HELENA-WEST HELENA, Ark. — Nearly a week without running water.
That was the reality this summer for thousands of people living in Helena-West Helena, Ark. The crisis is spotlighting a more significant issue across the state.
Aging infrastructure and staffing shortages are putting a strain on small towns working to keep the water flowing. Engineers said cities and the state must prioritize fixing this, but it comes with a hefty price tag.
As the publisher of the local paper, the Helena World, Andrew Bagley both lived through and reported on West Helena's faucets running dry.
"We began a six-day period where five of those days we were without water at all," Bagley said. "You couldn't flush a toilet or take a shower... it was third-world country kind of conditions. If it had not been for the governor's order to bring the National Guard over here, we wouldn't have had access. We would have had to go somewhere else."
West Helena's water problems didn’t happen overnight. The city said the West-Helena treatment plant has outdated valves and technology.
There are cracks on the water basin patched over, and the building itself is falling apart, along with a water tower years overdue for cleaning.
Right now, the water is safe to drink, but these issues put access at risk daily.
"This is the chickens coming home to roost deferred maintenance," Bagley said. "For decades."
The mayor’s chief of staff, James Valley, said they haven’t changed much at the plant since it was built in 1964.
"The old system runs several risks," Valley said. "Everything has to meet the right place at the right time. If it doesn't get there, the customer doesn't get the water."
And that’s what Valley said happened earlier this summer.
"Back in June, we had the collapse where the water system just shut down," Valley said. "We're seeing it a lot more often. Since then, we've figured out the problem and found a way to manage it."
The short-term fix requires the only water operator at the plant to climb underground multiple times a day to keep their air pressured lines running manually.
"That's how they did it in 1964," Valley said. "But now, they have electric control valves where you flip a switch, but you don't have that. We don't have that, but we'll get them."
The city asked the state for $650,000 to pay for new equipment, receiving $100,000 as a loan. However, the city estimated fixing everything would cost tens of millions of dollars.
"I’d bring in a crane, knock it all down and start over," Valley said. That's what I would recommend."
And it's not just West Helena. Aging water systems are at risk of failing in cities across the state.
It's an issue the Arkansas Rural Water Association has been sounding the alarm about for years.
In 2018, Dennis Sternberg helped assess the state’s water systems for Arkansas Rural Water.
"As long as the water’s flowing, everybody's happy," Sternberg said. "There's going to be times when it's not going to, with the aging infrastructure we have across the state and the nation."
In that report, Arkansas received a D+ grade and a price tag of $7.4 billion to fix everything.
"I mean, that money has to come from somewhere," Sternberg said. "We've had an influx of money this year because of our prop monies the state received, and Gov. Hutchinson allocated $270 million for water and wastewater… and now there's a waiting list of people."
Some help, but it's only a drop in the bucket of what’s needed, so water providers will likely turn to the customers for money, which can put a more considerable toll on small towns.
"To provide good rates to carry and maintain and make their system sustainable, but don't have the population," Sternberg said. "They're going to have a higher rate, and you will see in Little Rock, the Fayetteville, the Fort Smith's where you have a consolidated population to spread that cost over."
The 2020 census backs this up with data showing that many Arkansas small-town populations are getting even smaller, putting further strain on the people living there.
"I think the community water systems, or infrastructure, is the soul of any community," Sternberg said. "If you don't have good water, you ain't gonna have people live there."
Sternburg also said that water plant workers are leaving smaller cities, which West Helena struggles with.
"We just don't pay well," Valley said. "Some of that is we are in a depressed area, some of that is we haven't had the political will to pay our people what they ought to be paid… We're paying them, let's say, $15. I'll go to Little Rock for $22... what would you do?"
This puts smaller cities and towns one step closer to a water crisis.
"If we can get people to come back here and start investing their time and their lives and their work here, we can turn this around, eventually," Bagley said, "But the fact of the matter is right now, the equivalent of bubblegum and duct tape holds the system together."
This means the problem is pushed onto groups like Arkansas Rural Water to help cities find band-aid fixes with more calls each year.
"We can't fix everything," Sternberg said. "We can troubleshoot things and correct things as much as possible. It often goes back to the West-Helena issue of lack of money. Lack of continued maintenance."
While cities across the state wait on a multi-billion dollar solution.
"We got old infrastructure," Valley said. "If we don't replace it, we'll see these problems repeat themselves."
Sternberg said it's a problem everyone should take into consideration.
"I think everybody should be concerned," Sternberg said. "I'd be drinking the best water. We live in the United States. We live in the state of Arkansas. There's no reason we can't do it, but it costs."
Arkansas Rural Water said it is not just small towns responsible for that $7.4 billion price tag, as infrastructure in big cities is also aging and will need repairs.
A new study on the state's water infrastructure will happen in the next year— following orders from the governor.
It's the first complete look at the system since 2018.