Hot Springs Couple Sues Contractor, Engineer Over Lake Ouachita Waterline Damage to Home

A Garland County couple is suing the engineering firm and the contractor behind Hot Springs’ Lake Ouachita water supply project, claiming construction of the raw waterline damaged their home’s foundation and property.

Amber and Randy Radley filed the negligence complaint June 12 in Garland County Circuit Court against Crist Engineers Inc. of Little Rock and Belt Construction Inc. of Texarkana. The three-page complaint says the Radleys live in Garland County and that the damage happened there, but it does not give the home’s location.

The complaint says the two companies built “a new water line to direct water from Lake Ouachita to the city of Hot Springs,” a job finished at the end of June 2023. Crist was the project manager “responsible for making certain that no harm was done,” and Belt handled the on-site construction, the complaint says.

The Radleys claim the companies had a duty to build the line “without causing damage to the surrounding private property” and breached it “because damage of this kind does not ordinarily occur in the absence of negligence.” They are asking for the cost of repairs and remediation, the loss in their property’s value, attorney’s fees and a jury trial. The complaint does not put a dollar figure on the damage beyond saying it exceeds the court’s jurisdictional minimum.

Belt Construction answered July 31, denying every substantive allegation. The company admitted it is based in Miller County, that the job was the Lake Ouachita Water Supply Project, that the project finished in June 2023 and that Belt did the on-site work. It denied causing any damage and raised more than a dozen defenses, including that the claims are barred by the statute of limitations and that any damage was caused by “persons and/or entities over whom Defendant has no control.” Belt also asked the court to dismiss the case for insufficient service and said the Radleys’ own fault may be 50 percent or greater. The company is represented by Stephen A. Hester of Spicer Rudstrom in Little Rock.

Crist Engineers has not been served. The Radleys’ attorney, C. Shane Ethridge of Hot Springs, told the court Sept. 29 that a summons issued Sept. 9 to Crist’s registered agent, company president Matthew D. Dunn, had not yet been delivered. Circuit Judge Ralph Ohm gave the couple another 120 days to serve Crist in an order filed Oct. 2.

The Hot Springs Board of Directors awarded Belt two contracts on the raw waterline: $4.77 million in August 2021 for the 2.5-mile upper segment from the intake above Blakely Mountain Dam to the Ouachita Treatment Plant, and $9.17 million in February 2022 for the overland route, The Sentinel-Record reported. Crist designed and oversaw the project. Water from Lake Ouachita began flowing in July 2023, and the city dedicated the completed $155 million project in April 2026, according to Arkansas Money & Politics.

Four months after Hot Springs awarded Belt the second contract, two of the company’s workers died in a sewer manhole on a city project in Edmond, Oklahoma. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited Belt in December 2022 for six serious and two willful violations and proposed $287,150 in penalties, saying the company did not test the air in the 20-foot manhole, obtain a permit or provide rescue equipment before workers went in. Whether Belt contested the citations could not be determined from OSHA’s online records.

Belt has faced one other Arkansas suit tied to a utility job. Benton County landowners Donald and Monica Rone sued Belt and the Northwest Arkansas Conservation Authority in October 2023, claiming sewer work across their cattle pasture stripped topsoil and left rock and debris behind. The Rones dropped the case with prejudice in December 2024, after a judge had refused to delay a trial set for that month. Settlement terms, if any, were not filed.

Belt Construction traces its start to 1970 and is run by the third generation of the Bass family, according to its website. Arkansas Secretary of State records list Kyle M. Bass as president.

No hearing has been set in the Radley case.