The City of Highfill
The City of Highfill AR is a rural community located in the Northwest portion of Arkansas. Highfill hadn’t been able to keep pace with the explosive growth of the surrounding area despite its serving as home to XNA, the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport. Without a municipal sewer system, real estate development in the city couldn’t move forward. since it lacked a municipal sewer system. As a result, the population was dispersed, industry was negligible, and commercial development was limited. The key issue was how to spur growth with the limited financial resources available to this small, rural community.
Highfill turned to Aqua Tech Systems to work with local leaders and their civil engineering firm to come up with a feasible solution.
Comprehensive planning and an economic analysis of the proposed solution enabled the city to move forward in implementing an Aqua Tech Systems wastewater facility. The financial benefits of modular capacity expansion using this decentralized systems compared to future plans for a large regional centralized facility gave the Aqua Tech System the consideration it deserved. The design for Phase 1 of this project is calculated to handle 100,000 GPD with a final phase making the system capable of treating up to 300,000 GPD.
Also, of critical importance was the negative impact this could potentially have on the environment. Located in the Illinois River Watershed, this prospective solution had to be designed to ensure that no additional phosphorus would be introduced into nearby Osage Creek. Permit limits and conditions required by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality and the EPA made the implementation of a large scale subsurface drip irrigation system the perfect solution for the project.
A win-win has been created. The Osage Creek is protected and economic development can take place.