HOT SPRINGS - The Mid-Arkansas Water Alliance learned Thursday of a new delay in the group's five-year effort to secure drinking water from Lake Ouachita for its 750,000 customers.
A draft policy indicates that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers likely won't grant approval for the group to take water on a contingency basis, meaning it won't process its request until after a several-year study of the lake's dam is complete.
Though the Corps has not formally denied the alliance's "contingency request," the draft policy presented by dam-safety experts is a good indicator of where the Corps stands, said Tricia Anslow, chief of planning and environmental issues for the Corps' Little Rock District.
Allocating water would require the Corps to raise the lake level, which would put more pressure on the dam.
Built in the 1950s, Blakely Dam has no mechanism to determine if it's leaking. So the only way to know if there are problems is to study it, Corps officials said. That will take two to three years.
Alliance members have been trying since 2003 to get water from Lake Ouachita.
"Here it is April 2008, and we run into another roadblock," said Steve Morgan, the alliance's president and the director of regionalism for Central Arkansas Water. "It seems like it's taking forever."
The alliance is made up of 23 public water utilities, associations and cities in seven counties.
For Little Rock, the setbacks aren't dire because the city has enough water to meet demand for the next 25 years. But for Hot Springs and communities in Saline County, the clock is ticking.
Hot Springs officials estimate that they will exhaust the city's water resources in the next two to three years, and Saline County officials estimate that they will need more water in eight years.
Hot Springs is trying to get approval from Entergy Corp. for more water from Lake Hamilton, and Saline County is studying building its own reservoir in a remote corner of the county.
While awaiting the dam study, the alliance had asked the Corps to consider a backup plan. The Corps could allocate water on a contingency basis from a "conservation pool," which would not require the Corps to raise water levels, thus eliminating the dam concern.
However, officials said, the trouble with tapping into that pool is that it could affect hydroelectricity production - the lake's main function.
The alliance's plans to get water from another Corps-operated lake, Greers Ferry Lake near Heber Springs, is moving forward, though. It's expected to provide additional drinking water for communities north of the Arkansas River, including Conway, Cabot and Jacksonville.
Arkansas, Pages 19 on 04/18/2008