The city of Mountain Home, Arkansas, is moving forward with two separate water projects worth a combined $75 million after approving $20 million in bonds upgrade the water distribution system and an engineering contract for improve water intake infrastructure at Lake Norfork.
The city greenlit both measures during its Feb. 19 meeting, enabling the city to move forward with the Lake Norfork Water Intake project. Slated to cost approximately $55 million, the project will significantly update and modernize the facility’s infrastructure. The construction date has not yet been released.
Currently, the intake is more than 45 years old, facing water intake access issues, is at maximum pumping capacity, lacks space, has aging structural components and has limited redundancy. The city will build a new water intake to supplement its need for reliably sourced water from the lake to the water treatment plant.
The project will build a new lake intake structure, establish a buffer zone, build a transmission line and upgrade the treatment plant. Plans include building an access road on the eastern part of the project site to access the intake.
The $20 million in bonds approved during the meeting will supplement the voter-approved Southwest Ground Storage Tank to Midway Elevated Storage Tank project. The project will address a critical vulnerability in the city’s water and sewer system, creating essential redundancy in the event of a system failure. Construction is expected to begin in 2027.
The city will build a new pump station at the current Southwest tank location. Plans include installing roughly 23,000 feet of 16-inch water main to connect the two tanks, alongside additional piping to increase redundancy.
Photo by David Ratledge, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, from Wikimedia Commons
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