Audubon Arkansas, water district teaming up to help conservation
Posted on Sunday, January 22, 2006
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/nwat/News/36727/
Audubon Arkansas and the Beaver Water District are making plans together for conservation efforts and conservation education in 2006.
The Beaver Water District produces up to 80 million gallons of drinking water a day from Beaver Lake for about a quarter million people in Northwest Arkansas. Audubon Arkansas works to protect watersheds and other habitats important to birds and wildlife.
Their education and outreach partnership last year resulted in conserving more than 75 acres in Northwest Arkansas, according to Amy Wilson, director of public affairs for the Beaver Water District. "What I consider a healthy habitat for birds is often healthy for people, too," said Fran Free, Audubon Arkansas education coordinator for Northwest Arkansas.
Audubon Arkansas has a new office at 34 E. Center St., Suite A, in Fayetteville, and a new employee for environmental curriculum is expected next month.
Suzanne Langley, associate director of development for the state, will also work from the new Fayetteville office. Her focus will be ongoing funding to replace the year-to-year grants that have funded the office in the past. Langley will also do some project management.
Urban stream walks that have been conducted in Fayetteville in the past will take place in the Beaver Lake Watershed.
Schools, area residents, and policy makers will be invited to a "very large" Beaver Lake education day, Free said.
A large component of that will be to measure turbidity, or how muddy the water, is with a device called a Secchi disk.
The partnership between Beaver Water District and Audubon Arkansas allows the water district to reach out to landowners and help them find solutions that benefit the environment and enhance their property investment, according to Alan D. Fortenberry, CEO of the Beaver Water District. That is essential, he said, because the watershed impacts the quality of water that comes from the lake. The watershed is the area of land that drains water, sediments and dissolved minerals into the lake. The partnership of the two groups intends to facilitate development of a War Eagle Watershed Group.
The War Eagle watershed is the largest of the seven sub-watersheds within the water district, said Bob Morgan, manager of environmental quality for the Beaver Water District.
Morgan said the War Eagle watershed is one of the larger contributors of phosphorous to Beaver Lake. He anticipates that a watershed group will identify erosion on the banks and in the channel.
The partnership will also work with the West Fork Environmental Protection Association to develop a grant proposal for future projects and provide support for a stream cleanup in the West Fork of the White River.
Later this month, 16,000 hardwood trees will be planted on a farm in southeast Fayetteville. The conservation partnership helped in selection of the trees.
Audubon Arkansas and the Beaver Water District worked in 2005 with the developer of Aspen Ridge in eastern Fayetteville to arrange the subdivision in such a way that a strip of land along the banks of a natural course of water could be saved while increasing the number of units in the development. It will be a buffer between urban pollutants and the stream.