Community members, along with three members of the seven-member West Stone County Water Association board, gathered at Fox Community Center Thursday night in an often-contentious meeting to address the ongoing water issues in the community.
Community member James Stafford began the meeting by saying that he and his neighbors had been out of water “for the majority of 14 days.”
”We’ve asked questions. We can’t get answers, so we got together this little meeting here just trying to figure out what we can do to resolve this.”
Soon after the discussion began, former water department employee Raymon Lancaster interjected to ask the board members present, “Do you still have water? Do you have water?”
Stafford suggested board members might want to come to the front of the room to answer questions, and board member Shane McElroy responded, “I’m not going to come up here and be roasted.”
Craig Hicks, owner of the Fox Country Store and former water department employee himself, said, “That’s not our intention at all.” Stafford echoed what Hicks said.
Stafford said, ”We’re wanting answers on what we can do, what we’ve got to do to help out. Let’s get this done. Whatever we’ve got to do, whatever the problem is … we want to know what we can do to help y’all. What do we need to do as a community to make this work?”
Community member Brenda Hearn added, “I think everyone’s looking for some clear, open communication.”
McElroy said, “As y’all know, we’ve had some major water breaks.” He said that when a water tank goes dry, the people who live in the area of the tank are going to be the first ones out of water. Many of those affected by the recent outage live close to a tank on Highway 263 between Fox and Timbo.
“That’s the highest point,” he said. “Everyone below y’all is going to have water, but that little circle of residents right there is going to be the first ones out.”
Stafford said that in the past, water issues were fixed more quickly. “Now, they won’t answer my calls. They won’t return my texts. We can’t get nothing done.”
After some discussion about leaks and water flow, Lancaster asked another question, “I’m wondering how you know y’all have leaks when your crew is about six months in with experience?” As Sutterfield began to answer saying that they had crews who were taking care of leaks, Lancaster continued to confront board members about the operation of the utility.
Stafford tried to settle the discussion, saying, “We’re not here for that.”
Several community members voiced concerns that when leaks were reported to the water department, they were not fixed. Stacey Kocher said that she knew of a situation where the leak was not fixed until someone took a video and sent it to a board member.
“Is that the way it’s supposed to be?” Kocher asked.
“No,” said board member Shane McElroy, “I’ve just been on this board about five months. As far as I know, the leaks that’s been reported to us, or to me, have been fixed.”
”Yes, you’re right,” Kocher responded. “But when it was reported to the water department, it just kept going until he finally sent you a video. And it was two months that it leaked. I’m just saying, we don’t know who to call.”
”If you don’t get any response from the office, call me,” said McElroy. “Call James,” referring to board president James Sutterfield.
Tensions ran high after a few community members, including Pam Hicks, who, along with her husband, Craig, runs the store, said that they didn’t feel that Sutterfield had treated them professionally. At one point, Hicks told Sutterfield, “you need to be voted out.”
Shortly after this, Sutterfield announced his intention of leaving the meeting. Hearn spoke to him quietly at the door for a few minutes.
As the two spoke, board secretary Lorie Hutto announced herself to the audience, saying that all board members’ phone numbers were listed on the website (only five of the seven board members are listed on the site, with their phone numbers; board members Mike Crow and Terry Rushing are not listed).
”I apologize for whatever happened, but please, on the website there are other board members’ phone numbers who are available and willing to talk to you,” Hutto said.
Hearn then addressed the audience from where she spoke to Sutterfield near the door. “Can we respectfully give this man a moment to speak his peace, his side of it, and see what he has to say?”
Sutterfield told the audience that the board is in the process of putting in a brand new telemetry system so they can better monitor leaks, so they can get ahead of outages. “We haven’t been able to do that in over two years,” he said. “The system was down whenever I came on the board.” He said that the board hopes to be able to make improvements in the system in the next few years.
“We did talk to Mountain View,” Sutterfield said. “Mountain View has said that they will allot us more water. That’s what they told us this week.”
Community members also expressed concern about what would happen if there was no water when school started.
“We just got our school back,” one audience member said. “We can’t be shutting down school because we don’t have water.”
Other concerns expressed at the meeting included:
• knowing who to call to report a leak or low water pressure;
• financial records that had been requested but that were not readily available;
• high staff turnover at the water department, with many staff members resigning or having been fired;
• confusion about the meeting times for the water board, as well as concerns about canceled or rescheduled meetings;
• the report that the water system has a 50 percent water loss rate. Sutterfield told the audience that he believed this was not accurate.
• failure to receive boil water notices in a timely fashion.
In a short interview after the meeting wound down, Sutterfield said that community members should call the department or one of the board members if they see a leak.
“If they’ll notify us, we will respond,” he said.
He said that Arkansas Rural Water Association will help the utility determine their loss rate more accurately. “What our rate is showing right now is not a true reading,” he said.
He said that the new telemetry system should be online by this week, and water department employees will be able to monitor the system 24/7 using their phones.
Of the water system, he said, ”This system was designed so many years ago, and there’s been no improvements in a long time. We’re trying to do a study now to see what we need to do,” Sutterfield said.
”We’re all volunteers on the board,” he said. “We get nothing out of it. We’re trying to do what’s best for our communities.”
Contacted on Sunday, McElroy said that conditions had improved over the weekend. He said that the Rural Water Association had made improvements.
“They were on a mission to help us, along with our crews putting in long hours to keep our customers in water,” he said.
McElroy said that there was a big leak north of Timbo Sunday morning, and that crews were working on it. McElroy said the water level in the tanks started improving late Saturday afternoon.
Board members for West Stone County Water are: James Sutterfield, president, Lorie Hutto and Shane McElroy, all of whom spoke at the meeting; and Dwight Davis, Preston Hipp, Terry Rushing, and Mike Crow, according to the West Stone County Water Association office.
West Stone County Water serves more than 2,000 customers throughout southwest Stone County, and into Searcy, Cleburne and Van Buren counties. There are nine tanks and more than 400 miles of line on the system.
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