Dear Mahatma: Can a sharp entrepreneur get a permit to operate a ferry in lieu of the Broadway Bridge? -- Nautical Man
Dear Nautical: We asked the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department if it still had any ferries in operation. Also your question.
May we reminisce a bit about the ferry at Guion? In fact, we went to Mountain View recently, and instead of following Arkansas 14 south all the way to near Batesville, we hung a left at Arkansas 58, where a ferry once operated over the White River between Izard and Stone counties. Guion is on the Izard side. Arkansas 58 connects to Arkansas 69. The whole drive, Arkansas 14 to Arkansas 69, is about 20 miles.
All in the area is beautiful and hilly and green. The river was misted over that morning. Guion appeared much as it always has, population holding steady at 85. The bridge was adorned by a dead deer about halfway across. This was, after all, in the woods.
The bridge was built in the late 1980s. The equipment used at Guion is no longer in possession of the Highway Department, spokesman Danny Straessle said.
Rats. You, Nautical Man, could have bought the equipment and ferried cars across the Arkansas River when the Broadway Bridge goes out of service as expected in April so it can be demolished and replaced.
Not so fast, Straessle said. The current river crossing at the bridge would be a construction zone. Can't operate a ferry in a construction zone. And because surely some government agency has regulations.
Regulations? Who has more regulations than the United States Army?
We phoned Laurie Driver of the local office of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the agency Congress authorized to operate and maintain the nation's waterways.
Sure enough, there is a process. A really long process.
A business person who wanted to start a ferry would work with the Regulatory Division of the Corps to find out if it were necessary to have a 404 permit of the Clean Water Act and/or a Section 10 permit of the Rivers and Harbors Act.
An entrepreneur might need a 408 permit, in case the ferry would disrupt a completed Corps project, in this matter the Kerr-McClellan navigation system on the Arkansas River.
Let's not forget the provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act. After which please call the Memphis office of the U.S. Coast Guard to find out what regulatory requirements were, um, required. Some state agencies also might have a dog in the hunt.
Never mind.
People who want to experience a ferry ride can drive to Peel, where the Highway Department operates its last ferry on Arkansas 125. The ferry crosses Bull Shoals Lake and runs every day from sunrise to sunset. It carries about 85 cars daily.
Eighty-five? The daily traffic count on the Broadway Bridge is 24,000 vehicles. That would have to be a mighty big ferry to do any good.
Mahatma@arkansasonline.com
Metro on 09/06/2014