Arkansas residents will have the opportunity this week to learn about challenges facing the Beaver Lake watershed and the efforts underway to meet those challenges.
The Beaver Lake Watershed Alliance will host a symposium Friday at the Carroll Electric Building in Huntsville.
John Pennington, executive director of the alliance, said the symposium is an opportunity for Arkansans to learn how they affect - and are affected by - Beaver Lake’s water quality.
Pennington said the objective of the symposiumis to bring together various “stakeholders,” including municipal decision-makers, landowners, agricultural producers and individuals, and present a picture of the challenges to water quality that may lie ahead.
“We just want to start a dialogue about how we manage these issues,” Pennington said.
The symposium, which is open to the public, will begin at 9 a.m. and is scheduled to adjourn at 3:30 p.m. Individuals who wish to participate may reserve a seat at (479) 970-3550.
More than a dozen speakers will deliver presentations on different aspects ofmanaging water quality within the watershed, which covers approximately 1,900 square miles and spans portions of Benton, Carroll, Washington and Madison counties, according to data from the U.S. Geological Survey. According to the agency, the Beaver Lake Watershed is considered the state’s top water quality priority.
Presentation topics at the symposium will include a discussion of the development of the Beaver Lake Watershed Protection Strategy, a document originally developed by the Northwest Arkansas Council about five years ago and revised in 2012. According to the report, Beaver Lake is the primary source of drinking water for more than 350,000 people in the state, and is the foundation for about $43 million in annual tourism spending.
Other topics scheduled for presentation include land conservation, the use of “rain gardens,” which involve the use of native plant species to absorb and filter rainfall and mitigate damage from storm-water runoff, and water quality monitoring within the watershed.
Pennington said some of the biggest challenges in maintaining quality of water in Beaver Lake include restricting sediment from making its way downstream when stream banks erode, limiting the amount of nutrients such as phosphorus entering waterways and managing future development inside the watershed.
“It’s expected that by2050, our population in the area is going to increase 80 percent, and the municipal areas are going to quadruple,” Pennington said. “We have to plan how we’re going to manage our growth and development.”
Sandi Formica, executive director for the Watershed Conservation Resource Center in Fayetteville, said she will be discussing several stream restoration projects her organization has completed over the past several years.
“We redesign channels based on sections of the river that are stable,” said Formica, who has been involved with projects restoring sections of the White River’s west fork and Mullins Branch, as well as other rivers and streams that had been placed on the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality’s list of impaired waterways.
“I think it’s important that people take an interest in their local environment,” Formica said. “They’ll learn about the watershed, and how different uses and activities affect their water source.”
Pennington said that while there is a sizable body of knowledge that he and other experts hope to share with the public, it’s also important to motivate participants to begin thinking about challenges for the watershed that may arise in the future.
“We only know so much,” Pennington said. “And we can address some things, but there are issues emerging that we’re trying to understand more about.”
The Carroll Electric Building is located at 5056 U.S. 412-B in Huntsville.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 09/25/2013