COVID funds, local cooperate to provide potable

By BETH ANNE BRINK-COX | The Municipal

No water system serves households between Mountainburg and Cedarville, Ark., so residents bring it from wells or other sources. The city buys water from the Lake Fort Smith Water Treatment Plant.

In 2022, the city began a series of steps toward a major project, adding 68 miles of pipe to provide about 625 Crawford County households with potable water service.

According to Mayor Susan Wilson, the project began in 1980 when she was just 11 years old.

“They’ve been trying for years to get this done, but it required major funding, and we just didn’t have enough. For decades, many households were being forced to haul water to their homes. When I was elected in 2018, the minute I took office I was asked if I would take this on: I said, ‘No. Absolutely not.’”

There was solid reasoning behind her refusal.

“When I first took over the water department was not solvent, so I had to get it under control before I could do anything else. There just wasn’t money for anything more, but then came 2020 and we know what happened. Who would have expected that money would become available as a result?”

By then, the project mattered as much to Wilson as it did to many other residents.

“At one of the meetings, I was speaking and this lady, Denise, and her husband came up to talk to me. She couldn’t quit work, she said, because they had to pay to have a truck to haul their water supply. It took a big truck to do that. Her husband said he hoped he would live to see this project happen.” He did not.

Wilson choked up and continued. “Afterward, I would go to deliver a speech and take questions, and learn that people had highspeed internet but didn’t have potable water.” She began to put it as plainly as possible: “This is not asking for something frivolous. This is not about new clothes. This is not about new shoes. This is not a Louis Vuitton purchase. This is water. We stress that.”

The funding came from several different accounts.

“Crawford County’s Quorum Court and the state of Arkansas each provided $2.5 million. The rest came from loans and grants,” Wilson said.

So that the plan could begin, the aim was to get 400 signed water-use agreements, with a deposit of $100 each. These deposits would be included in the project’s total cost and would serve as the