Saving the Sparta: How Union County Protected its Aquifer

Photos by Alex Hardgrave. Feature image above: Robert Reynolds looks at the Ouachita River while giving a tour of the water intake facility in Union County.

Union County has a deep history rooted in oil and other large industries, which remain a main economic driver for the region more than 100 years later. However, in the mid-1990s, it became clear that one resource was not keeping up with the region’s growth — groundwater.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, approximately half of the 335 million people living in the U.S. rely on groundwater for drinking, and it also plays a large role in the country’s agriculture. Crop irrigation continues to represent the largest use of groundwater, totaling about 57 billion gallons of water daily, the Ground Water Protection Council states.

A lot of the water comes from aquifers deep in the ground, and one of the most important aquifers in the Natural State is called the Sparta Aquifer. Beyond Arkansas, the aquifer extends into parts of Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama.

In 1996, a report from the U.S. Geological Survey identified Union County, along with four other southern Arkansas counties, as meeting the criteria to be called a “critical groundwater area.”

The Sparta groundwater levels for the area were declining as much as 7 feet per year in some areas. The USGS Arkansas Water Science Center determined in 1998 that the county needed to reduce Sparta groundwater consumption by 72 percent, from 21 million gallons per day to around 7 mgd. If the community did not do something and continued to draw water from the aquifer at the current rate, it would cause irreversible damage in five years, the research showed.

It was both a health and economic issue. Local leaders knew something needed to be done quickly to limit the aquifer’s usage. The Sparta Aquifer not only supplied the drinking water to the county’s roughly 39,000 citizens, but it was also critical for the large industries operating nearby — including the then named Lion Oil Refinery and El Dorado Chemical.

Sherrel Johnson, who was president and CEO of the El Dorado Chamber of Commerce at the time, took on the job.

“The chamber was the vehicle,” Johnson said, “but it wasn’t just me who got involved.”

The chamber, along with stakeholders such as the Arkansas Farm Bureau, the Poultry Federation, the Arkansas Rural Water Association, elected officials and private citizens came together to write legislation that allowed the state’s first county water conservation board to be created.

“It kind of felt like being on the Dream Team,” said Robert Reynolds, the Union County Water Conservation Board’s first president, comparing the group to the 1992 U.S. Men’s Olympic basketball team that went by the nickname.

What became the Ouachita River Alternative Water Supply Project was backed by a large group of stakeholders from the start, including people from every district in the county and members of each of the large industries.

“[The companies] had known for years,” Johnson said. “They all came on board.”

The board created a list of ideas to decrease Sparta Aquifer water usage and ultimately identified that the quickest way was by finding a different source of water for the biggest consumers, which were the factories and plants in the county. The nearby Ouachita River was deemed a reliable source to replace some of Sparta’s usage. “It is a dependable, year-round flow,” Reynolds said.

El Dorado Chamber of Commerce CEO Steven Jones takes a tour of the water intake facility in Union County.

Johnson believed the project was ultimately successful because the Union County Water Board and its partners were transparent about the project and its funding, holding forums around town to answer citizens’ questions.

“They really trusted us,” she said.

The board’s work led to a 1 cent temporary sales tax being passed to fund the project with more than 60 percent voter support, Johnson said.

In addition to that tax, the board also implemented a conservation fee of 24 cents per 1,000 gallons. Both taxes amounted to a good start toward funding the project.

Though a lot of the future success of the project can be chalked up to the hard work of Reynolds, Johnson and the UCWCB, there was also a bit of “right place, right time” involved.

In 1999, right as the board was beginning its work, the power companies Panda Energy International and TECO Energy came to Union County, looking to build a large power plant. Johnson said if the county had not already been working to find a solution for water use, they would not have been able to take the economic opportunity that the power plant would bring. The UCWCB promised reliable water to the plant, and, in tandem, the plant’s developers helped fund the project, allowing it to be completed quicker than it may have otherwise.

Machinery at the water intake area.

With the help of the soon-to-be Union Power Station, the tax and the conservation fee, as well as some federal and state funding, the board was able to break ground on the $65 million dollar Ouachita River Alternative Supply Project. The plan was to build an intake from the Ouachita River, as well as a clarification plant and around 20 miles of pipes to distribute the water. All of the $56 million for the project came locally.

In 2002, the first phase of the alternative water supply project brought water to its first customer, Union Power Station, which is now owned by Entergy. By December 2004, the Lion Oil refinery, now owned by Delek Oil, had fully converted from using the Sparta Aquifer, and El Dorado Chemical, now the LSB Industries’ El Dorado facility, quickly followed suit in February 2005. A third site, Chemtura Central Plant, now owned by Lanxess, partially converted to using the water in October 2005.

Even the Mystic Creek Golf Club, Mystic Creek residential area and El Dorado High School were tapped into the water source for irrigation.

The next few years would be the real moment of truth though. Would the monitoring wells show the Sparta’s water levels rising, or had it sustained too much damage from overuse?

More recently, in April 2025, one well measured 4.8 feet above the top of the aquifer, the depth from the land’s surface to water being 223.2 feet. That means the water level has risen a total of 126.3 feet since October 2004, where the depth from the surface to the water was 349.5 feet, or 121. 5 feet below the top of the aquifer.

Despite that, Johnson remains cautiously optimistic all these years later.

“I would say it’s recovering, but it hasn’t recovered,” she said.

On top of the water level recovery, the board also had unusual financial success with the project. They were able to pay back the debt on the project by 2005, which got the 1 cent tax removed three years earlier than the deadline for the tax to end.

Reynolds has had a long career and worked on many multifaceted projects. He said that usually projects have three goals — to be done well, to be done fast and to be done cheaply — but that most projects only meet two of those goals. For example, something can be done fast and cheap but not well or well and cheap but not fast. Reynolds said the Sparta project managed to do all three.

The project continues to work well, requiring only some minor upgrades and repairs over the more than 20 years since it started operating, and the project even planned for the future along the way. The clarification plant can clean a max of about 50 mgd, the current usage only equates to roughly 20 mgd to 25 mgd. That is by design to make sure there is capacity to easily provide more water as industries expand.

Once the water comes out of the nearby Ouachita River, it goes via pipeline to a water clarification facility where it is lightly treated.

The forward thinking has been especially important as companies have set their sights on Union County for the lithium-rich brine housed in the Smackover Formation. Reynolds, who is now a volunteer advisor for the UCWCB, said that it’s still early in the lithium industry process in Union County, so the board is not sure yet how much water usage to expect from it. He said the board’s “long-range” planning has prepared them to be ready to support the lithium industry and other industries that come to Union County.

Even with the UCWCB’s work, the Sparta Aquifer is not in the clear, as other parts of it in other states and counties are still being used quicker than it can replenish itself. About 39 percent of the water pumped from the Sparta Aquifer still cannot be replaced as quickly as it is removed, according to the Natural Resource Commission.

“Water resources are still declining dramatically,” Johnson said.

Two similar water projects in the state working to protect the Alluvial Aquifer and Sparta Aquifer are the Grand Prairie Area Demonstration Project and the Bayou Meto Water Project.

Ed Swain, executive director of the Bayou Meto Water Management District, is optimistic that the first phase of that project will be completed in about three years. The project was planned decades earlier but received stimulus money after the 2008 recession, which jumpstarted its construction. Once that money was used, there was another “slump,” in its progress, Swain said, until 2024, when Sen. John Boozman tapped critical federal funding to help complete the project.

While the Bayou Meto project is diverting irrigation from the Alluvial Aquifer by using Arkansas River water, it will also help protect the Sparta Aquifer. As the Alluvial Aquifer’s levels decrease, farmers have had to drill deeper irrigation wells, meaning they are accessing the Sparta Aquifer, which sits deeper in the ground below the Alluvial. Sparta is where many central and eastern Arkansas counties get drinking water, as well. If the cities cannot use drinking water from Sparta, then they may have to rely on surface water, which needs a lot more treatment to become potable and ultimately costs more money, Swain said.

Water sits in pools as part of the treatment process at the treatment plant.

“It’s great, clean water,” he said. “We need to protect the Sparta Aquifer for the future.”

Swain said Bayou Meto has taken a few pages out of the Union County project’s playbook along the way, including relying on data that has been developed, such as groundwater measurements. He also said he has seen how important it is to measure the aquifer’s recovery with monitoring wells once the project has been completed.

“[The rising water levels in Union County] surprised everybody,” he said. “It makes us very optimistic.”

The Ouachita River Water Alternative Supply Project continues to stand out as a positive pillar in Arkansas’ economic and environmental history. Johnson was even inducted into the Arkansas Outdoor Hall of Fame earlier this year for her work with it. She said she was honored but that she could not have done it alone.

“There were lots of people who were key and involved,” she said.