The Faulkner County Quorum Court appropriated $800,000 for a Lake Conway Wastewater Utility plant project Feb. 21, and the state will match the county’s funding.

After discussions about financial logistics, the ordinance passed unanimously and declared an emergency. 

Former County Judge Jim Baker said at the court’s Dec. 20 infrastructure committee meeting that the plant was dumping an “abundance” of waste into Lake Conway.

Baker said, “The Game and Fish [Commission] is fixing to stop it. … Conway Corporation has agreed to take this group on, and they have the capacity.

“They [the plant’s board] have to raise the money to hand it off to Conway, and Conway would run the whole system,” Baker said.

Conway Corp Chief Operating Officer Greg Dell said Feb. 21 that the Conway Corp board and Conway’s Mayor Bart Castleberry are “agreeable” to the project and that the project was a matter of public health.

The project still needs approval from both the Conway Corp Board of Directors and the Conway City Council since the plant is outside city limits.

“This wastewater system — which has been a good system — they have a new permit, and the plant’s not designed to meet the permit, and that illicit discharge eventually makes it to Lake Conway,” Dell said.

“There’s still some work to be done on the rates,” Dell said, adding that using grant funding would be cheaper for the plant’s customers than borrowing money. 

The sheriff’s January report to the court struck concern among its members about overcrowding.

Sheriff Tim Ryals said, at the jail’s Unit 1, “We have a capacity of 118 beds, and those are reserved for violent offenders,” or any offender with a previous violent crime or “violent tendencies.”

In January, “on average, we had 167 inmates in our Unit 1 facility,” he said.

Justice Justin Knight asked, “Are we in danger of being on a state watchlist for overpopulation? There was a few years ago when they told us we had to make some adjustments.”

Ryals said the state is still monitoring how the county handles overcrowding. 

“We have been doing that for about six years. It’s time. It’s truly time that we do something before they really could be a lot more aggressive in their actions toward us,” he said.

The open-barracks design of Unit 2, which is reserved for nonviolent offenders, holds 218.

“We had, on average, 159,” Ryals said. The juvenile center held an average of 16, its capacity.

Ryals also said the county typically holds “50-60” Arkansas Department of Corrections inmates, but that it isn’t unique to Faulkner County.

“What we have [in Unit 1] is sleds that we can pull out, they sleep on the floors on the sleds. … We pull these manufactured plastic sleds designed for this overflow problem, and that’s where they sleep,” Ryals said, adding most of the sleds are moved to day rooms so cells aren’t too confined.

Ryals said there was no way to section off parts of Unit 2 to make space for overflow violent offenders because it wasn’t structurally workable and could be dangerous.

Five justices, Kris Kendrick, Tyler Lachowsky, Andy Shock, Samuel Strain and Jonny Tyler, voted against reappointing Virginia Suzann Waggoner to the Library Board. Eight voted yes.

County Attorney Phil Murphy said, “It’s a majority confirmation. There’s enough to confirm,” and there was no further public discussion about the vote.

Lachowsky, who represents District 6, which comprises the area north of Lake Conway and south of Highway 64, said his vote wasn’t personal.

“Sometimes we’d like to have a bit more discussion. Maybe that’s my fault, for not bringing it up,” Lachowsky said after the meeting.

“The past two years, we got into a situation where we felt these board appointments weren’t being advertised like they should to the community so that regular community members who don’t have any experience participating in government would want to be on a board,” he said.

“I have nothing against that person personally,” Lachowsky said. “I need to talk to the judge more and say, ‘What can we do to advertise these appointments?’”

The court also approved a mutual aid agreement between Faulkner County and Cleburne, Conway, Lonoke, Perry, Pulaski, Van Buren and White counties for emergency and disaster response.

The quorum court’s next meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. March 21 at 801 Locust St.