Sebastian County Water Report

Sebastian County's water systems carry a failing grade, scoring 26.5 out of 100. Over the past five years, EPA SDWIS records 95 health-based violations — a pattern that public water utilities are required to disclose and correct.

Under the Clean Water Act §303(d), EPA ATTAINS tracks whether waterways meet quality standards for drinking, recreation, and aquatic life (reporting cycle: 2022). A small share — 6.3% — of assessed waterways are impaired (13 of 208 water bodies) across Sebastian County's watersheds. The leading impairment causes are ph and turbidity - base flows. Impairment does not mean tap water is unsafe — it measures ambient waterway conditions upstream of treatment, not finished drinking water.

USGS NWIS gauge data (as of 2010-09-30T23:00:00.000-05:00) puts AR River at 16.2k cfs — well below its long-term average at 37% of mean — low-flow conditions worth noting for water-dependent ecosystems. Streamflow is a leading indicator of drought stress, sediment load, and dilution capacity: low flows concentrate pollutants and warm water temperatures, stressing aquatic life and, in surface-water-dependent systems, the source water quality for treatment plants.

EPA's Water Quality Portal (WQP) aggregates monitoring data from federal, state, and tribal agencies. Sebastian County has moderate coverage with 11 active monitoring sites with 12,229 recent measurements on record. Predominant monitoring categories include inorganics, minor, metals and physical. More monitoring sites generally indicate greater scientific attention to local water conditions — and provide the baseline data that regulators use to set future impairment listings.