By Dr. James A. McCarty, Environmental Quality Manager
In March of 2006, the first agreement was signed between the City of Fayetteville and Beaver Water District (BWD) for the protection of Beaver Lake. This particular agreement centered around potential changes to the discharge permit for the Noland Wastewater Plant and focused on efforts both the City and BWD would do to help reduce nonpoint source nutrients from entering our drinking water supply. That first agreement started what is now a long history of cooperation to protect Beaver Lake and includes two additional agreements. Several of our more notable successes stemming from our cooperation include: the continued efforts by the Noland Wastewater Plant to keep phosphorus concentrations in their effluent well below permitted values, multiple stream-restoration projects along the West Fork and White River with matching contributions from BWD and the City, cooperation on low impact development projects, and most recently, the joint purchase of 225 acres of floodplain property along the West Fork White River in southeast Fayetteville.
In 2018, the City let BWD know that they would be pursuing a study to look at the feasibility of forming a Stormwater Utility. The entire concept was unfamiliar to most people at the time, but the basics of the idea made sense; stormwater infrastructure and maintenance is underfunded, and with a backlog of projects contributing to flooding issues and water quality threats to Beaver Lake, a stormwater utility could help mitigate those issues.
As the study unfolded over the next couple of years and a framework for how a stormwater utility could operate was defined, it became clear that this type of structure could significantly improve water quality. The landowners within the city each have a certain amount of impervious cover on their property which does not allow rainfall to soak in, leading to runoff. The runoff has to be accounted for within the city’s stormwater infrastructure, to ensure that it flows properly and reduces flooding risk. This infrastructure is not just the traditional concrete infrastructure for stormwater management, hundreds of miles of pipe/drainage ways underneath the city that carry stormwater off streets to local streams, it is also the city required stormwater detention, retention, and low impact development features in developments. The city would charge customers a rate based on the total impervious area of their land. This makes sense as the more impervious area one has, the higher the cost to the city to deal with the stormwater runoff from the property.
While most of the proposed funding would be slated for maintenance of existing infrastructure and addressing flooding issues after heavy rain, much of the activity would have a positive impact on water quality. When properly functioning and maintained, concrete infrastructure, water retention/detention ponds, and low impact development features can all be effective at reducing high flow during storm events and thus, reducing transport of sediments, nutrients, and chemicals to our drinking water supply. This summer, the Fayetteville City Council elected to continue funding updates to the original study and the development of an ordinance for the Stormwater Utility. It has been almost six years since BWD was first made aware of these efforts, and at times it has been a slow process, but now it feels like there is finally light at the end of the tunnel. Beaver Water District continues to support the efforts of the City of Fayetteville to protect Beaver Lake, and the District hopes that the example set by the new Stormwater Utility and other water quality efforts is followed by others. We have a strong history of collaboration and water quality protection to draw from and are looking forward to what comes next.