Eureka Springs Public Works crews have been on call day and night, quickly repairing a growing number of potable waterline leaks in recent months. Simon Wiley, Eureka Springs' public works director, updated the mayor and city council on some of the most recent breaks at last week's regular meeting.
"Since last council meeting, we repaired a leak over at Highway 62 in Hayes Division, a water leak over on 104 East Van Buren, a leak at 135 Spring St., at 532 Spring St.," Wiley said, listing more.
Prior to that meeting, Wiley agreed to meet in his office at public works to discuss the cause and the city's response.
"Most of our breaks in the water system are due to age or improper installation back when they were done," Wiley said, "some installed well over a century ago. They didn't really have the knowledge back in those days to properly bed pipe or install it and it's pretty much sitting on rock shelves. And what ends up happening over time is the ground is constantly moving and it causes a break in the pipe. Some of our lines are over a hundred years old, including old ductile iron and steel, which have rusted out."
The buried rock shelves he's referring to are geologic features known as karst terrain, fractured layers of limestone and dolomite, a common formation on the Ozarks which contain fissures, caves and sinkholes. Karst terrain under Eureka Springs was first mapped by scientists in 1916, and later in 1981, then part of a study to identify the location of Eureka's historic karst cold-water springs.
Wiley said his five-person public works crew is responding weekly to multiple water line as well as some sewer pipe leaks.
"They're kind of scattered all over the place," he said. "There's not a concentration of any one location. They're just happening throughout the city."
The Victorian-era remote Ozarks settlement which became Eureka Springs was founded in 1879, the local population growing to over 10,000 residents. Today, Eureka counts 2,300 residents, along with tens of thousands of tourists daily during the season. City officials are trying to sort out how to pay the cost to repair and improve Eureka's potable water distribution system — as well as the town's aging wastewater treatment plant located north of town on Leatherwood Creek. An emergency meeting was called by the town mayor Sept. 19 to respond to a massive sewage breach discovered inside the facility.
"I, Robert D Berry, Mayor of Eureka Springs do hereby declare Eureka Springs, Arkansas to be a disaster area," the mayor proclaimed, "to obtain aid relief and assistance and do hereby direct implementation of the emergency operation plan."
Wiley said the declaration expedites potential state and federal funding to repair a sludge leak recently detected in the wastewater facility settling basin. To better understand the problem, Wiley first explained how the plant operates.
"The way our sewage treatment plant works is that you have your influent, which is your inflow that comes from the city," he said. "It goes through a grid and trash removal process and then into sequencing batch reactors. And what they do is they go through oxygenation, the solids settling. The clearwater stays on top. We discharge the clearwater through an ultra violet cleansing channel where it gets disinfected, and discharged into the creek. The sludge that settles in the bottom is pumped into the sludge basin. We dewater the sludge essentially and process it for disposal, hauled to a Class 1 landfill."
Wiley said the emergency declaration will enable the city to apply to the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission for up to $100,000 in loans, one-third of the cost to repair a crack causing the underground leak in the facilities sludge settling basin, which is being decommissioned.
"Our effluent flow out of the wastewater treatment plant is doing very well almost less than one CFU per 100 milliliters so our plant is operating exactly as it should as far as discharge goes," referring to measurably low bacteria Colony Forming Units.
But farther downstream in Leatherwood Creek, Wiley said, elevated fecal coliform levels have been detected. Residents have been warned by the city, the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality and the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers in Little Rock. Private water wells, Wiley said, are being located for testing.
Wiley reported to city council that he first saw evidence of the sludge basin breach the evening of Sept. 13, a mile downstream in the creek which he described as "nasty," setting the city's emergency response in motion as well as repairs.
"About a foot of elevation in that sludge basin is approximately 10,000 gallons is what we're losing a day," he told city council. "And it's going underground somewhere, it's not coming out of the ground."
The sludge apparently is moving through underground channels, partially emerging far downstream into the creek, which drains into Table Rock-White River Basin. The leak is being contained, Wiley said, with major repairs underway this week.
Enforcement reports published online by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality reveal intermittent complaints and investigations by ADEQ officials over the decades regarding the aging sewer plant, including a sewage leak occurring a year ago on the creek below Livingston Hollow. That leak, according to ADEQ reports, however, was not due to an accidental discharge of raw sewage from the plant but rather to a treated solids "washout" event.
Wiley wanted to stress that despite a growing number of water and sewer line leaks within Eureka Springs city limits, the water supply remains safe.
"I think it's important for the public to realize that our water and sewer systems are two completely different systems." he said. "We purchase our water from Carroll Boone Water District located on Beaver Lake. There are no boil orders, and again, we're monitoring wells downstream from our sewer location to make sure levels are acceptable. We are doing all we can to make sure the public is safe and the impact is as minimal as possible."
Despite ongoing hard-fought efforts by Eureka's public works crews, the city's long-time consulting engineers warned officials that Eureka's water and wastewater infrastructure is at risk for future failure and has to be completely overhauled at an estimated cost of $5 million a year over 30 years, a total of $150 million.
Eureka Springs Mayor Butch Berry announced at the regular meeting of city council on Sept. 23 that he's personally contacted state and federal officials for financial help. The council unanimously approved two readings of an ordinance to raise water and sewer use fees by 25%, with a final and future reading pending once a fair and equitable rate structure is calculated.
"Whereas the city of Eureka Springs, Arkansas, the city owns and operates the water facilities, the system and whereas the cost of repairs and maintenance of the system continued to increase," City Clerk Ida Meyer read aloud, "and there is a major replace and upgrade the system as required by law. Whereas in order for the city to maintain the system and to repair place and replace and upgrade the water and wastewater facilities, a water and wastewater use rate increase is necessary."
An estimated 1,700 water meters in town include numerous commercial businesses, which tend to pay higher user fees based on consumption. Residents, Wiley said, could see base water use fees rise between $10 to $14 a month. That amount could double if a second rate hike is passed. The city also collects an improvement and infrastructure fee for every water meter, based on water usage, last year reported to be around $800,000.
Wiley said, looking to the future, rather than building a new state-of-the-art sewage treatment facility, rehabilitating the current plant will be most cost-effective. In 2022, census data show the median household income for Eureka Springs was only around $41,000.
"We are trying to find the loan that has the lowest interest rate," he said. "We want to have a payback of probably 30 years, pay it off in a time that's fast enough to where we can replace it in another 30 years. And there's not a whole lot available as far as grants are concerned for water and wastewater industry but as far as loans, the interest rates are very low, we are looking at around 2%. And when grants are available, the cities that have the loans, according to my understanding, are going to get those grants first to help pay off loans."
Other cities in northwest Arkansas are also dealing with aging water infrastructures. Fayetteville's Water Master Plan completed in 2017 called to upgrade 160 miles of inadequate-sized pipeline— some of it cast iron— which has not been fully implemented, according to city mapping data. Springdale Water Utilities has just completed smoke testing on its sanitary sewer system to locate problem sewer line leaks.
Climate change is also disrupting municipal water utilities across the country, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Extreme flooding and hurricanes are overwhelming or disabling sewer systems. Extreme cold and heat can cause the ground to heave, breaking water and sewer pipes.
A recent survey of state and local governments concluded that roughly $600 billion will be needed to improve the nation’s drinking water infrastructure, with another $950 billion to adapt drinking water and wastewater systems due to the consequences of climate change.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. The authoritative record of KUAF programming is the audio record.
