The large new pump is in place but its motor isn’t, at the city’s Little Missouri River intake site. Progress is evident, however, in all of Nashville’s major projects, including the river water intake effort.

Public Works Director Larry Dunaway said Monday that the river project also needed arrival of some pipe.

The project, which has a total cost of about $336,000 would increase the city’s pumping capacity from the river to more than 6 million gallons per day. The new pump will be supplemented by an older one which is still on line. The city’s record single day water useage occurred in the summer of 2011 when 4.9 million gallons was treated and distributed. In addition to city residents, businesses and industries, treated Nashville water is sold to about 2,200 Rural Water Association customers.

The increased capacity from the river means that the city is able to store and hold water in Lake Louis Graves in case it is needed.

One project which began two mayoral administrations ago may be completed in 2013. Dunaway said he had been told the city had completed the last step before work can begin on sidewalks, lighting and handcapped rails on the east and west sides of the 200 block of South Main Street, the only remaining work to be done on the stretch linking Hempstead Street on the south to city hall on North Main.

Dunaway said that the project is funded by a grant from the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department, and has been done in segments over a number of years. Little work will be done on the east side of Main Street.

The city’s largest pending project is a new wastewater treatment plant, a new trunk line and renovation of several sewer lines which permit inflow of storm waters to get to the wastewater treatment plant. “We’re having to treat water we haven’t sold,” Dunaway explained.

The new plant involves totally new technology and is required by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality and the federal Enviromental Protection Agency. The plant has a projected cost of $4.1million and the associated projects bring the total cost to about $6.8 million.

Dunaway said that bids came in far too high, and the city had submit some changes in order to let bids again. If bids are taken in late January or early February, he said, work could begin in late spring.