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Missed an issue of Ozark Waters?
Visit the Ozarks Water Watch website to find archives of all our newsletters.
www.ozarkswaterwatch.org
Want to join a Watershed Group? Click on the site you want to join...
Table Rock Lake Water Quality
http://www.trlwq.org
James River Basin Partnership
http://www.jamesriverbasin.com
Kings River Watershed
http://www.kingsriverwatershed.
org/about_us.html
Illinois River Watershed Ptshp
http://www.irwp.org/
Elk River Watershed
http://www.erwia.org/
Friends of the North Fork and White River
www.friendsoftherivers.org
Save the Illinois River
www.illinoisriver.org
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Upcoming Events
Click on the Event Title to go to the event webpage.
Earth Week April 17-23
"Earth on your plate"
Eat out & 10% of sales at Springfield area restaurants donated to water quality groups.
Click here for participating places dates and times.
Arkansas Earth Day 2011 Sat. April 23rd 10am - 3pm at North Little Rock's North Shore Riverwalk more information at: Kings River Watershed Partnership 2011 River Clean-ups June 4th at Kings River Rapids for info contact: or call: 870-654-4134 "Earth on your plate" |
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David Casaletto
I was invited to Fayetteville last Monday evening to celebrate a new birth. No, not of a baby but of a new watershed group, the Beaver Watershed Alliance. Dr. John Moore, my predecessor, was on the interim board during the formation process that included the writing of bylaws. At last Monday's event the first successful steps of this new organization and all the people who contributed to its formation were celebrated and appreciated.
Alan Fortenberry, Vice-Chairman of Ozarks Water Watch and CEO of Beaver Water District (center) and David Casaletto, Ozarks Water Watch President and Executive Director (left) at the BWA celebration.
The need for a Beaver watershed organization was established during the past several years through a study done on the Beaver watershed in northwest Arkansas. Conducted under contract with the Northwest Arkansas Council, the consulting firm Tetra Tech studied the current status of water quality in Beaver Lake, the threats to water quality, and ways to sustain adequate water quality in future years.
The study acknowledged that the continuing development of this dynamic region of Arkansas---including the Bentonville, Rogers, Springdale and Fayetteville communities----implies threats to water quality. The Northwest Arkansas Council recognized the essential importance of good quality water to the region's future in sponsoring the study. The challenge was to identify major threats, their potential impact on the watershed and reservoir and to recommend strategies to counter these threats.
Map of Beaver Lake Watershed
The final report included specific recommendations based on models of watershed dynamics. These recommendations focused on strategies to mitigate increases in nutrients and sediment in Beaver Lake. With feedback from community leaders throughout the watershed, the recommendations summarized below in capsule form were intended to help develop citizen-led voluntary programs, minimize regulations affecting landowners and support the economic development of communities.
- Core voluntary Best Management Practices (BMPs)
- Developer and contractor lake protection certification program
- Education and stewardship program
- Monitoring program and adaptive steps for lake and stream protection
- Beaver Lake Watershed Council
This last recommendation, the establishment of a watershed organization, started in 2008 when the Beaver Lake Watershed Policy Advisory Group was formed and has now been accomplished as the Beaver Watershed Alliance. The new organization used as models other not-for-profit watershed organizations that focus on major watersheds of this and other regions around the country. The nearby Illinois River Watershed Partnership, the Kings River Watershed Partnership and the James River Basin Partnership all provided relevant models for the new organization. The Beaver Watershed Alliance will focus on education and volunteer efforts very similar to the Illinois River Watershed Partnership.
The Beaver Watershed Alliance goal is to maintain a long-term, high-quality drinking water supply to meet present needs and continuing growth of the region through three primary objectives:
1. Work on voluntary and educational programs and projects
2. Foster communication among diverse stakeholders
3. Restore water quality of impaired stream and lake areas
The Northwest Arkansas Council prevailed on Dr. Nicole Hardiman of the University of Arkansas to help get this new organization off the ground. The challenges in such an undertaking were numerous. They included building consensus for programs and obtaining support from the variety of stakeholder groups (e.g. city mayors, county judges, business and industrial leaders, farm and property groups, environmental interests, etc.) The Beaver watershed includes Washington, Benton, Madison and Carroll Counties in Arkansas.
New Beaver Watershed Alliance Board
The new Beaver Watershed Alliance Board has members from the following eight stakeholder groups, who represent the diversity of interests across the watershed and Northwest Arkansas region: 1. agriculture, 2. business, 3. conservation, 4. construction/developer, 5. technical, 6. government, 7. recreation, and 8. drinking water customers. The board represents leaders in the community who are very interested in working together. Please join me in welcoming our newest member of the watershed organizations working in the Upper White River Basin to keep our waters pure and clean!
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Quote of the Week
"Water, whether still or in motion, has so great an attraction for the lover of nature, that the most beautiful landscape seems scarcely complete without it. There are no effects so fascinating as those produced by the reflexions in nature's living mirror, with their delicacy of form, ever fleeting and changing, and their subtle combinations of colour."
- Montagu Pollock - Light and Water: A Study of Reflexion and Colour in River, Lake and Sea, 1903
Current News Articles
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Scientists successfully generate electricity using freshwater and saltwater
Natural News.com, April 14, 2011
By simply utilizing what nature has to offer in terms of water, scientists from Stanford University have developed an effective way to generate electricity naturally and without causing pollution. Yi Cui, associate professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford, and his colleagues have developed a system that generates electricity using electrodes and a combination of freshwater and saltwater -- and nothing more. For more...
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SPECIAL REPORT: EPA going strong on Clean Water Act after 40 years
The Hill, April 14, 2011
A generation ago, the American people faced almost unimaginable health and environmental threats in their waters. Layers of industrial pollution on Cleveland's Cuyahoga River caught fire and Lake Erie was declared dead. An oil spill fouled hundreds of square miles of water off the coast of California, while in Washington, D.C., the Potomac was coated with so much sewage the pollution could be smelled in the city on hot days.
These circumstances prompted Congress to come together and find bipartisan solutions like the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Ocean Dumping Act. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was created to set and enforce commonsense standards to protect human health and the environment under these laws. That same year, people all across America came together for the very first Earth Day, and the 1970s initiated several extraordinary advances in the protection of the water that millions of Americans use for drinking, swimming, fishing and more....
http://thehill.com/opinion/op-ed/155925-after-40-years-epa-going-strong-on-clean-water-act |
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Indians Join Fight for an Oklahoma Lake's Flow
The New York Times, April 11, 2011
TUSKAHOMA, Okla. - Sardis Lake, a reservoir in southeastern Oklahoma young enough to have drowned saplings still poking through its surface and old enough to have become a renowned bass fishery, is not wanting for suitors.
Oklahoma City and fast-growing suburbs like Edmond want to see the water flowing through their shower heads someday. So do the water masters of Tarrant County, Tex., 200 miles to the south, who are looking to supply new subdivisions around Fort Worth and are suing for access. To read more...
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/science/earth/12water.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&ref=science |
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