City of Hot Springs says $110 million water project to be complete in two years

The city of Hot Springs is expanding its water system through a $110 million dollar bond project that officials told KATV it's been a decade in the making.

The city's utility director, Monty Ledbetter said water is the new gold, the new oil, and that the future of Hot Springs depends on this expansion project.

For more than eight months the city of Hot Springs has been working on multiple phases of the water project. Ledbetter said part of the four phases include, a new water planet, a raw water line of 17 miles, and an intake structure where they will drill through Blakely Mountain.

"The reason we're spending this kind of money and going to this effort is so that we can gravity feed water instead of having to pump water," Ledbetter said.

According to Ledbetter, the water system can provide the city with an additional 15 million gallons of water a day. He said it will set up the city for future growth and save them millions of dollars.

"Creating this extra capacity in our system sets us up for industrial trap growth, any type of water parks, anything that we need to expand on, we'll be ready for that," Ledbetter said.

Laura Driver is a business owner for nearly five years at The Willow Salon. She told KATV the water expansion project is a great idea because 80 percent of her salon depends on the use of water.

"That would change my whole job because I definitely need water when I'm dealing with clients all day with chemicals, with products, so we definitely need water all the time," Driver said.

The driver said this is a testament to the growth in Hot Springs.

"I think they know not just the tourism but I think they know a lot of people are moving here and we're gonna need quality water, and we're going to need to have enough water to support that," she said.

According to Ledbetter, the project will bring success to the city for decades to come. He also said the extra water capacity will give the city more options to expand in areas that it sees fit.

"We have to have water to survive and those that have water will grow and those that don't have it won't," he said.

Officials with the city of Hot Springs said they expect to save 28 to 30 million dollars of water costs over the next 30 years. Ledbetter said they expect the project to be complete in two years.