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Powering down |
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Monday, 11 February 2008 |
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Benton’s former wastewater plant will be demolished on Thursday  Jimmy Powers, who oversaw the city of Benton’s water, wastewater and electric departments for 30 years, stands beside a Jefferson Street structure that served as the city’s wastewater treatment plant for many years. Idle for some time now, the building later was used as a training facility by the city’s police and fire departments. It is scheduled for demolition Thursday. (Courier photo by Lynda Hollenbeck)
The Jefferson Street structure that served as a wastewater treatment facility for the city for many years is scheduled for demolition Thursday, Mayor Rick Holland said.
Benton City Council recently approved a recommendation to raze the structure, which has been idle for some time except for occasional situations when it served as a training facility for Benton fire and police departments.
The building is located adjacent to the Benton Senior Activity Center, which needs to increase its parking area and hopes eventually to add facilities, Holland said.
Perhaps no one in Benton has closer ties to the old wastewater structure than Jimmy Powers, who was superintendent of the city’s electric, water and wastewater departments for 30 years.
Powers visited the site last week to reminisce about the years when the city — a much smaller area then — operated with considerably fewer employees.
“I went to work as a wastewater trainee and ended up over the whole thing,” Powers said. “I retired in 1977.”
“When I started, the town’s population was only 2,300,” Powers said. “Now there are more than 27,000.”
Looking at the Jefferson Street facility, he explained that it went into service in 1952. “It ceased to be used when they put in the plant across from Interstate 30.
“At this facility, the water settled in concrete basins and flowed from here to the old electric plant on Hazel Street, where chlorine was added and it was made safe for drinking. It went from a million-gallon underground tank and was pumped out to water tanks.
“When this (Jefferson Street facility) went into service, there was only one water tank for a lot of years,” Powers said.
“Now, we’ve got them all over town.”
Interrupting his explanation of the water process, Powers added that Benton is fortunate to have “excellent water service.”
After the Jefferson Street facility was no longer used by the water/wastewater departments, it eventually served as the site for training exercises by the police and fire departments. In fact, the fire department used it last summer for a liquid petroleum burn training event, Assistant Chief Mark Mills said.
The department has been given the old electric plant on Hazel Street to use for training exercises, but it will require some renovations, Mills said today.
“It’s in disrepair,” Mills said. “It will take a lot of work, but as money becomes available, we’ll make it what we need.
“We used the other facility on Jefferson Street as long as we could,” he added.
Sherry Parsons, director of the senior activity center, said the center, for now, will use the additional area for parking, but she has a dream to someday build a senior health center on the site of the old sewer plant.
“I’d love to have a facility similar to what the city of North Little Rock has,” she said. “That’s in our long-range plans — to build a 60-plus health spa where people could work out, have a water therapy pool and a walking track.
“The North Little Rock facility is awesome,” she said. “ The city of North Little Rock has done wonderful things for their seniors. It aids better health and helps keep medical costs down.”
Parsons said the center has an average attendance of 100.
“We have a lot going on here. We open at 7:30 every day and close at 3:30 p.m., but a lot of our folks are here only from 9 to 12. They’re ready to get home after lunch and take a nap.
“We’re proud of our people. They have won the senior olympics bean bag baseball and are in a tournament now in Conway.”
She added: “They enjoy everything we offer here, but eventually, I hope we can offer them a lot more.” |
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Razorbacks