Activists Push To Stop Blueway

Several congressional voices, including fi ve from Arkansas, have joined the growing controversy over designation of the White River as part of the National Blueways System.

Nine senators and representatives from Arkansas and Missouri sent a letter to the head of the U.S. Department of the Interior questioning just what the designation means not only for the river but also for the expanded watershed, which includes a large swath through Arkansas and part of Missouri.

The designation came in January. The backlash came in recent weeks, stirred by property owners in the river’s watershed who fear federal interference. They have organized to protect perceived threats to private property rights.

The designation hardly seemed so ominous when it happened. State and federal oft cials gathered in Little Rock to announce the news that the White River would be the second of the nation’s great rivers to receive the designation.

(The first was the Connecticut River in four New England states.)

There to mark the occasion were politicians like U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor and Rep. Tim Grift n as well as representatives of various federal and state agencies and organizations involvedin securing the designation or could be participants in its application.

Back then, the conversation was all about how folks could partner to conserve, protect and restore the White River and its tributaries, all to the benefit of future commerce and recreation. Projects in the watershed were to get some greater priority for federal funding, even if slight.

Rivers selected as national blueways are supposed to be nationally significant and valued for recreational, economic, cultural and ecological assets. The White River, from its Ozarks headwaters to its wide spans in the Arkansas Delta, certainly qualifi es.

The blueway designation, again only the second in the still-new national program, was seen as an honor.

That was then. This is now.

A string of county quorum courts, including those representing Washington and Bentoncounties, have formally opposed the designation.

Some of the agencies that were part of the January celebration - notably the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission and Arkansas Waterways Commission - are also pulling back on their support.

And now comes this letter from the Arkansas and Missouri delegations, asserting that the designation came “without public comment, without adequate notice, without transparency from the federal government and without clear evidence of broad public support.”

Interestingly, Rep.

Griftn was one of the nine lawmakers who wrote last week to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell with questions clearly spurred by landowner reactions (or perhaps overreactions).

U.S. Sen. John Boozman and Reps. Steve Womack, Tom Cotton and Rick Crawford were the others from Arkansas to sign the letter.

Ken Salazar, Jewell’s predecessor at Interior, launched the National Blueways System in 2012, signing a secretarial order to create the system as part of the Obama administration’s America’s Great Outdoors Initiative.

A news release at the time said designation as a blueway does not establisha new protective status or regulation but is intended to recognize and support existing local and regional efforts by coordinating ongoing federal, state and local activities.

You can credit conservative citizen activists, including those who are part of Secure Arkansas and another group calling itself Northwest Arkansas Citizens for Better Government, for roiling the water, or blueway, if you will.

They’ve whipped this designation into some kind of federal land grab, imagining all manner of consequences from this program.

Some of the concerns they raise, at least as they are reflected in the letter from the congressmen, seem legitimate. Those deserve answers. But much of the opponents’ rant is founded on little more than fear and distrust of government.

Nevertheless, that was motivation enough for many locally elected oftcials as well as these members of Congress to try to get this designation explained and perhaps revoked.

So, answer the questions, Secretary Jewell. Dispel the fear.

BRENDA BLAGG IS A FREELANCE COLUMNIST AND LONGTIME JOURNALIST IN NORTHWEST ARKANSAS.

Opinion, Pages 12 on 06/30/2013

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