Throughout the summer, Helena West Helena, which is located in the Delta region, has been under boil water advisories, due to the city’s water infrastructure breaking down. According to NBC News, at the end of June, the city’s main water line broke, which left residents without water for 20 hours.
In an interview with Arkansas PBS’ Arkansas Week, Chris Colclasure, the director of the Natural Resources Division of the Department of Agriculture, said that a minimum of $10 million would be needed to fix the city’s aging water system.
“First of all, we need to figure out what the actual cost is and then prioritize the pieces of the system that need to be repaired. Obviously, there are funding sources available but the majority of those are loans,” he said. “As you’ve heard about the [water] rate increases and those things, typically those things have to happen in order to afford the debt service to repay the loans.”
Colclasure said the state has already provided Helena West Helena with a $100,000 loan to deal with the emergency from the summer.
According to Gov. Sarah Sanders' office, the governor met with city leaders this week to discuss the city’s water infrastructure. Arkansas’ U.S Senators John Boozman and Tom Cotton, both Republicans, have sent aides to Helena West Helena to assess the city’s water problems.
Colclasure said the issue with water infrastructure is not unique to Helena West Helena.
“In rural Arkansas, this is not uncommon for cities’ water systems to fail and not have a good backup system. Last year, for example, we had two issues — Eudora and Sidney were without water. We did the same emergency process with these two communities to get their parts replaced and the system back up and functioning,” he said.
Colclasure said part of the issue is cities defer maintenance on their water systems.
According to the White House, Arkansas will receive $528 million from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to improve its water infrastructure. The money will be distributed over five years.
