Environmental notebook

Agency to review turtle-catch request

The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission has agreed to consider a petition from environmental groups to ban unlimited commercial collection of wild freshwater turtles, according to a news release from the Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club.

The groups, and others, petitioned the commission to ban the practice last fall.

Trapping turtles is banned in several counties in the Ouachita and Ozark mountains as part of a larger fishing ban. In Arkansas, turtles are mostly caught in the eastern part of the state. Unlimited collection of 14 types of turtles is allowed in counties without the fishing ban, the groups note. The groups are concerned about the sustainability of the turtle populations if there’s no limit on catches.

Turtles often are caught as pets or for food. In some countries, consuming turtle meat is thought to be medicinally beneficial.

Four environmental awards handed out

The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality announced last week the winners of its annual environmental awards.

Delta Plastics, the city of Fayetteville, Arkansas Rural Internet Service and Little Rock Central High School and student Meghana Bollimpalli were recognized for environmental innovations and stewardship in Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s conference room, according to a news release.

Delta Plastics won the 14th annual Arkansas Environmental Stewardship Award for water-efficiency projects for farmers and for diverting more than 1 billion pounds of scrap plastic from landfills, the release said. The company is “the largest recycler of heavily soiled plastic in Arkansas and one of the largest in the world,” according to the release.

Fayetteville won the third annual Arkansas Environmental Technology Award for installation of a new type of disinfection system at a wastewater treatment plant. The city installed a hyper-concentrated dissolved ozone system at its Paul R. Noland Resource Recovery Facility.

The second annual Energy Excellence Award went to Arkansas Rural Internet Service for installing a solar-powered, fiber-optic, high-speed Internet service for more than 4,000 rural residents in five counties in south Arkansas.

Meghana Bollimpalli and Central High School won the first ADEQuest Science Award for using waste byproducts and a microwave to make a supercapacitor — which stores energy for later use — more eco-friendly. The school and Bollimpalli both received $500 for education purposes.

EPA $300,000 goes

to district

The East Arkansas Planning and Development District will get $300,000 to assess abandoned properties for potential rehabilitation, according to a news release from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The funds come from EPA’s Brownfields program, which provides money to entities to assess and/or rehabilitate potentially contaminated properties. The agency argues the investments eventually generate even more money when businesses move in.

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