OPINION - Guest writer

Hear us roar

Women step up in bridge battle

Editor's note: This is Part 3 of a multi-part series on the White River Bridge at Clarendon.

Since we were children, we have watched the White and Cache rivers flood every few years. The rivers are lower than the surrounding Arkansas Delta, so it is natural for them to flood. Usually the flood covers only the low areas around the rivers, and sometimes it covers the surrounding farms. The low areas that flood regularly are known as the "Big Woods" and cover more than 550,000 acres.

Because the Big Woods flood so often, it is not suitable for farming and has never been cleared like the rest of the Delta. By the 1930s, it had been mostly cleared of timber, and after that, it was left alone. In 1935, the federal government created the White River National Wildlife Refuge and now owns 160,000 acres that is protected forever from encroachment of any kind. In 1986, the federal government created the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge on which it now owns 68,000 acres.

There is one easy and accessible place to see the Big Woods up close: the old bridge at Clarendon. The bridge is ideal because it looks down on the canopy of the trees in the Big Woods and travels east/west across its entire width. The three of us want to convert the bridge into the place where you can experience it easily.

After a long and expensive study of tearing down the old bridge and building a new one, all of the federal and state agencies involved agreed in 2006-2007 to tear down the bridge. The federal government's view is that it wants to execute the plan all the agencies agreed upon and tear it down.

We and a group of our fellow Arkansans created Friends of the Historic White River Bridge at Clarendon to save the bridge and repurpose it into a tourist destination. We came late to the issue, starting in 2013.

So why should this long-ago decision be changed?

  1. What we have seen in Little Rock with the Big Dam Bridge is the first. Bicycling has taken off in America. Millions of new cyclists are on the roads. The City of Memphis and a private philanthropist spent $40 million and built a hiking and biking bridge adjacent to a railroad bridge across the Mississippi River. They estimate over a million cyclists a year will ride into Arkansas from Memphis. And bike trails are being built all over Arkansas and along the Mississippi from St Louis to New Orleans. Biking is the new thing in outdoor recreation in America. The Clarendon Bridge can be the connection between Little Rock and the Mississippi River biking trails.

  2. One main reason for removing the old bridge is that supposedly it exacerbates flooding above the bridge in the flood plain. When the study was done years ago, that was true. But since then, 9,000 feet--almost two miles--of the original bridge that was an earthen berm was removed so water could flow freely. Studies show that the still-standing bridge could add 0.36 of an inch to flooding--less than one inch. That is not going to hurt farming above the bridge or have an impact on hunting and fishing.

Instead of spending $11.3 million to demolish the bridge, the law says we can use that same money to repurpose our bridge, which would save the government almost $6 million. It has cost Arkansas less than $15,000 annually to maintain the old bridge when it had traffic flowing over it. We can raise that from foundations and local supporters who are ready to support us once the bridge is saved.

We have watched our county decline for our entire lives. Monroe County (Brinkley, Clarendon, Holly Grove) lost a bigger percentage of its population than any county in Arkansas between 2000 and 2010. The bridge can make the entire Arkansas Delta into a major tourist destination. We have a plan to do that. You can read it by emailing porter@porterbriggs.com for a copy.

We remember long ago using the White River sand bar at Clarendon as a "beach." Weekends there would find 150 people at the beach swimming and tubing in the river. The beach is still there, unused. And it can be reclaimed for visitors to our bridge. See its beauty at WhiteRiverBridge.org/videos, and you'll understand why the three of us want the bridge saved. It's beautiful. And it will draw tens of thousands of visitors to the entire Delta.

We three women and thousands behind us roar to our political leaders: Stop the tragedy of tearing down this bridge. It is the one chance we have to turn around our economic decline. The money to repurpose the bridge is there--it's already appropriated, and a $6 million savings.

It's personal with us. Save our bridge.

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Connie DePriest, Sandra Kemmer, and Susan Caplener are members of the Board of Directors of the Friends of the Historic White River Bridge at Clarendon, of which Connie serves as president.

Editorial on 02/22/2018

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