People Rule: A Referendum On Local Water Boondoggle On May 5th the Hot Springs Board passed a $3.8 MILLION ordinance to pay a Little Rock engineering firm for services toward a new water treatment plant south of the lake and 42-inch water mains from Lake DeGray. This comes on top of Hot Springs flushing about $3 million earlier for another engineering feasibility study to take water from the Entergy Park area by Carpenter Dam---even though the Corps of Engineers and Arkansas had told them from the beginning that such would never be permitted. The total costs of current plans may very well exceed $100 million, new sewer plant not included, and the Board openly admitted to about $50 million during a first phase with unknown components (like the water intake plant) not yet calculated. To justify this scheme the City projects a doubling of population by 2020 to 70,000. REALLY? Hot Springs population has not changed from 35,000, plus or minus, for over THREE decades. WHERE are all these people coming from all of a sudden? If the City does not grow as projected, then we have a all this debt that will be loaded onto our water bills---maybe doubling or even tripling them---to pay off a HUGE bond debt. Even county residents who get Hot Springs water have a vital stake (if not vote) on this issue. And this is ON TOP OF a 27% increase already in the works over the next 3 years! I am inclined to work with some folks who want to stop this via a referendum, which requires about 1,500 signatures of City registered voters on a petition by June 5th. Wanna help? If so, please come to a 1 p.m. meeting today in the back room at Cracker Barrel by Cornerstone off Central if you can. Much more info at the meeting. Hope to meet you there!!! Feel free to bring any of your friends who are activists and have better use for their monies than supporting Hot Springs water boondoggle! WHY cant we simply take water from Garland County, either Lake Hamilton or Lake Ouachita, without the costs and expense of pumping water up and over the mountain all the way from DeGray and building a NEW water treatment plant (probably in Hot Spring (not Garland) County on the side of Jack Mountain, which in turn will require a sewer treatment plant that direction? I have my suspicions. Rule of thumb for good lawyers and keen investigators: Follow the money! Who stands to benefit from all of us paying for this ill-conceived squandering of public monies? Yup, follow the money! Yes, yes, yes: all this is connected to my anti-annexation efforts. After all, who in his/her right mind would want to be a part of a City with this kind of project?
Posted on: Fri, 23 May 2014 14:07:38 +0000
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