Workers have been out at the Lake Bella Vista dam removing debris and old asphalt in an effort to get the dam ready to re-open for foot and bicycle traffic.
Bentonville Street Manager Tony Davis said that once the surface repair is complete, he intends to move on to debris removal, then re-open the trail once that is finished.
This whole process, he said, should be finished in the next couple of weeks.
While the lake is named Bella Vista, it is in Bentonville city limits and is a part of a park maintained by that city.
Bentonville Engineering Director Travis Matlock said that, while a long-term plan is not yet ready, the current goal is to reopen the dam and reconnect the loop of trail around the lake.
Millings -- the term for recycled asphalt -- are being removed, he said, and the walkable surface will be a compacted base, which should form a slightly loose surface.
The thick layer of asphalt, he said, did not contribute to the dam's flood preparedness, so removing it should not have an effect on the dam's ability to stay above water.
He does not see any risk in reopening the dam for normal use.
"It is not in an imminent failure position in the normal operating modes," he said. "If we had another massive rainstorm and it gets overtopped, of course it would be shut down during that."
The long-term plan, he said, is in the works. The city has also applied for an extension on its Arkansas Department of Emergency Management grant, which has been granted until December. The grant is for $2.7 million from FEMA. The city's plan is to replace the dam with one farther downstream.
"That gives us some time to come up with a plan and figure out which way we're going to go with this," he said, "meaning which permit we're going to pursue."
Bentonville Parks and Recreation director David Wright said that the water level is so high is that debris has clogged up the openings in the dam, restricting the flow of water through it.
"That dam needs to be replaced, like tore out and replaced, or it needs to be eliminated," Wright said. "This last rain event, it was so structurally compromised, I don't know how much life it has in it if we don't do some structural repair in the future."
The city is engaged in talks, he said, with various entities -- including Cooper Communities, Northwest Arkansas Trailblazers and Friends of Little Sugar Creek -- to try to reach a solution on what to do with the dam.
Until then, he said, he does not intend to open the dam if it isn't up to regular use.
"If there was a 1 percent chance something would go wrong," Wright said, "we would not open."
The dam's future has been embroiled in a lawsuit as Friends of Little Sugar Creek fight to stop the city from replacing it. The group advocates for the dam to be removed. The lawsuit was dismissed a few months ago, after construction permits and a Federal Emergency Management Agency grant expired.
The dam was topped by flooding in 2008, 2011, 2013 and 2015. The gates were removed after the 2015 flooding.
General News on 06/21/2017