LITTLE ROCK — The White River is really two rivers.
South of Batesville, the White is a broad, brown, delta river good for boating and commerce. Then north of Batesville and going up to Calico Rock and beyond, the White is a clear, cold-water, trout-fishing Mecca and nationally known as a place to go.
The reason is the intersection of the Black River, just south of Batesville.
"Well, you get those shoals in Batesville, " Charlie Eldridge of Augusta said as he floated down the White River on his house boat. "Where the Black [River] hits the White, it makes for a different river. The bottoms are different. The sediment comes in from the Black and that makes for a bottom that needs to be dredged, while north of the shoals you have limestone, and that makes for a harder bottom."
Eldridge, who has lived in Augusta his entire life, owns Eldridge Supply Company, a business that was started by his family in 1933.
He has also spent as much of his life as he could on the water and on one occasion floated down to the Gulf of Mexico on a pontoon boat.
Boating enthusiast doesn't do Eldridge justice. He estimated that he owns an interest in 15 boats scattered around Arkansas.
"We just have a boating community, I'd guess you'd say," Eldridge said of Augusta. "The bluff bank and the proximity [of the river] to the community has been a big part of that."
Eldridge has built two docks on the White River near Augusta.
"Me and my friend David Stanley, who has since passed away," Eldridge said, "we built that dock we came down in 1989, and then that other dock, we put that one in in 2000 or so."
Eldridge likes to be out on the water, and he said that he spends as much time as his business allows, but the current plan for the river leaves him scratching his head.
"It seems to me that that the area and the community surrounding it would be better off with an undisturbed river," he said.
The Army Corps of Engineers, the group that maintains the river, is looking at a project called the Lower White River Navigation Channel Improvement.
The plan would call for a 9-foot channel that would be dredged, and the lower White River, which the Arkansas Wildlife Foundation called "possibly the finest and last example of the massive floodplain that once dominated the Mississippi River region" would become more like Arkansas River after the McClellan-Kerr project was completed.
"It seems crazy to me that the rock jetty proposal and the scouring of the bottom - the hazards that would be placed," Eldridge said. "It's just that in no way would that be beneficialto any interest that I know of. The farmers wouldn't get any savings." The proposal is being contested, and proponents say that making the White River similar to other commercial rivers would be beneficial.
But Eldridge looks at the example of the Arkansas River and he doesn't see it.
"Come on, this little ol' river," he said. "You aren't going to see any economic benefit here. If you look at the port authority in Little Rock, it is not utilized and they are saying it could be like there. To me, the area is better served by just leaving it alone." Of course it isn't all boating on the lower White River. Generations have also floated it as well.
"We used to do it when we were kids," said Terry Gregory, who lives in Augusta. "We'd take tubes out and float down, then come back up." The reason was a peculiar little twist in the river called "the narrows" by locals.
"That's it right there," Eldridge said as he pointed to a ribbon on the bank of the river. "That's the spot. You can stop right there, get out, and people can walk through the woods about a hundred yards and tube back up. You'd have to get on Google Earth to see it, but it is downstream both ways." - jpeppas@ arkansasonline.com
Three Rivers, Pages 60 on 10/25/2007