A rally to help build support to preserve the historic U.S. 79 bridge over the White River in Clarendon will be held Saturday, organizers say.
The Friends of the Historic White River Bridge said the rally will be held from noon to 1 p.m. at the base of the bridge’s eastern approach in the Monroe County seat.
“There is tremendous enthusiasm among our citizens to save this bridge,” Clarendon Mayor Jim Stinson III said.
The rally, which will feature brief speeches from Stinson and others, as well as refreshments, comes amid a lawsuit seeking to block demolition of the bridge and an online petition to save the bridge.
The city and the Friends of the Historic White River Bridge sued the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department in June. A federal judge denied a temporary restraining order, but the department withdrew a project to demolish and remove the 85-year-old bridge from a June bid letting, which allowed the bridge supporters to proceed with a full hearing on the merits of the lawsuit to halt the project without requiring them to pay a bond.
The bridge was replaced by a new one that opened Aug. 15. The new bridge and its approaches cost about $100 million. The old bridge is barricaded to keep traffic off the bridge, according to a department spokesman.
An online petition to save the bridge was launched on Sept. 14, and has garnered more than 800 signatures from the around the United States and 22 other nations.
“The world is watching,” said Connie DePriest, the nonprofit’s board president. “Surely there’s a way for all the parties to come together to resolve this in a way that’s beneficial to all involved.”
Supporters say the old bridge and its approaches can be the centerpiece of a plan to boost ecotourism in the impoverished Delta region by converting it into what they say will be the longest pedestrian and bicycle bridge in the world.
The effort to save the bridge has drawn support from the Department of Arkansas Heritage and Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who met with top U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials on a visit to Washington.
For the plan to work, the western approaches of the bridge must be kept. They extend over part of the environmentally sensitive Cache River National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge was established in 1986 to protect significant wetland habitats that provide feeding and resting areas for migrating waterfowl.
The wildlife refuge covers about 56,000 acres in Jackson, Woodruff, Monroe and Prairie counties, and is one of the few remaining areas in the Lower Mississippi River Valley unaltered by significant channelization and drainage, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages the refuge.
To build the new bridge, the Highway Department had to reach an agreement with the Fish and Wildlife Service to mitigate the damage the new bridge would inflict on the refuge. Under the agreement, the federal agency required the removal of the western approaches, although the actual river span over the White River could stay.
An online petition to save the bridge was launched on Sept. 14, and has garnered more than 800 signatures from the around the United States and 22 other nations.