Arkansas Blog: Dam them!

The environmental community got rolled today.

After months of haggling, and promised opposition to a weakening of the rule on damming "extraordinary resource waters," the laughingly named Department of Environmental Quality abruptly changed course yesterday afternoon. Department Director Marcus Devine threw in with the folks who want to dam Lee Creek to build a water supply (and sell lakeside lots around the resulting reservoir, most likely) for Van Buren. A more than ample water supply next door in Fort Smith isn't good enough for them.

Under existing rules, the state's 55 or so stretches of extraordinary resource waterways may not be dammed or mined for gravel. They may be used for water supplies, such as by building a weir to divert water to a reservoir. This is already done several places.

The state's rulemaking process has been under review. Environmentalists backed a new rule that would allow dams only if no alternative existed to provide a water supply. That was the department position until last night. It agreed this stance was required by federal law. No more. Now, primarily because of opposition from powerful Commissioner Randy Young, who heads what once was laughingly known as the state Soil and Water Conservation Commission, the department has caved. It will accept a rule -- approved without discussion and unanimously this morning -- that allows dams if there's no "feasible" alternative (a vague standard) and that says the stream may be tapped for uses other than water supply.

The rule goes out now for public hearings but the same commission presumably will adopt it after the hearings. Stream protectors believe it will put the extraordinary waters in the state in jeopardy. Meanwhile, the state still has no comprehensive water plan worth the name. Protection of water appears to be in de facto control of the head of an agency that has presided over the wrecking of aquifers in eastern and southern Arkansas and that pursues ever more expensive and dubious projects to prop up the very farmers who squandered one of the state's great resources.

A troubling theme in the day's events is the growing belief among legislatively powerful rural forces that protecting streams has somehow restricted, for example, cattle operations that aren't on the streams. It hasn't. But cattlemen were among those who turned out in force to support the relaxed rule, sprung on opposition with virtually no notice. They were joined by the black helicopter crowd that opposes any government protection of natural resources as the enemy of unfettered private property rights.

Comments

This is the same department that worked with the Health Department to come up with a law that requires a permit for a septic tank but not an actual septic system to insure breakdown of raw human waste before it is discharged on the ground or near a watershed.

A nice situation that leaves rural communities unprotected.

If they aren't interested in protecting us from human waste, why worry about animal waste?

Posted by: Equity | September 22, 2006 03:10 PM

I have yet to understand why cities in the FT Smith area-Ark River valley have not tapped the great river as a water source.
Is treatment equipment prohibitively expensive?
Just seems it would be less expensive in the long run to pump from that never ending supply than to build yet another resevoir.

Forget a comprehensive state water policy. Too many self-interests and too little awareness. It's a use and patch system and I think that is about as good as it will get. Foresight runs about 6 months ahead.

Pulling this wate coup off on Friday means keeping it out of the news cycle for a few days except for watchful eyes like yours. Thank you for the diligence.
_

Posted by: Lwood | September 22, 2006 03:38 PM

in the long ago early days of the young and wistful clintons and their young agency heads i worked for metroplan in little rock. i was very young and working for jason rouby, the best boss i ever had. we did the water quality planning for the federal clean water act. something that reagon and james watt made a 4 letter word. there was cooperation between pollution control, state soil and water, forestry, and local agencies to clean up the rural water and the city water. the sewer and water supply agencies worked very hard. we used to joke that little rock water didn't want people to even drink the water of maumelle. i wish it would stay that way. we made great advances in both the city on the fourche creek system and the rural creek systems with the help of weyerhauser and the state forestry commission. we had numerical research with the help of ualr to prove it. i doube the rethuglicans can read numbers. 12 years of rethuglican control hurt things but when clinton came in things started coming back. the last 6 years have done more damage than the 12 years of reagon and daddy bush combined. the farmers have hackabee by the balls, they must have pictures, the gravel miners have the same set of pictures and other business have free rein to screw up the greatest resourse we have other than our children. it is just like the fools in north little rock trying to say that if they fill in a wet land they will make another one. i am sorry cause i like some of what they want over there. they want development but do it smart. man does not make wetlands. man does not make water but man can screw it up and sometimes cannot fix it for many many years.

Posted by: jerry donoho | September 22, 2006 03:54 PM

Sure would like to see Beebe take a stance on this and related issues. But, I suspect it's more in line with Rod Bryan's campaign than Beebe's industry-friendly tendencies. That's one reason my vote's going to Bryan.

Posted by: Neuroglider | September 22, 2006 04:52 PM

Arkansas Blog

Dam them!

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