Fort Smith Almost Ready to Unveil New Dam

Fort Smith residents shouldn’t have to worry where their next glass of water will come from for at least 50 years.

On Oct. 28, the city of Fort Smith will unveil the completion of its new dam, which was the largest earthen dam project under construction in the United States in the past two years.

The $180 million project features a 196-foot-tall dam with a wall of boulders that stretches about 3,000 feet wide. The dam is located at Lake Fort Smith in Mountainburg in Crawford County. Surrounded by oak and maple trees, the dam will create a reservoir with a water surface area of 1,400 acres.

“It roughly triples our water supply,” said Steve Parke, director of utilities for the city of Fort Smith.

With the new dam in place, the reservoir now will be able to hold 84,000 acre-feet of water, each the equivalent of 325,000 gallons of water.

The dam will rescue the city of Fort Smith and surrounding communities from a shortage of water that was bearing down quickly.

A water study conducted in the 1990s reported that by 2005 the water supply wouldn’t be enough for Fort Smith and the city’s 13 wholesale customers, which currently serve about 140,000 people. In 2050, the population around Fort Smith is expected to be 380,000.

“So the region was nearing its ability to provide an uninterrupted water supply by the time we were opening bids [in 2003],” Parke said. “That was one of the things that led us to this project.”

The dam is being paid for entirely with local revenue, and the state government is kicking in only for part of the cost of relocating Lake Fort Smith State Park to Lake Shepherd Springs.

To have enough water in the future, city officials decided their best bet was to merge Lake Fort Smith with Lake Shepherd Springs, located about six miles upstream. Both lakes had dams, and the water was used for Fort Smith and its customers in surrounding communities.

One of the first steps for the construction crew from Granite Construction Co. of Watsonville, Calif., was raising the Lake Fort Smith dam by about 100 feet.

It also built a 225-foot-tall, 65-foot-wide concrete water intake tower. The windowless tower will be the control center for the outflow of water to Fort Smith.

Moving and rebuilding the cabins and other facilities at Lake Fort Smith State Park has a price tag of $22 million, although the plans have had to be scaled down somewhat. It is still expected to open to campers in 2007.

Campers will be able to choose between setting up a tent at the camp sites or in cabins in the 250-acre park.

Parke said a decision on whether swimming will be allowed in the reservoir has not yet been made. But the lake can be used for boaters and fisherman looking for crappie and bass. Skiing and personal watercrafts won’t be permitted.

Drought

In the 1990s, the city of Fort Smith conducted a 50-year master plan that projected the city would outgrow its water supply. In 1998, the city created a citizens task force to look at 14 possible ways to boost the water supply. The group whittled the list down to one: Building a bigger dam at Lake Fort Smith to create one large reservoir.

Environmental groups also approved of the plan.

“When something is already there, it makes sense to use it to its fullest potential,” said Alice Andrews, president of the Ozark Society, an Arkansas conservation group.

She also said it was the logical choice to build the dam at Lake Fort Smith rather than dam up another creek.

Still, not everyone was happy.

“Water projects are always controversial because they involve water acquisitions,” Parke said. “They benefit a large portion of the population, but a small population is always adversely impacted.”

Fort Smith had to acquire 500 acres between the lakes, which included 30 homes. Some landowners sued the city, saying the price for taking their land was too low. Parke said those lawsuits have all been settled.

As the project was getting the necessary approvals from the Army Corps of Engineers, city officials pleaded with voters in 2001 to pass a 1-cent sales tax to help pay for the project.

The voters agreed to the tax, which will expire in 2008. The tax will pay off $50 million of the project cost, with the rest being paid with income from water bills that will go to pay off $95 million worth of bonds. The rest of the project was paid for with the utility’s cash on hand, Parke said.

“There’s no federal or state assistance,” Parke said. “It’s all just from the local sources.”

Construction

The city opened the first bids for site preparation in 2002.

Two historic cemeteries had to be relocated, and remains of native Americans unearthed during construction had to be moved, too.

Also, as part of the project, Fort Smith had to swap 570 acres of forest land with the federal government.

“So we had to go into other areas of the state and acquire forest land” to make the exchange, Parke said. “That process is just now coming to a close. That was a two-year process.”

In 2003, Granite Construction Co. began building the dam.

Granite used about 690,000 cubic yards of clay to create the core of the dam. Surrounding the clay core are boulders. The clay and rocks came from the hills surrounding Lake Fort Smith, which helped keep a lid on the costs, Parke said.

Construction crews used more than 5 million cubic yards of rock excavated out of the hills for the Lake Fort Smith dam.

With the new dam built, Granite then cut a 900-foot section out of the dam at Lake Shepherd, which allowed the water to flow to Lake Fort Smith.

After the completion of the intake tower, one of the tallest structures in Northwest Arkansas, the gates were closed in late December and the reservoir started filling up.

“This year’s droughts have slowed (the filling) somewhat,” Parke said.

Fort Smith gets an average of 45 inches of rain a year. And the new reservoir will be filled in about 14 months.

The lake will be 150 feet deep at its deepest point.

State Park

The city of Fort Smith and the state of Arkansas are sharing the expenses of relocating Lake Fort Smith State Park, a 40-acre park with facilities dating back to 1936.

The city is putting in $12 million and the state is kicking in $10 million. Parke said that was originally thought to be enough to complete the park as envisioned, but rising material costs and a shortage of construction workers have forced the plans to be scaled back.

“Everybody is experiencing an increase in construction costs,” Parke said. “So we’re at the point of building what we can afford, and then we’ll look for other funding sources and complete the rest over time.”

He estimated that about $6.5 million more would be needed to complete the original plan.

The Arkansas Department of Parks & Tourism is expected to ask the state Legislature for the extra money in its next session, Parke said.

Even though the project won’t be 100 percent completed when it opens next year, it will have a swimming pool, cabins and 2.5 miles of roads.

“The loss of the former state park tugged the heartstrings of a lot of the population, but we also replaced it with a new facility,” Parke said.