Rogers-Lowell Area News

Beaver Water District Deploys Monitoring Equipment on Beaver Lake

James McCarty, Manager of Environmental Quality for Beaver Water District (BWD), announced equipment for monitoring water quality has been deployed in Hickory Flats Cove in the War Eagle arm of Beaver Lake. The vertical profile sampling platform resembles a small aluminum pontoon boat and will be stationary. This equipment is part of a research program to help determine sources of nutrients in Beaver Lake. The platform collects temperature, dissolved oxygen, conductivity, and chlorophyll-a data from the column of water beneath the platform.

“Collected data will help BWD determine causes of algae blooms, improving our understanding of Beaver Lake, the source of our drinking water,” McCarty said. “It will help us continue to provide clean safe drinking water to residents of Northwest Arkansas.”

McCarty explained that the deployment location is of particular importance because of the high algae concentrations that are measured there each year.

"Coves have often been overlooked as important sources of nutrients and algae that can impact water treatment," he said. "Hopefully this study will help us identify some of the factors that contribute to the high algae concentrations in Hickory Flats Cove and will ultimately lead to potential solutions to the problem here and in other coves."

BWD’s mission is to provide high-quality drinking water that meets or exceeds all regulatory requirements and is economically priced consistent with their quality standards. BWD supplies clean, safe drinking water, sourced from Beaver Lake, at the wholesale price of $1.34 per thousand gallons to Fayetteville, Springdale, Rogers, and Bentonville. These cities in Northwest Arkansas then pump, store, distribute and resell the water to their customers -- more than 320,000 people and industries in their cities and surrounding areas. For more information, visit http://www.bwdh2o.org/service-area.