopardizing consent decree milestones and see if we can get together some sort of comprehensive plan so things aren’t being brought to us piecemeal.”

Fort Smith Mayor George McGill agreed with Catsavis, saying some companies seeking to locate or expand in Fort Smith require “large sums of water.” He said the city needs to ensure it has an adequate water supply and system for economic development.

“I think we need to discuss adequate water supply as we expect to grow,” he said.

Director André Good agreed that a comprehensive plan is a good idea, but pushed back on the idea that city staff has brought water issues to the board in a piecemeal fashion.

“But I do want to make a statement that I do disagree with the comment about this being piecemealed,” Good said. “Because every situation we are addressing right now has been addressed in years previously. Give you an example. Water transmission lines was an item that we were talking about way back when I got on the board way back in 2008. So, these items have been addressed. They haven’t been piecemealed. They’ve been put on the back burner because previous board members didn’t want to make the necessary agreements to raise rates or do whatever was necessary to make sure that money was there to do these projects.”

In a brief interview after the Sept. 2 board meeting, McAvoy said the city already has a master plan for water infrastructure work, but he had “no issue” with another look.

“The more people looking at it, the better,” McAvoy said.

CONSENT DECREE
Fort Smith voters on May 13 approved by a wide margin a sales tax reallocation plan to provide $360 million over 30 years to fund federally-mandated sewer system work. The vote potentially puts a frustrating and costly federal consent decree on a path to completion.

After decades of failing to maintain the sewer system, officials with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Justice filed a consent decree in 2014 with the City of Fort Smith that required certain improvements to the city’s sewer system.

While estimates vary, the consensus estimate is that the total cost could approach $800 million. According to city information, the city spent around $49 million prior to enactment of the consent decree, and spent $87 million on consent decree work between 2015 and 2019. Between 2020 and 2023, the city spent $64.1 million on consent decree work. The total for the work, including prior to 2015, is around $200 million.