Agency again orders removal of old tires
The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality has amended its consent administrative order with the West River Valley Regional Solid Waste Management District, setting a deadline of June 1, 2017, for removing the hundreds of thousands of excess scrap tires at the district's recycling facility in Johnson County.
The previous consent administrative order, issued in 2015, required the tires be removed by June 1, 2015, with fines for every day after June 14 that the tires were not removed. That deadline has been pushed back before, and no fines have been levied.
The district had about 300,000 scrap tires piled up at its 24087 Arkansas 64 address in Clarksville earlier this year, far more than what was allowed under the district's permit and state law. The district has recently processed some of those tires into recyclable materials with the help of funds from the Department of Environmental Quality and area legislators' apportionment of general improvement funds.
A warehouse that belongs to the district in Knoxville has another estimated 300,000 scrap tires. That site has no permit for storing tires and has yet to be cleaned up.
Waste tire piles can attract mosquitoes and pose fire hazards.
Plans set to clear out invasive plants
The U.S. Forest Service has published an environmental assessment on a plan to combat non-native invasive plant species in a section of the Ouachita National Forest.
Currently, workers in the 406,000-acre Jessieville-Winona-Fourche Ranger District can only address invasive plant species in certain watersheds because of the limited scope of the treatment plans in place. The proposed plan would allow workers to address the species throughout the district, Ranger Megan Moynihan said.
The plant species would be removed either by pulling them up by hand or cutting with chain saws, cleared using large machinery, burned off or treated with herbicides.
The plan proposes treating at least 300 acres per year across the 406,000 acres of the Ouachita National Forest and 1,575 acres of the Crossett Experimental Forest in south Arkansas.
Herbicides would not be used in the immediate vicinity of endangered or threatened species of plants, would not be used within 300 feet of public water supplies, and would be used at the "lowest rate effective in meeting project objectives and according to guidelines for protecting human and wildlife health," according to the document released with the public notice.
The assessment concludes that the project could disturb some animal species in the area but that the work would largely have a positive impact or no impact at all on animal species in the area.
The project, for which the environmental assessment was produced, is part of a national U.S. Forest Service effort that intends to restore forests to a composition of native species, according to the environmental assessment.
Among the at least 50 non-native species are the Tree-of-heaven, cheat grass, Japanese honeysuckle and sacred bamboo. Non-native invasive species have a tendency to overtake an area, wiping out other plants and disrupting the environment for birds, animals and other plant species that live in those areas, Moynihan said.
If approved, the project would receive fiscal 2017 funds beginning in October, U.S. Forest Service in Arkansas spokesman Terence Peck said. If approved, the district would apply for funds and then treat however many acres it could secure funding for. The work can cost $90 per acre or $250 per mile along a road, depending on where the work takes place, Moynihan said.
Concerned parties have until Sept. 2 to comment on the environmental assessment. Copies of the plan can be found at http://www.fs.usda.gov/project/?project=29115.
Metro on 08/14/2016