Severe weather Sunday that damaged some farms also caused dayslong power failures, with some agricultural businesses reporting losses because of the prolonged blackout.
The most extensive damage appeared to hit Lonoke County, particularly around Carlisle; the two big fish farms that need electricity to power aerators for their ponds struggled to keep their fish healthy. Farm Pond Solar Aerator
Keo Fish Farms, which operates roughly 1,000 acres of fish ponds, was still experiencing some power failures four days after the storm.
"What we're worried about right now is just trying to get power back on the aerators at the fish production ponds; as hot as it is, there's not a lot of oxygen," Keo Fish Farms Owner Mike Freeze said Thursday.
"We have electric aerators on all the ponds, but they don't run if we don't have electricity, so if we have an oxygen depletion, we could lose the crop, so that's our main concern right now."
I.F. Anderson Minnow Farm, which operates 3,200 acres of fish ponds in Lonoke and primarily raises bait fish like minnows and goldfish, lost power around 6:30 p.m. Sunday.
Power lines were blown over the ponds in the storm, owner Jamie Anderson said.
Electricity was restored by Friday, though with spotty results.
"It came on yesterday and went back down and now it's back up and I hope it stays up," Anderson said Friday morning.
"We had a lot of broken poles and lines down. We were lucky at our facilities we didn't have any infrastructure damage. Luckily, we had generators in place, but we're spending a couple thousand dollars a day on fuel for generators," Anderson said on Thursday afternoon.
The farm still didn't have power across many of its fish ponds on Thursday, Anderson said.
"Therefore we don't have aerators running for oxygen, we don't have wells running for water, so it's been an issue. We're losing fish daily because of it," Anderson said Thursday.
"We're losing thousands of pounds of fish a day just because we don't have aerators right now and it just happens to be record-breaking heat, so that's our biggest struggle right now.
"And it's a holiday week, everybody across the country's needing fish, so this is a really busy week for us, so it's just compounding issues," Anderson said.
More than 62,000 Entergy Arkansas customers lost power at the peak of the storm on Sunday, which also damaged or destroyed more than 561 utility poles, according to a notice posted by Entergy Arkansas on Friday morning.
There were still roughly 1,000 Entergy customers without power Friday, though the company anticipated most customers without power who can "safely receive it" were to have power restored by 10 p.m. Friday, according to the notice.
"Entergy continues to position additional resources to restore remaining outages as quickly and safely as possible," the noticed stated.
Severe storms with strong winds swept across Arkansas on Sunday night; farmers and county extension agents reported crop and infrastructure damage, as well as power failures, particularly in agricultural communities within Lonoke, Pulaski and Arkansas counties.
John McMinn, agriculture economist and director of commodity activities and economics at the Arkansas Farm Bureau, said on Monday power failures could hold back farmers who use electric pumps to irrigate crops.
Because irrigation could be a concern for farmers, McMinn said on Thursday that he expects the upcoming fall harvest to be a true indicator of just how much was damaged.
McMinn said it could be a waiting game still with power restoration efforts for well pumps continuing through the high temperatures this week.
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