LITTLE ROCK — More than a half century after International Paper built the 7,500-acre Lake Erling, named for a company vice president, the company is looking to rid itself of the property at the far southern end of Lafayette County.
“The short answer for all this is, we simply do not need the lake any longer from a business perspective,” company spokesman Tom Ryan said.
The Springhill mill closed in 1979, and the company’s timber holdings surrounding the lake had all been sold by the early 2000s. Not long after, the company reached an unofficial agreement to donate Lake Erling to the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.
If Game and Fish does obtain Lake Erling - and agency Deputy Director Mike Armstrong said it’s less a matter of if than when - it would surpass the Craig D. Campbell Lake Conway Reservoir as the largest state-owned lake in Arkansas.
The lake juts north in a long crooked finger from a point that almost kisses the Louisiana line.
It is hidden from the road in all but a few parts by brushy tracts of loblolly pine, which are dotted with hunting and fishing clubs, clusters of RVs and mobile homes, and a handful of bait shops and boat ramps.
Its isolation has kept development to a minimum, but it has earned a reputation as a top-notch fishing spot teeming with crappie, bass and catfish.
Todd Collier, who lives a half hour away in Stamps, came up empty-handed on a recent morning, an outcome he attributes to the date not a dearth of fish. Only two other pickups and boat trailers were parked on the landing.
“Pretty soon, they’ll be getting ready to spawn,” said Collier, a frequent visitor to the lake, who was pulling his skiff from a northern arm of the lake known as Holsclaw Creek. “Then, there’ll be people covered up down here.”
Cummings Camp, an assemblage of mobile homes that overlooks a stretch of water dotted with waterlogged cypress, was almost deserted, a lone boat moored at the dock.
Jeff Willis, who was manning the fishing camp’s barebones bait shop, said visitors began arriving last week and would continue to pour in over the summer.
A few hundred feet down the shore through gateless brick turrets is a neat row of new brick and log homes known as Water’s Edge.
Behind one of the homes, Robbie Mason and two employees are finishing construction of a boat dock, the last one for the season before water levels rise.
Mason was born and raised near Springhill and knows the lake well.
He speaks approvingly about the size and abundance of Lake Erling crappie, holding his hands 16 inches apart, and said his dock business has boomed recently.
“Lake Erling’s been good to us the last six or seven years,” he said.
After years of relative obscurity, the lake is being discovered, Mason said, both by residents in surrounding counties and weekenders from the Shreveport area looking for lakeside property at a bargain.
International Paper built the lake as a water supply, but it has become an important lake for recreation and flood control, Armstrong said.
“Our main interest is to keep it open for public fishing,” Armstrong said.
The agency is considering several options for doing so, including partnering with a local conservation district to maintain the lake.
Troy Odom, the Lafayette County district’s treasurer, said the state-funded group is working on a plan to maintain the lake that it will present to Game and Fish in about two months.
There is little demand now, but Odom thinks Lake Erling will be a major factor in municipal and industrial water supply in Lafayette County.
“We want the water for the future,” Odom said.
Game and Fish is waiting until it can obtain additional flowage easements from owners of lakefront propertybefore it officially takes ownership.
International Paper owns land up to the level a flood is expected to reach once every five years. To protect the state against lawsuits stemming from property damage, Game and Fish wants an easement stretching another 5 vertical feet, to the level of a 100-year flood.
The process of obtaining easements from dozens of property owners surrounding the lake is tedious but moving forward.
“We don’t want to drag it out,” Armstrong said. “We hope to have some sort of agreement within two years.”
Arkansas, Pages 15 on 03/28/2012