Water Board discusses master plan

News-Times/Terrance Armstard: Sherrel Johnson, standing, addresses the Union County Water Conservation Board at the Union County Courthouse.
News-Times/Terrance Armstard: Sherrel Johnson, standing, addresses the Union County Water Conservation Board at the Union County Courthouse.

A presentation of the Water System Master Plan update was discussed by the Union County Water Conservation Board meeting on Wednesday. The board decided that the presentation of the long-term plan will take place at 4 p.m. on Jan. 27. This is an update of an original plan that was started in 1999.

Tom Burger, plant manager at Entegra, presented year-end financial information through Dec. 31, 2015 that showed that a total of 3.6 billion gallons of water has been processed against a budget of about 3.35 billion.

Over the past few months, Burger said they elected to pull a part of No. 1 pump at the booster station and refurbish the runner of the rotating element in that pump.

They commissioned the new variable frequency drive they installed on that pump but in the process, the drive motor failed. They then had to shut down the commissioning exercise and send the motor off for repair.

“Out of the four pumps in service, we have two that are running on new drives,” Burger said. “We need to go ahead and replace the remaining two drives.”

While discussing the financial statements, the board was informed that water sales for December 2015 were down about $100,000.

The total water sales for the current month and 12 months ending Dec. 31, 2015 was $2,605,124.80.

There was a request to confirm items that had been approved via e-mail including the Burns and McDonnell Amendment 22 to Authorization 10 for Sparta Monitoring in the amount of $10,497 for the period of Oct. 22, 2015 through Oct. 19 of this year as part of and to include the overall Sparta Recovery Initiative $129,482 annual monitoring budget.

Sherrel Johnson, UCWCB grant administrator, gave a water plan update that stated that the Arkansas Water Plan rules become effective on Feb. 1 and they are already working to implement the recommendations.

Another big push, according to Johnson, is to enter into an agreement with USGS to get 65 meters placed on alluvial aquifer wells in East Arkansas and to use the data from the meters to increase the accuracy of our crop irrigation water use reporting.

“Arkansas is one of the few states with no drought plan so we are working with the National Drought Mitigation Center and others for advice on how to formulate one,” Johnson said.

Johnson also reported that the tax credit program for groundwater conservation is another area where we hope to make improvements to encourage people to participate.

They will continue to engage the people who made the update successful as they implement the recommendations and as they prepare to update parts of the plan.

Ginger Risinger, with the Union County Conservation District, reported that there was a problem making a connection to the Hilo transducer and she was unable to download the data for the month. She sent the cable and the Level Troll 500 for data extraction on Jan. 12.

An evaluation update on Jan. 19 showed that the transducers circuit board had a high current draw and a dead internal battery. The transducer is still under warranty and a new replacement transducer will be sent out by Jan. 29.

Mike Dumas, president of the Ouachita River Valley Association and stated that the river is above flood at Thatcher and Felsenthal. He added that the tonnage for 2015 was a little over 1 million tons, according to Dumas, even after the river was closed for an entire month.

Dumas also stated that the current executive director, Bill Hobgood, is wanting to retire so they are looking for a replacement.

The next UCWCB meeting will be held on April 20.

Upcoming Events