Stream Tour educates people about watershed
Posted on Friday, June 9, 2006
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/nwat/News/41558/
They traveled from the hustle and bustle of the city to the solitude of quiet landscapes, never leaving the Fayetteville city limits.
These were people who participated in the second annual Urban Stream Tour on Thursday evening, sponsored by Audubon Arkansas and Beaver Water District that focused on the West Fork of the White River watershed.
The watershed is a 124-square-mile sub-watershed of the Beaver lake Basin.
Its main channel originates near Winslow and flows north. It passes through several cities, including Greenland and Fayetteville, and forms a confluence with the White River just east of Fayetteville. It is about 57 percent forest, 33 percent agriculture and 10 percent urban, according to Audubon Arkansas.
Stops during the Stream Tour that never left Fayetteville included Mullins Creek, World Peace Wetland Prairie and the confluence of the Town Branch tributary and West Fork at Pump Station Dam.
The tour provided a look at the impact of urbanization on the quality of the water used in homes and businesses, as well as the best practices for balancing growth and preventing degradation.
Part of the tour was a 10-minute canoe paddle to a reforestation site in the flood plain.
Updates on projects to improve the watershed were given by different speakers.
Mullins Creek The first stop of the tour, Mullins Creek, is located on the University of Arkansas campus. At this stop, difficulties with erosion and other matters were discussed by Fran Free, northwest education coordinator for Audubon Arkansas. Audubon Arkansas and the university are working as partners. "It’s a good partnership, and there’s quite a bit of give and take on both sides," said Kevin Pierson, director of conservation for Audubon Arkansas. The Mullins Creek watershed is located entirely in the City of Fayetteville and its headwaters originate on the UA campus before flowing south through Town Branch Neighborhood and merging with Town Branch, which is the West Fork’s main urban tributary.
This watershed is composed of 30 percent impervious surface, which means increased runoff, erosion, pollution and downstream flooding. Audubon Arkansas has four demonstration sites within this watershed with the goal of offsetting some of these adverse effects.
World Peace Wetland Prairie is one of those projects, and it was the next stop.
Jennifer Creel, project manager, gave a presentation on the efforts in this area.
The prairie is a 2 1/2 acre remnant of what historically existed on the Ozark Plateau. Few of these natural wetland prairies exist today and are disappearing to make room for urban areas, which are composed of impervious surfaces (surfaces that do not soak up water) and their associated increase in stormwater runoff.
Wetlands counterbalance the negative effects of runoff by retaining and slowly releasing stormwater, while absorbing and filtering pollution contained within the runoff. These areas also provide habitat for wildlife.
The World Peace Wetland Prairie was made possible through donations provided by the city of Fayetteville; Audubon Arkansas; the OMNI Center for Peace, Justice and Ecology; Tyson Foods Inc.; the Town Branch Neighborhood Association; and the Fayetteville Natural Heritage Association. The property was donated to the city of Fayetteville on Earth Day 2005 and became part of the city’s parks department.
Joint restoration responsibility on the property has been given to Audubon Arkansas and Town Branch Neighborhood Association, and Audubon recently received a grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to carry out the restoration plan.
One of the main tasks, Creel said, will be to eliminate 70 percent of invasive species in the area — most of the invasive species are honeysuckle plants — and replant native species.
From the wetland, the tour went to Pump Station Dam, which once provided drinking water for Fayetteville. From there, canoes were paddled to the Jerry Gene Hall farm, where Hall talked about the planting of trees through a program to reforest the area and provide a riparian zone, or transitional area between water and surrounding lands. Riparian zones act to control the flow of water, sediment, nutrients, and organisms between aquatic and upland areas.
Sandi Formica of the Watershed Conservation Resource Center, also gave a presentation.
The resource center along with several partners, including the West Fork Environmental Protection Association, landowners, government and non-government organizations and local groups, are looking at streambank erosion in the West Fork of the White River. The goal is to determine what can be done to reduce impacts on the river and community.
A plan is being developed to reduce accelerated streambank erosion in the watershed, Formica said, and that involves prioritizing areas for improvement.