Contract Starts Study For Wastewater Plant

The Northwest Arkansas Conservation Authority will be one step closer to its vision of a new regional wastewater facility when it finalizes its engineering contract in December.

But revelers will probably welcome in the new year 2009 before the plant is fully operational. At an estimated cost of $40 million, the new plant will give users a shot at an additional 5 million gallons per day (MGD) of average wastewater use.

Uvalde Lindsey, president of Ozark International Consultants in Fayetteville, said the rule of thumb is 100 gallons of wastewater generated per person per day. OIC estimated if the Northwest Arkansas population swells to 725,000 by 2025, that means the area needs an additional 80 MGD.

The site for a potential regional wastewater treatment plant could be expanded to handle 80 MGD someday, said Donnie Moore, chairman of NACA.

Rogers, Bentonville, Springdale, Highfill, Bethel Heights, Lowell, Cave Springs, Elm Springs and Tontitown are all members of NACA now.

Lindsey said the Arkansas Soil And Water Commission and the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality have endorsed NACA’s regional wastewater efforts.

Rogers is the planning stages to expand its wastewater capacity to 14 MGD from 6.7 MGD. Rogers generates an average of 6.5 MGD, said Michael Lawrence, plant manager for Rogers’ Pollution Control Facility.

But a million gallons per day is really hard to quantify, he said.

That’s because the more rainwater that falls in a year, the more wastewater flows and the more is treated. The Rogers plant could handle up to 20 MGD for an eight-hour period of heavy rain, Lawrence said.

Lawrence said the plant will solve Roger’s wastewater problems for the next 20 years and will cost about $20 million, which will be paid for by revenue from use charges.

Springdale Plant

Springdale’s new wastewater treatment facility started operations this fall, said Renee Langston, executive director of Springdale Water Utilities. The new plant brings Springdale’s wastewater capacity to 24 MGD, where the city’s average use was about 12.6 MGD for 2004.

Langston said when a plant gets to the point of holding 75 percent of its total capacity, it’s time to plan for expansion, which could mean another three to five years before a project is complete.

But as Springdale continues to grow, the developments get farther and farther away from the treatment plant, Langston said.

“We’ve got the bookends in place,” Langston said. “We’ve just got to fill in between.”

That creates the need for transmission lines.

“You can’t build a decent lift station for less than $100,000 these days,” Langston said. And the cost can run into the millions. Springdale’s largest lift station cost $2 million. Not to mention that lift stations can stink, literally.

If the waste sits at the station too long, it promotes the creation of sulfur organisms, or that “rotten egg” smell, Langston said.

Cities have to pay more to pump chemicals into the waste to make it smell better when it’s transported.

Master-planning lines can also save money, Langston said.

For example, he said, if a developer wants to put in an 8-inch water line and the city knows that future growth will probably call for a 12-inch line, then they’ll kick in the difference in price to put in the extra four inches.

But not every city would be able to charge rates fair enough to pay for such an infrastructure undertaking as those of Springdale and Rogers. That’s why NACA is trying to build a regional facility, so every city can pay the same amount for a gallon of water, said John Sampier, director of NACA.

“The larger the facility, the more volume, the more palatable the rates,” Sampier said.

Sampier joined NACA in March 2005 and is also the former mayor of Rogers, where he served the city from 1981 to 1998.

“The cost of building these plants is just tremendous,” Moore said. “Smaller cities like the Cave Springses, the Tontitowns, the Highfills cannot afford to provide services and meet the criteria the EPA wants.”

Langston said wastewater treatment facilities would have to meet the limit of 1 milligram of phosphorus per liter of water by January 2007 to retain a permit.

Lindsey said Oklahoma’s recommendation is .037 milligrams of phosphorus per liter, and that requirement will go into effect in 2012.

Langston said the city of Springdale has reduced its average phosphorus index from 8.4 milliliters per liter in 2001 to 0.68 milligrams per liter in 2005. But there’s the additional cost of trucking the remaining phosphorus-ridden sludge to the Tontitown landfill, which it began doing in 2002 at a cost of $500,000 that year. Langston said the price has decreased since then.

Footing the Bill

Moore said NACA can help cities finance infrastructure, such as transmission lines to flow into a central plant, and in turn, NACA will charge those cities for the service.

The system eliminates the debt for a smaller city and frees up credit for other improvements, such as roads etc., Moore said.

The city could use NACA’s credit, Moore said.

“We say to the smaller cities, ‘Hey if you can’t afford to do it, we will fold it into our bond issue,'” Sampier said.

NACA’s credit line will be based on a number of factors, such as service contracts with cities that will use the new plant, assets of property and grant funding.

NACA is working on its bond options with Crews & Associates, a wholly owned non-bank affiliate of First Security Bancorp of Searcy. Moore said the Arkansas Soil and Water Conservation Commission will fund part of the project.

Sampier said NACA plans to buy the 479-acre site for $3.4 million from the city of Bentonville, which is what Bentonville paid for the site in May 2004.

NACA has to find interim financing to buy the land and to finance its engineering work to design the treatment plant, Sampier said.

Sampier said within the past two months, the NACA board of directors has secured a bond attorney, bond underwriter and is in the process of finalizing negotiations with its engineering firm, Burns & McDonnell of Kansas City, Mo., and local firm USI-Arkansas Inc. of Springdale.