On a recent summer afternoon, workers and trucks buzzed in and out of a pump station under construction in DeValls Bluff. Several miles away, the site of what will eventually be a 100-acre regulating reservoir is currently filled with dirt.
Already 17 years in the making, the project tends to spark cycles of controversy among those who say it’s a badly needed solution to the region’s water woes and those who say it’s too large of a financial and environmental burden. Such woes include rapidly dwindling ground water.