New medical college, ArcBest expansion top Fort Smith area news in 2014

A more than $30 million medical college with a reserve of more than $100 million, a significant expansion of a large employer with a global footprint and an unsettling settlement to address federal Clean Water Act violations were the biggest headlines for the Fort Smith metro area in 2014.

1. Arkansas College of Osteopathic Medicine
Kyle Parker, president and CEO of the Arkansas College of Osteopathic Medicine, said recently that dirt is literally being moved to prepare for the planned fall 2016 opening with a first cohort of 150 students.

The new osteopathic school will be housed in a three story, 100,000-square-foot building valued at more than $31 million. The building will house classrooms, administrative offices, two auditoriums, an electronic resource library, dissection labs and could eventually house a proposed physicians assistant program.

A fully operational osteopathic college is expected to serve about 600 students, and employ around 65 (full-time equivalent jobs) with an average salary of $103,000. That impact does not include adjunct professors that will be needed for the school. The school is located on Chaffee Crossing land (200 acres) donated by the Fort Chaffee Redevelopment Authority.

Parker said construction pads are finished on 27 acres, and $32.5 million has been placed in escrow as part of the COCA requirements. The college will get the money back after the first class graduates. The COCA staff has reviewed and approved a feasibility study, according to Parker, with a site visit planned for early 2015. The next stage of review with COCA is set for April, with “provisional” approval hoped for in August.

The proposed osteopathic school will be housed in a 100,000-square-foot building that will house classrooms, administrative offices, two auditoriums, an electronic resource library, dissection labs and could eventually house a proposed physicians assistant program.

Funding for the school from donations and other funding sits at $106.9 million, Parker said. The largest amount of funding – $60 million – is being provided by the Degen Foundation. Also, the college has hired 13 employees, including senior staff.

2. ArcBest announces expansion
The announced addition of 975 jobs with the ArcBest corporate expansion in Fort Smith could result in a total of 1,907 jobs created in Arkansas, according to an economic modeling analysis conducted by the Institute for Economic Advancement at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Fort Smith-based ArcBest Corp. – formerly known as Arkansas Best Corp. – announced May 30 a $30 million plan that will see the construction of a new office building and data center at Chaffee Crossing and the addition of an estimated 975 corporate jobs by 2021.

The company will retain its high-profile, 195,000-square-feet corporate headquarter building on Old Greenwood Road in Fort Smith. That facility, which opened in early 1995, is expected to provide space for the consolidation of ABF Freight and ArcBest Technologies offices. Moving corporate and logistics jobs out of the existing corporate headquarters will allow room for expansion at ABF Freight and ArcBest.

There are now between 1,300 and 1,400 ArcBest corporate jobs in the Fort Smith area.

An economic impact model prepared by Gregory Hamilton, senior research economist at UALR, indicates that the fully realized 975 jobs would result in 484 new “indirect” jobs in the region and 404 “induced” new jobs – or a total of 1,863 jobs in the region by 2021. The ArcBest jobs would also create more than 44 jobs outside the Fort Smith region.

ArcBest’s largest subsidiary is less-than-truckload carrier ABF Freight System. The non-asset subsidiaries are Panther Premium Logistics, ABF Logistics, FleetNet, ABF Moving and ArcBest Technologies (formerly known as Data-Tronic.). ArcBest officials have said growth in the non-asset businesses are necessary to diversify the company’s revenue stream and to help reach a goal of $3 billion in revenue in 2014.

3. Fort Smith settlement with the DOJ/EPA
The Fort Smith Board of Directors on Dec. 16 accepted the controversial settlement with the Department of Justice that may require an estimated $480 million investment by 2026 to improve the city’s water and sewer system.

The costs – which could result in a tripling of water and sewer bills for all city customers on the Fort Smith system – are part of a possible agreement between the city of Fort Smith and the Department of Justice related to Clean Water Act violations with the city’s water and sewer system. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency turned the matter over to the DOJ in 2006.

Of the $375 million capital costs, 39% ($145 million) is for defect remediation, 17% ($63 million) for capacity remediation, 12% ($45 million) for pumping improvement and 10% ($37 million) for engineering and professional services. Treatment, capacity assessment and current projects are also included in the capital costs.

Of the $104 million in operations and maintenance costs, 26% ($27 million) is estimated for collection system maintenance and repairs, 23% ($24 million) for extra staff and management support, 13% ($14 million) for treatment and pumping maintenance, and 13% ($14 million) for information management. The remainder will cover project management, root removal and pre-treatment work.

While the proposed settlement between the city and the DOJ is complex, the primary purpose of action is to increase capacity to eliminate wet weather overflows and address remedial defects to eliminate dry weather overflows. The time frame outlined in the city's presentation of the proposed consent decree terms extend for 12 years, giving the city time to invest the needed funds to bring the sewer system up to standard.

Under the agreement, the city must begin to monitor overflows in wet and dry weather situations and report all overflows to the Environmental Protection Agency. The assessments must focus on finding the dry weather blockages and intrusions in lines that cause overflows during dry periods. These can include grease blockages and roots that have grown into water lines over periods of years or decades. Testing private lines of residential and commercial users could involve smoke testing.

4. Whirlpool pollution problems
Much of 2014 included efforts by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality and Whirlpool Corp. agree on a plan to contain and remove a toxic plume of trichloroethylene (TCE) that has leaked into the groundwater from the now-shuttered Whirlpool manufacturing plant in south Fort Smith.

Whirlpool closed its Fort Smith refrigerator manufacturing plant in June 2012, resulting in the loss of about 1,000 jobs. The company had employed as many as 4,600 at the plant in the mid-2000s.

ADEQ issued its first RADD in December 2013. Whirlpool said in May that contamination in some areas is worse than originally thought and would require soil removal. The ADEQ said Whirlpool and its consultants knew about the contamination at Whirlpool’s former Fort Smith manufacturing operation even as it was presenting a remediation plan to the agency late last year and early this year.

In July, Jeff Noel, Whirlpool's corporate vice president of communications and public affairs, told the Fort Smith Board of Directors that the company had made meaningful progress on remediation during the last six months.

"You'll see that we have, I think, advanced the ball very nicely in terms of the remediation," he said.

Just a few weeks later it was learned that more testing would be needed to see if TCE and/or other chemicals from the Whirlpool plant were underneath or near the Boys and Girls Club property. Whirlpool said the pollution near the club posed no risk.

In September, ADEQ Engineer Mostafa Mehran said the Whirlpool pollution plume is growing and it could not be certain that no health risk existed with pollution near the Boys and Girls Club site or in other areas of the plume.

"Given the apparent shape of the plume, ADEQ requires an additional monitoring well in the northwest corner of City of Fort Smith property (three properties)," Mehran wrote.

Whirlpool said in October that the plume is decreasing rather than growing. ADEQ documents released in early November again expressed disagreement about the status of the pollution plume and asked Whirlpool for more data to support the claim that the plume was shrinking.

Also, An attempt to settle a class action lawsuit against Whirlpool by residents in and around the TCE plume was denied Dec. 3 by U.S. District Judge (Western District of Arkansas) P.K. Holmes III.

5. Warplanes leave 188th, new mission installed
Several hundred members of the 188th Fighter Wing, former unit members, their families, dignitaries and the media attended a June 7 “Conversion Day” ceremony in which “Fighter” was removed from the 188th Fighter Wing moniker.

Broad cuts in U.S. defense spending – possibly up to $500 billion over 10 years – included the removal of 20 A-10 Thunderbolt fighter planes from the 188th Fighter Wing in Fort Smith. It was announced in 2012 that the A-10 Thunderbolt fighters of the 188th would be lost and the unit’s mission would change to an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) mission.

The largest component of the new mission for the 188th Wing is the 188th ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) Group. The 188th ISR is comprised of the 123rd Intelligence Squadron, the 153rd Intelligence Squadron, the 223rd Intelligence Support Squadron, and the 288th Operations Support Squadron.

The 123rd role is to conduct “near real time exploitation of imagery intelligence data, collected by” ISR units with that info then delivered in a useful manner to “combatant commanders and war fighting forces.” The 153rd provides “targeting production capability” based on gathering data and other intelligence from “a number of sources.” The 223rd group “develops and trains Cyber systems professional and provides critical cyberspace communication services” for the 188th’s missions. The 288th group “provides support to the daily operations of the 188th ISR Group, including training, plans, mission management, and weapons and tactics functions for the AN/GSQ 272 ‘SENTINEL’ weapons system.” This unit is also part of the Distributed Common Ground System of the U.S. Air Force.

Overall, the 188th ISR Group will have 347 members, and at some point will operate from a planned $12.5 million, 40,000-square-foot facility to be built on the 188th base that Col. Anderson has said could help the 188th become an “ISR Center of Excellence.” Counting operations, security, medical and other groups, the 188th will have more than 900 personnel who will train and operate from the Air National Guard base in Fort Smith.