Earlier this month, Fort Smith officials met with Environmental Protection Agency representatives to request a renegotiation of a consent decree that came as a result of years of Clean Water Act violations. City Director Carl Geffken says the city has made a lot of progress on how much wet-weather sewer runoff gets in the Arkansas River and, among other proposed modifications, would like to see the EPA cap the cost of sewer rates at 1.9 percent of median household income after the city had to raise rates for residents over the last three years to fund consent decree projects.
Kyle Kellams is KUAF's news director and host of Ozarks at Large.