Vigilance Needed To Protect Water, Wildlife Conference Highlights Need To Restore Measures

Vigilance Needed To Protect Water, Wildlife Conference Highlights Need To Restore Measures
Last updated Wednesday, March 11, 2009 4:18 PM CDT in Outdoors
By Scott Branyan
Commentary

A group of wildlife conservationists met in Little Rock Saturday to discuss wetlands conservation and to support efforts to restore the Clean Water Act protections impacted by two recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions in 2001 and 2006.

The event, called "Hunter Angler Water for Wildlife Summit," was sponsored by a long list of groups that are working together to support congressional action known as the Clean Water Restoration Act.

Jim Murphy and Jan Goldman-Carter of the National Wildlife Federation gave presentations explaining how the court cases and resulting Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers decisions have lessened Clean Water Act protections.

In short, narrow interpretations by both agencies have left non-navigable tributaries and their adjacent wetlands classified as geographically "isolated" waters and without Clean Water Act protection.

Both said the Clean Water Restoration Act would restore regulatory protections using long-standing decisions.

Also speaking was Scott Yaich with Ducks Unlimited who said his organization had estimated the loss of U.S. wetlands since the 1950s to be around 17 million acres. That includes 7 million acres lost in Arkansas.

Another 20 million acres nationally stand to be affected under the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers decisions. Most affected are the Prairie Potholes of North and South Dakota, which produces most of the ducks coming into Arkansas, the Great Lakes, the Mid-Atlantic Coast and the Lower Mississippi Valley.

Steve Filapek, Arkansas Stream Team coordinator and assistant chief of fisheries with the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission, said Arkansas has 90,000 miles of streams. Of those, 70,000 miles could be classified as perennial or intermittent and are hence without protection under the recent decisions.

The number one pollutant of Arkansas water is sediment. An indicator of how big the sediment problem can be is the rare Arkansas darter. Filipek said a one-tenth of an inch of sediment over the darter eggs can result in greater than 50 percent mortality to the eggs.

Crooked Creek, one of the best smallmouth streams in the state, is an intermittent stream which has had sediment issues from gravel mining.

Congress will have the opportunity this year to provide a legislative fix with a goal of restoring 35 years of Clean Water Act protection to our streams and wetland areas. Goldman-Carter recommended that people contact Arkansas' congressional delegation and urge them to support the Clean Water Restoration Act.

The act would return to the use of long-standing regulatory definitions, remove the word "navigable" from the definition of protected waters, and restore regulatory protections to headwater areas.

In the US Department of Agriculture's "Soils and Men" yearbook for 1938, F. R. Kenny and W. L. McAtee wrote, "Among the assets of mankind, wildlife receives its true appraisal only in advanced stages of civilization, when owning to the heedless destruction of earlier times, it has been seriously if not irreparably reduced. ..."

"If we had sufficient foresight we would preserve in due proportion nature's wealth-creating centers of every kind, but lacking it we are wasters. Experience at last brings regret, and we would re-create what we have destroyed. We see that it has values that we can ill afford to lose, not only in a material sense but for beauty as well."

"When at length we do realize what nature's bounties mean to us we should act promptly positively, and persistently in maintaining and restoring them."

Scott Branyan writes a blog and colimnist for the Morning News in Northwest Arkansas and is a fly fishing guide on the White River tailwater trout streams.

2nd Annual Environmental Conference Mar 27 Joplin

2nd ANNUAL ENVIRONMENTAL CONFERENCE
La Quinta Inn ♦ Joplin, Missouri March 27, 2009

"We can store it, treat it and deliver it, but we can't manufacture it - Water Planning for a Critical Resource"

The 2nd Annual Environmental Conference will address state water plans in Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri.

Representatives from each state will present a status report
on their respective state water plans. Global warning's effect on reservoirs will also be discussed.

The Conference is co-sponsored by the Watershed Committee of the Ozarks, Tri-State Water Resource Coalition and Environmental Task Force of Jasper and Newton Counties.

Information and registration form can be obtained at www.envtaskforce.com or from Bob Nichols at bnichols66@sbcglobal.net or (417) 673-7151.