LITTLE ROCK — A day after the release of a report on the potential for development to pollute the Lake Maumelle watershed, Pulaski County Judge Buddy Villines said he expects the Quorum Court to resume work later this month on regulations that would limit what can be built.
The Quorum Court almost a year ago voted to postpone consideration of zoning regulations in the watershed until the release of the report by the U.S. Geological Survey, even though the agency said at the time that the study was not meant to influence the debate.
The report, released Tuesday, found that increasing the amount of development would result in more pollutants in the lake, but that the overall level of the pollutants would be low. The study modeled the potential impact over a seven-year period.
“We don’t know what would happen” over a longer period, said Reed Green, one of the authors of the report. “It’s kind of a cumulative thing.”
The proposed land-use regulations came from an effort by Central Arkansas Water to protect the lake, one of the sources of drinking water for about 400,000 people in Pulaski, Saline and Grant counties.
Property owners complained that the restrictions would lower their property values. Advocates for water quality, meanwhile, said the regulations did not go far enough.
Villines said Wednesday that the county’s planning staff has been talking with property owners and is preparing a revised set of regulations that would preserve the residents’ ability to build driveways and make other improvements.
He said he’s hopeful the Quorum Court will adopt the changes at its meeting on Dec. 18. It could then give final approval to the ordinance in January.
“We’ve worked very hard for over a year now with the small property owners, and I think we’ve addressed all their concerns,” Villines said.
Beau Bishop, coordinator of local affairs and rural development for the Arkansas Farm Bureau, said “big strides” have been made, but that it’s too early to say whether the property owners will support the regulations.
“There’s some pretty con- tentious things in there that we’re still working on,” Bishop said.
Kathy Wells, president of the Coalition of Greater Little Rock Neighborhoods, said she is less optimistic that the revised regulations will satisfy her group’s concerns. It sought an amendment that would temporarily cap development in the watershed at 7,000 houses.
Wells said the group wants residential developments to be limited to about one house for every 5 acres, instead of one for every half-acre.
“We like the rural, rather than the city, density,” Wells said.
In the 132-page report, researchers with the Geological Survey calculated the estimated effect under different development scenarios, including expanding existing development in the watershed in Pulaski County from less than 1 percent to 20 percent of the total watershed.
The researchers calculated what the effect on water quality would have been if such development had been in place from 2004 to 2010.
The study found that more nutrients, suspended sediment, organic carbon, and fecal coliform bacteria would enter the lake, but that the overall level of the pollutants would remain low.
Robert Hart, technical services officer with Central Arkansas Water, said the results were similar to a version released in early 2011 that was revised to correct errors.
Kent Walker, an attorney for several watershed property owners, said the report shows the impact of development on the lake has been minimal.
“The reason it’s so clean is because [property owners have] kept it clean,” Walker said.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 12/06/2012