Been chewing on this for a couple days now and figured I'd see what folks here think, because I keep going back and forth.
For anybody who missed it, Conway Corp's CEO (Bret Carroll) laid out a plan to pull water from Greers Ferry Lake and send it to Conway. We're talking a 42-inch raw water line, more than 20 miles long, tied in with the Community Water Systems plant up in Higden. He's saying about 9 years to build, and the reason is Lake Brewer won't be big enough for them by around 2035. Here's the news piece if you want the details: KATV: Conway Corp plans to tap Greers Ferry Lake
The line that stuck with me is him saying the lake is owned by all the taxpayers. And ok, he's not wrong on paper, it's a Corps lake and we all paid for it. But it's a funny thing to hear when you live out here and see it every morning 😅
Then Heber Springs Water and Wastewater posted that it'd be a "literal drop in the bucket." Their math was something like 0.08 inches of lake level, up to 20 million gallons a day, compared to the lake losing somewhere between 214 and 550 million gallons a day just to evaporation. Honestly that does make it sound small. I water my garden out here in Sugar Loaf all summer and July evaporation is no joke, I can watch my tomato beds drink it up in a day, so I believe the evaporation number.
But I'm not sure how I feel. Part of me says if the numbers are that tiny, who cares, share the water, we're a neighborly bunch. The other part of me asks why it takes 9 years and a 20-mile pipe to solve somebody else's supply problem, and who ends up making money off it? And what happens in a dry year, like when the lake is already down and everybody's docks are sitting funny? Does a "drop in the bucket" in a normal year still look that way in a drought?
I've seen a lot of folks on the Facebook side already hollering about it, some for, some dead set against. Figured I'd rather hear from people here who actually live on the water or work around it. Anybody here with a dock or a lake house worried about it? Anybody who knows how this stuff works with the Corps and the water rights? I'm no expert, just a guy who loves this lake, plays too many shows on its shores, and likes knowing it'll still be here for the next Wednesday night on the deck with a band 🎶
Not trying to start a fight, just curious where everybody stands.