Hope Water & Light says no to joining Millwood Lake water sale to Texas

Hope won’t be part of the plan to sell Millwood Lake water to Texas. The Hope Water & Light Commission voted Wednesday, Oct. 28, not to participate in the proposed sale of excess raw water from the lake, the utility said in a statement published by Hope Prescott.

HWL said it was recently approached about joining the sale. After looking at it, commissioners voted no. The utility said it "remains committed to providing reliable water service to the Hope community and ensuring that local water needs remain a priority."

How much water Hope has

• HWL owns rights to 12 million gallons a day in Millwood Lake.
• The Southwest Arkansas Water District manages those rights. Hope has 3 million gallons a day activated through the district and uses about 2 million of that.
• The other 9 million gallons a day are held in reserve for future use.

Where the bigger deal stands

On Oct. 13, the Texarkana, Arkansas, Board of Directors voted to let the water district ask the state for permission to move up to 110 million gallons a day of Texarkana’s Millwood water into Texas. That vote also approved an exclusivity agreement with developer Heartland Water Partners that named the cities of Hope and Ashdown and the town of Ogden, TXKtoday reported. Under the draft agreement, the cities were to tell the district and Heartland in writing by Nov. 1 how much water they would commit. We covered the Texarkana vote here and the pipeline plan here.

Hope’s vote does not stop Texarkana’s application. Any sale would still need approval from the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission and the Legislature.

Other business

At the same meeting, commissioners accepted a low bid of $214,000 from TWOBO for a fluoridation project and voted to start advertising for a co-general manager ahead of Co-General Manager Russell Cornelius’s retirement at the end of April, Hope Prescott reported. Cornelius also gave a brief update on a possible data center project. No action was taken on it.