Rogers-Lowell Area News

Lane Crider Joins Beaver Water District Staff

On Sept. 27, the Beaver Water District (BWD) Board of Directors announced the hiring of M. Lane Crider P.E., LEED AP, of Fayetteville. Crider will join BWD on Oct. 1. He will move into the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) role upon the retirement of longtime CEO Alan D. Fortenberry, P.E., in 2019. Crider is a Registered Professional Engineer in Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Tennessee, and has a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Arkansas. From 1989 to 2018, he worked for McGoodwin, Williams and Yates, Inc. and MWY, a Division of Olsson Associates. He began his career with McGoodwin while still a student at the University of Arkansas in the role of intern. His nearly 30 years of experience with MWY includes water and wastewater treatment plant design; water transmission, distribution, and storage; wastewater collection and transmission; sludge application and industrial pre-treatment; street, paving and storm sewer design; sanitary sewer rehabilitation; municipal utility relocation and reconstruction; and many other areas of design and construction for private and municipal projects. 

Crider has served on the state Board of Directors of the Arkansas Society of Professional Engineers (ASPE), as well as in officer’s positions for its Northwest District Chapter. He has also served on the Board of Directors for the Arkansas Water Works and Water Environment Association (AWW&WEA), most recently as the 2017 Past Chair. He has served on the Legislative Committee for the Arkansas Water and Wastewater Managers Association (AWWMA) and has experience testifying before the Arkansas House and Senate subcommittees. In 2016-2017, Crider served on the American Water Works Association’s (AWWA) Water Utility Council’s Technical Advisory Workgroup for the review and response to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) six-year review of the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA). 

Crider is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), the AWWA, the Southwest Section of the AWWA, the Water Environment Federation (WEF), the Arkansas Water Environment Association (AWEA), the AWW&WEA, the American Public Works Association (APWA), the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC), the ACEC/A Emerging Leaders Board of Directors, the United States Green Building Council (USGBC), and the ASPE. 

Crider’s service to the community includes Rotary International, Northside Rotary Club, Arkansas 811 Board of Directors, First Christian Church, and Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce. His awards and recognitions include ASPE Young Engineer of the Year, ASPE Distinguished Service Award, Northside Rotary Club’s Rotarian of the Year, and Rotary International Paul Harris Fellow. He was inducted into the Arkansas Academy of Civil Engineers in 2013. 

BWD’s mission is to serve our customers’ needs by providing high quality drinking water that meets or exceeds all regulatory requirements and is economically priced consistent with our 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. (This rate increases to $1.36 per thousand gallons on Oct. 1.) These cities then pump, store, distribute and resell the water to their customers -- more than 330,000 people and industries in their cities and surrounding areas. For more information, visit http://www.bwdh2o.org/.