FAYETTEVILLE - Proposed changes to the state’s water-quality regulations aim to base future pollution measures on a very large test case: Beaver Lake.
The proposed changes were discussed Thursday night at the Fayetteville City Administration Building, during the second of four public comment sessions scheduled around the state by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality.
The federal Clean Water Act requires that state environmental departments review water regulations every three years and allow for public input.
Sarah Clem, technical assistance manager for the department’s Water Division, took an audience of more than 50 Northwest Arkansas residents through a presentation outlining about 23 pages of changes to existing water regulations.
Clem said that through funding available from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Walton Family Foundation, the department created a scientific working group that met from 2005-07 to establish more accurate nutrient criteria for Arkansas surface water.
According to department spokesman Katherine Benenati, the group - which drew members from Beaver Water District, the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and other sources - published a report in 2008 based on modeling and analysis of existing water quality data at Beaver Lake.
“They determined that nitrogen and phosphorus were not the best indicators of nutrient impairment,” Clem said. Instead, under the proposed regulatory changes, inspectors will measure the clarity of the water and the presence of chlorophyll-A, which plants use to convert light to nutrients , to determine the effects of nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus in the water, Clem said.
Benenati said in an e-mail Friday that while existing standards for lakes in Arkansas are based on a “one-size-fits-all” measurement of turbidity - the cloudiness of water caused by particulate matter - more individualized criteria would better serve Arkansans.
“[A] site-specific standard for our deep high-quality reservoirs is more desirable,” Benenati said.
Based on the success or failure of the new pollution monitoring at Beaver Lake, Clem said the state may apply the criteria to other lakes in Arkansas. The proposed criteria for the presence of chlorophyll-A is 8 micrograms per liter of water. The proposed criteria for transparency is 1.1 meters-meaning that inspectors should be able to visibly make out the pattern on what’s known as a Secchi disk when it’s lowered 1.1 meters below the surface of the lake.
A Secchi disk is typically at least 8 inches in diameter and normally features a black-and-white checkered pattern.
James Gately, president of the Association for the Beaver Lake Environment, read from a prepared statement in favor of the proposed regulatory change during the public comment portion of the meeting.
“We are certainly inclined to accept [the] proposed standards for Beaver Lake, and propose that you do the same,” Gately said. “The importance of water quality for Beaver Lake cannot be overemphasized. It’s the water supply for Northwest Arkansas. It’s the economic engine of the region and contributes to the area’s quality of life through clean water for recreational activities.”
The other major regulatory changes proposed by the department govern mineral discharge in streams and other waterways, and are based on compliance with Act 954, which the Arkansas Legislature passed April 8. The act removes the state’s default designation of all waterways as potential drinking-water sources, allowing industries and municipalities to discharge greater quantities of minerals, including chlorides and sulfates, into waterways not currently designated as sources of drinking water.
“Minerals has been a hot-button issue with municipalities and industries for a long time,” Clem said. “Minerals in Arkansas are very low, relative to other states and other specific geologies.The regulation needs modification and revision.”
The act also affects how regulators calculate the potential rate of water flow through creek beds - beds that are sometimes dry or very low at the time a survey is conducted. The change will likely increase the amount of minerals that can legally be discharged into such waterways.
Fayetteville resident David Orr, who addressed Pollution Control and Ecology Commission member Dana Samples during the meeting, said afterward that he was concerned that while the state was making positive progress in monitoring water quality in lakes, it was losing ground in its efforts to regulate mineral discharge in streams.
“The state is moving incrementally in the right direction, but I’m trying to push it to take a much more specific standards-based approach to protecting our water quality,” Orr said. “When you have climatic change going on, you can have periods when there’s very low flow. Then you get a big flood pulse that washes down all kinds of pollutants that have just been building up. That happens in construction zones, highway projects, and farm areas with chicken litter spread all over the place.
“So if you go out there and say, ‘There’s no water in this stream. Let’s just lift the regs; we won’t regulate it,’ but [then have] a big flood, the pollution’s still going [into the watershed],” Orr said.
The department will conduct two more public comment sessions as part of the triennial review in April. The next will be at 6 p.m. Monday in the Workforce Development Building on the South Arkansas Community College East Campus in El Dorado, followed by the final meeting at 2 p.m. Wednesday in Little Rock at the department’s headquarters, 5301 Northshore Drive.
The deadline for submitting written comments to the department regarding the proposed regulatory changes is May 8.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 11 on 04/20/2013