Bethel Heights sewer customers to receive refunds – Arkansas Online

SPRINGDALE -- Former customers of the Bethel Heights sewer service will soon get a payback from Springdale Water Utilities, Heath Ward, executive director of Springdale Water Utilities, announced Tuesday night.

The utility will return to every property owner the $250 deposit paid for sewer service provided by Bethel Heights. And customers who paid both Bethel Heights and Springdale for an overlap of service last month will see another $20 refund on their account, Ward said.

Ward shared the news with a handful of Bethel Heights residents in a meeting at the administration building of the shuttered city.

Springdale on Aug. 21 annexed the nearly 2.7 square miles and roughly 3,000 residents of Bethel Heights. Residents of both cities voted overwhelmingly for the action Aug. 11. The smaller city spent more than a year working and failing to get its two wastewater treatment plants operating in compliance with its state permit.

Springdale's water staff on Sept. 16 held an informal closing ceremony for the Bethel Heights wastewater system. As of that date, 100 percent of the sewage from the former Bethel Heights has been pumped to the Springdale wastewater treatment plant on Silent Grove Road, Ward said.

"It was like flipping a light switch, and it was over," Ward said.

"You've done more in three and a half weeks than they've done in 13 years," Lawrence Bowen told utility staff at the meeting, speaking of the former Bethel Heights government. Bowen lives next door to the Lincoln Street plant and suffered with untreated sewage running across his property for many years.

"I can now walk to my in-laws' house in my tennis shoes, not my rubber boots," added Tina Bowen, who lives next door.

Ward said he didn't feel his department had any right to the deposit money paid by former Bethel Heights customers.

Bethel Heights residents received sewer service from their city, which required a deposit, and water service from the Springdale system, which also required a deposit.

Ward said Springdale residents paid just one deposit, as the utility provided both services to its customers.

"We wanted the new citizens of Springdale to be treated the same way," he said. "If their accounts are in good standing, we hope to make those payments in the next 60 days."

Repaying those deposits might be a chore, Ward said. In Bethel Heights, property owners were responsible for deposits; in Springdale, account holders pay.

"And those original property owners might have died or moved out of state or otherwise be hard to find," he said.

Rick Pulvirenti, chief engineer and operating officer for the utility, said any deposits not returned to property owners will be deposited as unclaimed property through the state attorney general's office.

Ward said the utility also plans to institute a yearly "pump out, clean out and inspection process" for residents who retain infrastructure of the Bethel Heights system. Each home has a small septic-type tank where wastewater was collected before piped to one of the city's two treatment plants.

The utility will not charge residents for the program or repairs, and the process will start soon, he said.

"A lot of those individual systems were left in pretty poor condition," Ward said. "Parts are missing from some of them, or the lids might be cracked or removed. It's a safety issue. Those tanks could be hazardous if there is a child in the home."

Wastewater from the former Bethel Heights homes now bypasses the closed treatment plants and is pumped into lines leading to the Springdale plant, Ward explained.

Springdale utility crews laid above ground, 8-inch polyethylene pipes from both plants. The lines probably pump about 100 to 300 gallons a minute -- an amount not expected to overwhelm the system, Ward continued.

The pipes tie into the Springdale just 800 feet from the north plant on Lincoln and about 1,700 feet from the south plant on Oak. Both run through private property for which the utility paid for easements.

"We are proud to say we have done this in about three weeks," Ward said.

He said the project cost only about $120,000, without labor costs.

The utility staff now turns its attention to a permanent solution of putting the temporary lines underground, hopefully by March. Ward said a plan has been sent to the Arkansas Division of Environmental Quality and the Arkansas Department of Health for approval.

Even the temporary pipelines include flow meters and other equipment to determine for the department gallons of water, peak flow times and more. This data should help determine the needs over the next few years and the long-term plan for serving residents as the city and region grow, Ward said.

"All of the decisions will be data-driven."

The utility staff will work with the state's regulating agencies about the future of the land that holds the now-closed plants, Ward said.

"It should be pretty straightforward since most of the decommissioning is the mechanical removal of certain items and letting nature take care of the rest over time," he said.

An eight inch continual polyethylene pipe from the former failing Bethel Heights water treatment plant to a connection with a Springdale sewer line is visible Tuesday, September 29, 2020, as it comes out of the ground after passing under a road. Check out nwaonline.com/200930Daily/ and nwadg.com/photos for a photo gallery.(NWA Democrat-Gazette/David Gottschalk)

Laurinda Joenks can be reached by email at joenks@nwadg.com or on Twitter @NWALaurinda.

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Bethel Heights sewer customers to receive refunds - Arkansas Online