Federal court pushes consent decree settlement issues further down the road to 2038

The modification to the City of Fort Smith's federal Consent Decree has received final approval from the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas and is now officially in effect.

 Following review by the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the State of Arkansas, the court entered the Agreement and Order on Modification to Consent Decree, updating the original 2015 decree that addressed deficiencies in the city's sanitary sewer system.

The 2015 Consent Decree resolved a civil action filed by the United States and the State of Arkansas against the city for repeated sanitary sewer overflows and related Clean Water Act violations. It required a comprehensive assessment of the wastewater collection and transmission system along with remediation of condition defects and capacity constraints, with all work originally scheduled for completion by early 2027.

Over the intervening years the city encountered significant obstacles, including a historic flood in 2019 that damaged key infrastructure, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, rising construction costs, and shortfalls in available funding relative to the accelerated timeline. These factors left the city unable to meet interim milestones and the final deadline under the original terms.

The approved modification extends the deadline for completing the required sewer system improvements from January 1, 2027, to June 30, 2038. This adjustment lengthens the overall compliance period while preserving the core performance goals of eliminating sanitary sewer overflows and ensuring proper operation and maintenance of the system.

In place of rigid annual quotas for rehabilitating sewer lines and manholes, the revised schedule grants the city greater flexibility to prioritize work according to engineering assessments of the most critical needs, measured against a three-year average of progress. The city remains obligated to focus first on recurring and high-volume overflows.

Additional provisions confirm the city's existing ordinance that raises sewer rates by 3.5 percent annually through 2030 to support ongoing operations and maintenance. The modification further requires the city to submit a Financial Management Plan demonstrating how it will fund the remaining work.

 Changes to the dispute resolution process between the city and the federal agencies streamline procedures for addressing future disagreements. Supporting these commitments, Fort Smith voters previously approved extensions of dedicated sales and use taxes and authorized the issuance of bonds to finance Consent Decree capital projects, providing a more sustainable revenue stream for the extended schedule.

The city has already invested substantial resources in compliance efforts since 2015 and continues to advance rehabilitation projects under the updated framework. The approved modification and related.