The Little Maumelle River in Pulaski County on June 2, 2024. (Mary Hennigan/Arkansas Advocate)
Environmental officials – who one year ago were tasked with updating a comprehensive plan that informs water policy in Arkansas – recently announced goals, future plans and an estimated completion cost of $3.3 million for the Arkansas Water Plan.
The most recent iteration of the Arkansas Water Plan was published a decade ago, and while it was expected to guide leaders through 2050, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed an executive order last August calling on state officials with the Department of Agriculture to update it as risks to water quality and resources have heightened.
Since last year, a combination of federal and state funds have trickled into towns struggling with failing water systems. In July, state officials allocated $5 million to projects in three dozen Arkansas counties to fix critical infrastructure problems.
Sanders’ office announced the completion of Phase I of the water plan in a press release on Tuesday, noting that it was “a significant milestone” in the development of a comprehensive plan to address a range of water issues, from quality drinking water to flood management.
Sanders highlighted the importance of moving forward with the project and Secretary of Agriculture Wes Ward touted Sanders’ efforts in the press release.
Phase I included a review of the most recent water plan, published in 2014, to determine areas that need to be reevaluated or updated. Seven stakeholder meetings were held during the first phase, and residents were encouraged to provide feedback through a survey.
The meetings and survey answers helped identify six goals that officials should address in Phase II:
-Provide drinking water that supports public health and well-being
-Provide water that supports environmental and economic benefits to the state and supports interstate agreements
-Use the best available science, data, tools, practices and technologies to support water resource planning and management for current and future needs
-Maintain and improve water supply, wastewater, stormwater and flood control infrastructure, and plan for future infrastructure needs
-Maintain, protect and improve water quality to support designated uses of waterbodies
-Reduce the impacts of future flooding events on people, property, infrastructure, industry, agriculture and the environment
What’s next?
Officials are now expected to take the information they gleaned from the first phase and build on it in Phase II while they also “refine specific areas with gaps rather than overhauling the entire 2014 plan,” according to a lengthy report produced by Michael Baker International, an engineering consultant in contract with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The report outlines the process of updating the Arkansas Water Plan, including two funding schedules for Phase II. Priced at either $3.30 million over two years or $3.36 million over three years, the second phase is expected to include a variety of data collection and analyses.
The difference in cost stems from an additional $50,000 for project management in the third year.
Starting later this year, officials will launch Phase II with project management and scheduling procedures, then move into a regional review to assess methods used by other states, all while engaging with stakeholders along the way.
The two most expensive portions of Phase II include the updated water plan, $1,516,570, and the development of the first-ever Arkansas Flood Plan, $956,450.
Regarding the water plan, officials are expected to complete assessments of existing infrastructure and water availability. Specific water usage issues that are up for analysis include population and economic projections, drinking water, industrial, mining, thermoelectric power, crop irrigation, livestock, duck hunting and habitat maintenance and fish and wildlife support.
Officials should consider extreme weather impacts during their sector-specific analyses, the report states. In recent years, Arkansas has seen an increase in extreme weather events, such as tornadoes, winter storms, droughts and flooding.
With the flood plan, officials will also complete data collection and assessments, but through specific “hot spots” they identify using geographic information systems, or GIS.
The plan is intended to inform officials about ways to reduce the impacts of flooding events on “people, property, infrastructure, industry, agriculture, and the environment in Arkansas, as well as avoiding increasing flood risks in the future,” the report states.
The final piece of Phase II is described as an “interactive dashboard,” which should allow members of the public to view the results of the project.
Once the reports are completed, the content can be referenced as policy recommendations. The updated Arkansas Water Plan is expected to include mitigation strategies, a water reuse action plan, groundwater treatment methods and groundwater recharges.
The Arkansas Flood Plan is similarly expected to include proposed flood mitigation solutions and strategies.
Though Phase II will be underway for at least the next two years, Sanders’ executive order from 2023 stated an interim status report is due Dec. 31 detailing the progress of the water plan update, as well as “any supplemental reports and analyses, and preliminary needs and recommendations.”
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