River Blueway no more

The White River watershed is no longer a National Blueway.

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell withdrew the Blueway designation Wednesday after a groundswell of opposition from people in Arkansas and Missouri concerned primarily about property rights within the watershed.

In a statement, Jewell cited two letters received within the past week in which “state and local stakeholders” requested that the Blueway designation be rescinded.

One of those letters,sent Friday, was signed by directors of the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism and the following state commissions: Game and Fish, Waterways, Natural Resources, Forestry and Natural Heritage. All of the agencies originally supported the White River’s nomination as a Blueway last August.

“While this is a great honor for the state of Arkansas, the conflicts and controversy surrounding the designation are such that we must respectfully request that you remove the National Blueway designation from the White River,” the letter stated.

The other letter was from the Nature Conservancy and Ozarks Water Watch, said Ginny Porter, a spokesman for The Nature Conservancy in Arkansas. Both of those organizations also initially supported the Blueway designation.

The National Blueway Committee reviewed the letter from the state commissions Tuesday and recommended withdrawing the designation, according to the statement from Jewell.

The Blueway designation was announced at a Jan. 9 news conference in Little Rock. The watershed encompasses about one-third of the land in Arkansas and one-fifth of Missouri.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar established the National Blueways System last year, and the Connecticut River watershed received the first designation. The White River watershed was named the nation’s second National Blueway.

Secretarial Order 3321, which created the Blueway program, states that the designation comes with no regulatory authority and has no effect on property rights in the watershed. The White River flows more than 700 miles from its headwaters in the Arkansas Ozarks, north into Missouri and then back through Arkansas to the Mississippi River.

The designation “is intended to recognize and support existing local and regional conservation, recreation and restoration efforts by coordinating ongoing federal, state and local activities,” according to a news release from the U.S. Department of the Interior. The Blueways program is part of President Barack Obama’s America’s Great Outdoors Initiative.

But since January, a backlash of conservative opposition has been growing, stirred vigorously by Secure Arkansas - a group that stands for “basically property rights and constitutional government,” said its founder, Jeannie Burlsworth.

Burlsworth said it took a few months to research the White River’s Blueway application, a memorandum of understanding between three federal agencies and other documents.

“It would be a future federal land grab,” she said Tuesday of the Blueway program. “There were way too many loose definitions. Loose! And then they didn’t have local involvement. They tried to work around everything. These federal and state agencies are realizing this public outcry is going to get very intense.”

After Wednesday’s decision, Burlsworth said: “I’m thrilled that they decided to rescind this Blueway designation. It shouldn’t have gone this far anyway.”

At a June 26 meeting of the Arkansas House and Senate Committees on City, County and Local Affairs, it was clear that opposition was strong.As a result, three state agencies backpedaled on their support of the Blueway designation.

The Natural Resources, Game and Fish and Waterways commissions, along with the Nature Conservancy and Ozarks Water Watch, announced that their support of the designation could impede work on conservation matters because landowners are wary of new federal regulations.

“We like the recognition and the prestigiousness, but it’s not worth the sacrificing our ability and capacity to work with private landowners,” Game and Fish Commission Deputy Director Mike Armstrong said at the meeting. “We didn’t foresee the backlash, I’ll be honest with you.”

On Wednesday, Gene Higginbotham, director of the Arkansas Waterways Commission, said he thought withdrawing from the Blueway was “the best action to take.”

“A lot of the agencies were concerned about the partnerships they have with conservation groups and local citizens,” he said. “They didn’t want to endanger that.”

The Republicans of Arkansas’ congressional delegation issued a news release praising the move.

“We all agree that we should work to protect our waterways, but a new federal Blueway program is not necessary to improve the cooperation of federal and state agencies on the management of the White River,” said U.S. Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark. “This designation occurred without a formal process -no public comment, lack of transparency from the federal government and without the broad support of Arkansans. We are happy to see that Secretary Jewell reviewed the program and heard the concerns of our citizens.”

Twenty-one Arkansas counties had passed resolutions opposing the Blueway designation.

Four of those counties - Baxter, Madison, Polk and White - rejected boilerplate resolution language from Secure Arkansas and wrote their own resolutions.

The wording of Secure Arkansas’ resolution was “extreme,” “abrasive” and “anti-government,” according to officials in counties that drafted their own resolutions. They said their resolutions oppose the Blueway designation without using inflammatory language.

Secure Arkansas’ resolution - which was passed by quorum courts in 17 counties - referred to “violations,” “failures,” “bureaucratic attempts” and “grandiose schemes” of the federal government.

“This resolution accomplished what we set out to do,” Burlsworth said Wednesday. “You can see the ramifications of it.”

Baxter County Judge Mickey Pendergrass said his county didn’t need that kind of language in its resolution. The county has a trout hatchery on the Norfork River that needs funding from the federal government.

“We don’t need to tick them off,” Pendergrass said. “The county government is not an anti-government PAC or some kind of opposition group. … We don’t need this abrasive and disrespectful language in anything we do.”

Baxter County’s kinder, gentler resolution passed 9-2 on Tuesday night.

Quorum courts have opposed the Blueway designation because of a lack of advanced notification and a concern over future property rights.

Independence County was to consider two versions of the resolution at its meeting Monday, but neither one was the version from Secure Arkansas.

“We’re trying to direct the concerns without having an outright condemnation of the federal government in general,” said Independence County Judge Robert Griffin. “The majority of the judges I talked to were not comfortable with [Secure Arkansas’] language and were not willing to submit it to their quorum courts.”

Rivers are named National Blueways after selection by a national interagency committee appointed by the secretary of the interior that includes representatives from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service and U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The White River was selected as a National Blueway on the basis of an application submitted by 26 groups, including the Nature Conservancy, Ducks Unlimited, the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission, the cities of Augusta and Clarendon, and the Lower Mississippi Valley Joint Venture.

Andy Fisk, executive director of the Connecticut River Watershed Council, said he has heard no complaints about the Blueway designation there.

“There’s really been no opposition and lots of very constructive questions,” he said. “From our vantage point, this is really a terrific opportunity to do things from the local level. … It’s the epitome of the way to do bottom-up conservation.”