Five state agencies will participate in the creation of a watershed management plan for the Buffalo National River with a goal of helping the state leverage funding for conservation projects in the watershed, Gov. Asa Hutchinson announced Friday.
The Arkansas Natural Resources Commission and the state departments of Environmental Quality, Health, Parks and Tourism, and Agriculture will make up the Beautiful Buffalo River Action Committee.
That committee, with the help of a $107,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency, will hire an engineer to assist in analyzing data and developing a plan to protect the Buffalo River, Environmental Quality Department Director Becky Keogh said. The process will include public meetings and input from stakeholders.
The watershed protection plan will not regulate development. It will be a guide for development and a catalyst for obtaining additional grants for landowners in the watershed who want to implement protective measures, Keogh said.
The committee also will identify projects that can be done immediately, according to an accompanying memorandum issued by Hutchinson.
The committee will meet quarterly and provide recommendations on actions and annual reports to the governor. The first report will be due Jan. 31, 2018.
A watershed is the area from which materials can drain into a body of water.
Watershed management plans exist for other major bodies of water in Arkansas -- the Illinois River, Beaver Lake and Lake Maumelle, for example -- and have been developed by a variety of groups. In Pulaski County, aspects of the Lake Maumelle watershed management plan became regulatory after the Quorum Court adopted them into a zoning code for the portion of the watershed that was in the county.
"The Buffalo River is an extraordinary national river that we are blessed to have here in Arkansas," Hutchinson said Friday morning at a news conference.
The governor said the formation of a plan would be a proactive measure to protect the Buffalo and prevent complaints, not just respond to them. He said he's received as many letters from constituents regarding the Buffalo River as he has for any other issue.
"That says something," Hutchinson said.
Gordon Watkins, a Jasper resident and president of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, said the creation of the committee was "a good step."
Watkins said he hopes the group will consider and use public input, but he was given "a little bit of pause" to find out the watershed protection plan would not be a regulatory document.
Watkins said he'd like to see limits on nutrient levels in the river, such as those that exist in the Illinois River watershed, where poultry farmers are required by law to have nutrient management plans.
Watkins said he'd also like to see the karst terrain near the Buffalo factored in when the Environmental Quality Department considers permit applications in the region. The department and opponents of a large industrial hog farm in the watershed have been at odds over whether the land where C&H Hog Farms was permitted is karst -- a porous landscape with caves, springs and aquifers.
The Buffalo River Watershed Alliance was formed in 2013 to oppose the operation of C&H, and other groups and private citizens across Arkansas have voiced concern about the potential of a hog farm to pollute the Buffalo via open manure ponds.
They've raised concerns in 2016 about pollution levels in some tributaries of the river and about a study conducted in 2015 that showed higher-than-expected moisture levels below one of the manure ponds.
Keogh said the Buffalo River meets the standards for an Extraordinary Resource Water, which the EPA defines as a body "characterized by scenic beauty, aesthetics, scientific values, broad scope recreation potential and intangible social values." A few dozen bodies of water in Arkansas are considered Extraordinary Resource Waters.
Hutchinson noted Friday that the state has hired researchers from the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture to continuously monitor the hog farm and its surrounding area. The state also recently funded a drilling project to detect whether one of the manure ponds had been leaking. The project wrapped up Monday, and a report is expected by the end of the year, Keogh said Friday.
In 1972, 135 miles of the 150-mile Buffalo River became the country's first national river at the urging of U.S. Rep. John Paul Hammerschmidt and U.S. Sens. J. William Fulbright and John McClellan, all of Arkansas. Some area residents objected to selling land to the federal government and were wary of the presence of a national park.
Since early 2013, many people across Arkansas, including some watershed residents, have objected to the permitting of C&H Hog Farms on one of the river's tributaries.
C&H, near Mount Judea in Newton County, sits on Big Creek about 6 miles from where it converges with the Buffalo River. It is the only federally classified large hog farm in the river's watershed and is permitted to house up to 6,000 piglets and 2,503 sows.
The Buffalo River had 1.46 million visitors last year, the third-highest total since it became a national river and the highest since a record count of 1.55 million in 2009.
Metro on 10/01/2016