South Little Rock creek hailed as place for canoeists

State installs larger boat launch, signs

Longtime cleanup volunteer Cowper Chadbourn and John Isom of Little Rock snag trash Monday from Fourche Creek near the Mabelvale Pike overpass. The creek, which runs through south Little Rock, has been designated as the state’s fi rst Urban Water Trail.
Longtime cleanup volunteer Cowper Chadbourn and John Isom of Little Rock snag trash Monday from Fourche Creek near the Mabelvale Pike overpass. The creek, which runs through south Little Rock, has been designated as the state’s fi rst Urban Water Trail.

Several canoe trips along the serene stream ended at a fallen tree Monday, with the creek barricaded mostly by the tree and littered with empty plastic bottles, food wrappers and beer cans.

Fourche Creek had just been designated the state's first Urban Water Trail during a ceremony commemorating Little Rock's Travel and Tourism Day 2017. Dozens of people showed up and took 30-minute treks in canoes to explore the creek they'd just celebrated.

Dan Scheiman, bird conservation director at Audubon Arkansas, sighed at the sight of the downed tree. The creek is maintained by volunteers like Scheiman -- although, from his perspective, there aren't quite enough volunteers.

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Photos by John Sykes Jr.

He steered his canoe toward a creek bank with a Busch Light beer can on it and took a photo of the tree. He'll call one of Audubon's employees to find a way to remove it.

In spite of the litter, which likely was washed in from various corridors of the city, canoers gave Fourche Creek a good review Monday.

"We want to do it again," one woman said as she bounced out of her canoe.

Several others lamented that the free guided trip didn't last long enough.

Fourche Creek, a secluded 20-mile waterway that runs through south Little Rock, is unknown to many canoers in Arkansas. But Audubon Arkansas, and state and local groups it's partnered with, want to turn it into a destination in the widely visited county. Pulaski County takes in about $1 of every $4 spent by tourists in Arkansas.

The creek is wide and winds along canopies of Cypress trees. Even though the creek is only minutes from the interstate, canoers hear mostly silence and the intermittent chirping of the 100 species of birds in the watershed.

The surroundings are largely brown and green -- the ground, the trees and the heavily sedimented water -- with scattered patches of blue skies that reflect off the water.

"We loved it," said Jennifer Finley, who took her 5-year-old daughter, Evie, on her first-ever canoe trip Monday.

Finley, 30, has lived in Little Rock since high school and considers herself an active canoer of the Buffalo and Ouachita rivers. She saw Monday's ceremony promoted on Facebook, looked up the location and was surprised to see it was only a few miles from her Hillcrest home.

"I was like, 'What? Is this right?'" she said.

To mark the second day of National Travel and Tourism Week, the Little Rock Convention and Visitors Bureau hosted a formal ribbon-cutting Monday for a new boat launch into Fourche Creek and Little Rock's Benny Craig Park.

The large concrete slab replaces a much smaller one in which many boats couldn't fit, Scheiman said. The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission spent about $53,000 installing the new launch and placed signs at the park directing people to it.

Chris Racey, chief of fisheries for the commission, also announced during Monday's ceremony Fourche Creek's designation as the first Urban Water Trail in Arkansas.

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The state has a dozen other designated water trails, but all of those are in rural areas. Those trails are featured on the commission's website, along with driving directions and information about the history and wildlife of the creeks.

The designation doesn't come with any additional funding, Racey said, but the webpage, signs and boat launch should help promote Fourche Creek.

"The idea is to get folks out and using water trails," he said.

Scheiman believes that could help clean up Fourche Creek. More people using the creek might convince more people to volunteer to protect it, he said, which could lead to more pristine conditions.

The creek is subjected to pollution from the populous area around it. About 73 percent of the city drains into it, meaning litter downtown can eventually wash into the creek through storm drains.

People also have dumped garbage -- tires, old soda fountains, mattresses, appliances -- directly into the creek. The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality has fielded complaints from people concerned that nearby industries are polluting ponds or waterways that drain into the creek. The department has verified some of the complaints, but not all of them.

Finding the culprits is hard, Scheiman said.

"No one leaves a mailing address on the side of the refrigerator they dumped," he said.

Officials also have created channels in Fourche Creek to keep it from overflowing and flooding Little Rock properties during heavy rains, Scheiman said. That causes stream banks to erode and contributes to sediment in the creek's waters.

Scheiman said he wouldn't swim in the creek or eat any fish he might catch in it -- the creek is on the Department of Environmental Quality's draft list of impaired and polluted streams -- but he has canoed it numerous times, and his organization has devoted resources to cleaning it up and promoting it to canoers since 2001.

Audubon Arkansas has formed Friends of Fourche Creek with other conservation organizations and government agencies. They host cleanups several times each year in which they extract tons of trash and dozens of tires from the creek's banks and waters.

Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola recalled participating in a cleanup last fall. He implored people at Monday's ceremony to help Fourche Creek.

"It's amazing what winds up in this wonderful watershed," he said.

The city has made several moves over the years to aid Fourche Creek.

It's working on improving its wastewater infrastructure to prevent overflows into the creek. Those overflows prompted the Sierra Club to sue Little Rock Wastewater in 2001.

The city, Friends of Fourche Creek, government agencies and area businesses and nonprofits also have sponsored the painting of dozens of storm drains throughout the city. The paintings illustrate the storm drains' connections to local waters and remind people to keep them clean.

Recreation, education and beautification measures in the watershed -- which comprises more than 100,000 acres -- are also among the city's 2020 sustainability goals. City officials themselves often help with the cleanups.

Before Monday's ceremony, many volunteers helped clean up Benny Craig Park, which had partly flooded, to ready it for the creek's big photo-op. Scheiman said he filled seven garbage bags with junk from the river Friday.

He smiled Monday and said the Urban Water Trail designation was the result of years of work to promote Fourche Creek as a place for floaters.

"This really is a turning point, recreationally, for Fourche Creek," he said.

Metro on 05/09/2017

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