According to a report this past week by The News Star, Monroe, La., USA, perhaps the most significant conservation effort in the Union region (Union County, Ark., and Union Parish, La.) which encompasses the border between Louisiana (especially Ouachita Parish) and Arkansas in the West Monroe region in the past decade is the city of West Monroe, Arkansas' Sparta Reuse project. It's a comprehensive plan to reduce water usage from the Sparta aquifer, a major source of drinking water for municipalities and water systems west of the Ouachita River.

The Sparta Reuse Project allows West Monroe's Graphic Packaging (Atlanta, Ga.) facility to use recycled wastewater in its production process to eliminate drawing from the aquifer. Before the project came online in April 2012, Graphic Packaging was the area's largest consumer of aquifer water. The plant used approximately 10 million gal. per day (mgd) from the Sparta before the reuse project. It now uses 5 mgd, but if West Monroe can tie its water treatment plant into more sewer systems as planned in the future, Graphic Packaging could be taken off the Sparta aquifer altogether.

 

 

Photo: Graphic Packaging Plant in West Monroe, Louisiana 

 

Terry Emory, West Monroe environmental quality manager and a member of the Sparta Aquifer Groundwater Commission, said wells throughout the region were heavily drawn down before conservation efforts took place.

"I think we're doing a good job compared with other water districts. The largest cone of depression and greatest threat was right under West Monroe in our state. But we are seeing recovery at those wells, and because the level of clean water is recovering, it's pushing the salt water down. The more effluent we can get into our plant to supply to the paper mill will help get them completely off the aquifer," Emory said.

Other conservation efforts across northeastern Louisiana and southern Arkansas have taken place to reduce the draw from the depleted aquifer. International Paper (Memphis, Tenn.) which shuttered operations in 2008, stopped drawing from the aquifer in 1981, and over a 10-year period, the USGS-monitored Bastrop well used averaged a rise of more than 35 ft.

The former Smurfit-Stone Container Plant, now operated by WestRock (Richmond, Va.), located in Hodge, La., just south of the Union region in Jackson Parish, established a recycling project that reduced Sparta use from 15 mgd to 8.1 mgd.

 

 

Photo:  WestRock Container Plant in Hodge, Louisiana (by photographer Billy Hathorn)

 

Converting these paper packaging industries to surface water use in the past decade has resulted in a significant water level rise in Union County, Ark., wells and in bordering Union Parish, La., wells, most notably in wells nearest the state border, according to the Sparta Commission. Every well near and around El Dorado in Union County saw dramatic increases in water levels, some as high as 50 ft., with others averaging 20 to 30 ft. improvements, according to a USA Today (Tyson Corner, Va.) analysis.

If southern Arkansas had not taken measures, and Graphic Packaging, the area's largest fresh water user, was still tapping 10 mgd instead of 5 mgd, the aquifer water levels would still be in an alarming decline, according to the report.