The Wright-Pastoria Water Association, which served more than 500 customers across the rural Arkansas Delta communities of Wright, Pastoria, Tucker, and Sherrill, has completed a multi-year regionalization effort that now gives every former customer access to clean, reliable drinking water through Grand Prairie Regional Water Distribution District (GPRWDD).

Originally incorporated in 1979 in Jefferson County, the small system faced the familiar pressures of rural utilities: aging infrastructure, a limited revenue base, and declining population, made worse by catastrophic flooding in 2016 that displaced families from their homes and shuttered local farms.

Board President Dianne Aiken doesn’t mince words about what she inherited as board president. The operator was gone. The office manager was gone. And the treatment plant, the heart of the whole system, couldn’t produce what the community needed.

“Our water was yellow,” Aiken said. “The equipment was failing. Meters hadn’t been replaced in over 30 years. Even after we put in new meters, people were still stealing water, and our revenue was too low. At one point, I was volunteering in the office just trying to keep the lights on and make payroll.”

Aiken stayed through the hardest years, including the death of a close friend and fellow board member, a woman in her 80s who was still heading out into the field when she was diagnosed with throat cancer. Her passing made clear just how much support the system truly needed.

Help arrived through a coordinated effort led by the Arkansas Natural Resources Division (ANRC), which in 2022 launched a statewide regionalization initiative to stabilize struggling systems. A feasibility study by Hawkins-Weir Engineering identified Wright-Pastoria as a candidate for consolidation. The proposed solution was to merge with the nearby GPRWDD, a larger and more financially sound utility.

ANRC referred Wright-Pastoria to Communities Unlimited (CU) in March 2023. CU’s Community Infrastructure Team stepped in alongside the board to work through a significant backlog of financial, regulatory, and operational challenges.

“CU came in and took on a huge mess,” Aiken said. “They went through everything — our books, our tax returns — and helped us get back on track.”

CU’s Lending Team worked with the board to provide a $951,000 Pre-Development Loan in 2023 to fund engineering work and consolidate the system’s existing debt. This was a key step in the consolidation process. CU’s Pre-Development Loans are made possible through an investment by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in CU’s loan fund for this purpose.

The bridge loan was later repaid using Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) funds administered by ANRC. Total project funding reached approximately $12 million, with roughly $5 million in State Revolving Fund (SRF) assistance through ANRC and nearly all remaining costs covered through principal forgiveness under the SRF program.

Construction connected Wright, Pastoria, Tucker, and Sherrill to the regional distribution system and was completed in September 2025. The Wright-Pastoria Water System formally dissolved, and operations transferred fully to GPRWDD

Wright Pastoria’s customers now have access to clean, reliable water. The regionalization has also brought peace of mind to Aiken personally, who, despite retiring in 2006 from a different occupation, came to help the utility during its most difficult years.

“I lost my home in the flood,” Aiken said. “We lost half our customer base. It was a hard time. But now, to see the system stable and the community taken care of, it’s amazing.”

Wright-Pastoria’s story shows what’s possible when communities drive the process. CU remains engaged in the Delta, and the regionalization model that stabilized Wright-Pastoria continues to inform how rural systems think about long-term infrastructure sustainability.