Officials brief Senate committee on state water-plan update and record year for water infrastructure funding

Department of Agriculture and Health Department officials briefed the committee on the state water plan update, water and wastewater funding programs, and technical oversight of drinking-water systems.

Chris Caulklaasier, director of the Natural Resources Division, said the governor's executive order directs a comprehensive update to the state water plan that will examine supply, demand, infrastructure needs and flood preparedness. The agencies have partnered with the US Army Corps of Engineers through a Planning Assistance to States program (cost-sharing) and selected Michael Baker International as the primary contractor with FTN and Associates as a subcontractor. Caulklaasier said the scoping phase includes recent public meetings (Little Rock, Fayetteville) with five additional public meetings planned in May and a work plan and cost estimate due to the governor this summer; the final plan is expected around 2027.

Ryan Benefield, deputy director of Natural Resources, outlined multiple funding channels the department administers: two federal capitalized programs (clean water and drinking water state revolving funds), three state-funded programs and a general obligation bond program. He reported a record year in approvals, citing roughly $1,173,000,000 in projects across about 302 projects (about $891M from the two federal programs, $270M ARPA funds and $12.9M state dollars as presented). He emphasized the agency is primarily a low-interest loan provider and that principal-forgiveness (grants) are a smaller, competitive portion of funding.

Benefield described the project-priority list process, the Water and Wastewater Advisory Committee review, and special funding categories for cybersecurity, regionalization incentives, emerging contaminants, and lead service-line inventories. Lance Jones (Health Department) said the Health Department oversees ~1,000 public water systems that serve 99.7% of Arkansans, monitors more than 90 regulated contaminants and reported high compliance rates (99.9% monitoring compliance; 97.3% compliance with water-quality standards).

Committee members asked about outreach to planning and municipal districts, inventories for lead service lines (federal deadline in October), the mix of loans and grants, and incentives for consolidation. Officials said the agencies use listservs, conferences and partners to get the word out and that principal-forgiveness eligibility uses median household income and other LMI metrics. They also discussed Act 605 (water-provider oversight) and the legal limit on new systems under 300 customers.

Next steps: agencies will continue scoping and public engagement, complete the work plan to the governor this summer, and proceed with inventories and project-priority scoring required for federal funding applications.