Special to the News-Times
UNION COUNTY — The Union County Water Conservation Board (UCWCB), in collaboration with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), has contracted with Pender Water Wells of Texarkana to begin constructing a new real-time groundwater level monitoring well at the Arkansas Welcome Center on Highway 167 South in El Dorado.
Pender transported and set up the drilling rig Friday and began drilling 24 hours per day on Monday. Well completion is expected by late Thursday and Pender has subcontracted parts of the job with local contractors Hugg & Hall, Mussop, and Diversified Services.
The existing Welcome Center groundwater level monitoring well casing failed late 2016, and the UCWCB and USGS elected to construct a new well to continue monitoring the Sparta aquifer’s recovery in South Arkansas and North Louisiana in response to Union County’s conservation efforts begun in the late 1990s. The new well is approximately 300’ from the existing well, which will be plugged and abandoned in accordance with state regulations.
Prior to casing failure, the Welcome Center well had risen over 61’ since October 2004, when the UCWCB completed the Ouachita River infrastructure and began delivering the alternative surface water source to three industries that once relied solely on the Sparta aquifer for water. The abundant Ouachita River alternative water is available only because of Thatcher Dam, the uppermost of four dams in the Ouachita-Black Navigation Project. Sparta groundwater recovery is totally dependent on this continued source of alternative surface water.
The Welcome Center well is one of eight USGS real-time wells in the UCWCB’s Sparta groundwater recovery monitoring network that includes twenty-eight wells in a five-county/three-parish South Arkansas/North Louisiana monitoring area.
There are eight groundwater level monitoring wells with automated data loggers and twelve water quality monitoring wells in addition to the eight real-time groundwater level monitoring wells. The twenty-eight wells are located strategically throughout the monitoring area. The USGS real-time wells transmit water levels several times daily to the USGS via a solar powered modem, real-time data is available to the public at https://waterdata.usgs.gov/ar/nwis/current/?type=gw&group_key=county_cd, and the UCWCB measures all groundwater level monitoring wells manually quarterly to validate electronic data.
According to Sherrel Johnson, UCWCB project manager, “The Welcome Center well has the added benefit of being highly visible and easily accessible for education and project familiarization. The Center’s staff and Arkansas Highway & Transportation Department personnel have been indispensible during this process to replace the failed well.”
For additional information contact Johnson at 870-314-0749, [email protected], Robert Reynolds, UCWCB Volunteer Advisor, 870-918-6100 or [email protected], or Jonathan Gillip, USGS, 501-228-3646 or 479-263-0184, [email protected].