COMMENTARY: Protection’s Time Has Come

Monday, January 3, 2011

— One of the immutable laws of nature is that water runs downhill. That means that what happens upstream is certainly going to affect what happens further downstream and the more water there is the larger and more noticeable the effects will be. This certainty then brings us to the proposed Streamside Protection Ordinance that the City of Fayetteville is hoping to implement in the near future.

What the proposed ordinance would do is establish undeveloped “buffer zones” up to 50 feet wide adjacent to certain designated streams within the city. The buffer zones are designed to do a number of things. One of their most important functions would be to absorb as much surface water as possible to keep it from entering a stream and help prevent, or at least mitigate, the effects of the increased flow of water, i.e. flooding. The buffer zones would also help prevent the direct introduction of silt and sediment runoff into the streams to maintain higher water quality and prevent the deposition of that silt within the stream itself, clogging the channel and forcing the water to go other places, such as into people’s houses. Another benefit is that you will not have to stand there and helplessly watch your property fall into a flooded creek and be washed away. The buffer zones would also help prevent pollutants such as engine oil and excess fertilizer and herbicides from entering the streams and further reducing water quality.

The Streamside Protection Ordinance will help maintain and reestablish streamside plant life that will be a boon to wildlife and fish and will help ensure the ecological integrity of the waterway. It will help improve the water quality in Fayetteville’s numerous lakes and ponds which will make recreational activities more pleasant and fishing more enjoyable.

Looking beyond the purely environmental and water quality issues that will be improved by the Streamside Protection Ordinance there are the practical and, shall we say concrete, reasons why the ordinance is a good idea. Large rainfall events, known as “toad stranglers” to many folks, can dump huge amounts of water onto an area in a very short period of time resulting in localized flooding. Such flooding within a city that has established infrastructure such as roads, bridges, parks, hiking and biking trails, water and sewer systems, can cause serious damage to those facilities. One only has to harken back to the floods of 1982, 1997, 2004 and many others to realize the impact that a single rainfall event can have. Washed out roads, damaged bridges, culverts, electric and telephone lines, serious erosion of streamside property and localized flooding costs the citizens of a community both money and lost time. Flooding can also occasionally cause bodily injury and even loss of life. Anything that can be done to offset or minimize such damage should be taken seriously by that community and the Streamside Protection Ordinance will do just that for Fayetteville.

Over the past forty years Fayetteville has gained a well deserved reputation for being a progressive community determined to provide its residents with quality of life services above and beyond those of most cities in Arkansas. They have done so with the implementation of the Tree Preservation Ordinance, its recycling and composting programs, its incredible system of city and neighborhood parks and, most recently its extensive system of hiking and biking trails. The Streamside Protection Ordinance would be a welcome and well deserved addition that would further improve the quality of life for the residents of Fayetteville and I would urge everyone to support its passage by the City Council when it comes up for consideration.

TOM MCKINNEY OF WEST FORK IS CONSERVATION CHAIRMAN OF THE ARKANSAS CHAPTER SIERRA CLUB.