U.S. ends disputed Blueways program

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - A U.S. Interior Department program intended to recognize conservation efforts along the nation’s waterways was dissolved Friday amid opposition from landowners and politicians who feared it would lead to more regulation and possible land seizures.

The National Blueways System was created in May 2012 under President Barack Obama’s America’s Great Outdoors Initiative. The program was voluntary, didn’t include any new regulations, and a designation included no additional funding.

The designation had been bestowed on only two rivers. One of those, the White River, which spans more than 700 miles through Missouri and Arkansas, was dropped last year because of regional opposition.

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said in a statement that her agency decided to shelve the program, which was formed by her predecessor, Ken Salazar, after a departmental review.

“The National Blueways Committee will be deactivated, but the department will continue to encourage collaborative, community-based watershed partnerships that support sustainable and healthy water supplies,” department spokes-man Jessica Kershaw said.

Jewell put the program on hold in July, two weeks after removing the designation from the White River. The only other National Blueway waterway - the Connecticut River, which runs through Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire - will retain the designation, Jewell said Friday.

While the program was intended solely to recognize conservation efforts, supporters hoped that gaining a National Blueway designation would put their waterways at the front of the line for federal grants. The White River received the designation after several groups, including the Missouri Department of Conservation and the Nature Conservancy, nominated it for inclusion.

Federal officials insisted the program would not include any new protective status or regulations, but opponents in Missouri and Arkansas - largely conservative groups - weren’t persuaded. Their opposition intensified in late June, when a coalition of Republican U.S. senators and representatives from both states sent a letter to the Interior Department asking how to revoke the designation.

Eventually, even supporters of the White River’s designation pushed to have the title rescinded because they feared the dispute could make landowners resistant to voluntarily cooperating with conservation efforts.

The dissolution of the Blueways program was welcome news to some members of Arkansas’ congressional delegation.

Rep. Tim Griffin, a Republican who was opposed to the Blueways designation, said in a statement that he would support “community-driven conservation efforts.”

“The Obama Administration’s National Blueways program was not implemented with grassroots support as advertised. The federal government talked a lot about local input but didn’t deliver,” Griffin, who representscentral Arkansas, said.

Patrick Creamer, a spokesman for Republican Sen. John Boozman, said the Boozman was pleased that the Interior Department was ending “this misguided program.”

“Sen. Boozman and many Arkansans at the local level knew it was wrong for Arkansas, which was why he and others pushed back strongly at the federal level against the proposed White River designation. This ill-conceived power grab was not in the best interests of Arkansas, or any state in the nation for that matter,” Creamer said.

Meanwhile, Mike Armstrong, deputy director of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, said the dissolution of the Blueways program was “expected” and “somewhat regrettable.”

Armstrong said the commission originally supported the designation because it seemed to support conservation efforts that are already in place around the state, such as the Beaver Lake Alliance and the Illinois River Watershed Partnership. But he said the designation later became a “distraction” that appeared to some as a mandate from the federal government.

Armstrong said his agency would continue to work with the partnerships around the state and would support a federal conservation program that is more “locally driven.”

Independence County Judge Robert Griffin, who also opposed the Blueways designation, said he would support conservation efforts that also weighed the concerns of property owners. Griffin said he thought it was “appropriate” for the Interior Department to do away with the program.

“I think it was ill-conceived in the way that it was top-driven and it didn’t really seek local input,” Griffin said.

David Casaletto, head of the Missouri-based Ozarks Water Watch, noted that his group initially supported the program because it was a way to recognize the conservation efforts of local communities and property owners. He said nobody anticipated such staunch opposition.

“It was more important to maintain our partnershipsand our support from the local people we work with than to retain something that, other than being recognized, doesn’t do anything,” Casaletto said. “There was no reason to jeopardize our local support over that recognition.”

Todd Sampsell, director of Missouri’s Nature Conservancy, blamed the program’s demise on too many people misunderstanding the program.

“That’s a product of a failure of communication somewhere along the line,” he said Friday. “When that happens, people tend to want to insert their own thoughts and ideologies about what’s going to happen, and it escalated from there.”

The Interior Department said only one other state had expressed interest in the program, but it never got past the discussion stage before Jewell put it on hold.

After the White River designation was rescinded in July, Boozman released a statement saying the program wasn’t necessary to improve cooperation between federal and state agencies to manage the river.

“We all agree that we should work to protect our waterways,” he said. “This designation occurred without a formal process - no public comment, lack of transparency from the federal government and without the broad support of Arkansans.”

Jeannie Burlsworth, founder of the conservative group Secure Arkansas, applauded the decision to end the program Friday.

“If there hadn’t been such a public outcry, they would have never rescinded it,” she said. “They had planned on doing this across the U.S.” Information for this article was contributed by Bill Draper of The Associated Press and by Sean Beherec of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/04/2014

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