Guest Posted March 10, 2015 Posted March 10, 2015 Dangit man! Thats not good news. I hate losing good river holes due to siltation. plus there may be a few thousand turds mixed in that mud.
JohnF52 Posted March 10, 2015 Posted March 10, 2015 West Fork of the white definitely needs mitigation. Ag runoff, stream banks caving in, trash, etc. Which agency would take appropriate action? Middleton369 1
Jerry Rapp Posted March 11, 2015 Posted March 11, 2015 a good evening in Arcadia Valley. I just drove home from a board meeting and heard two groups of peeper frogs. Ponds and small lakes still have a sheen of ice, 52 today, but the night time temps have been above freezing. The kayakers will have a good time this weekend at the white water championships. Lots of runoff.
Dan the fisherman Posted March 11, 2015 Posted March 11, 2015 Dangit man! Thats not good news. I hate losing good river holes due to siltation. plus there may be a few thousand turds mixed in that mud. Yes turds r never fun to fish in lol.
Members Middleton369 Posted March 11, 2015 Members Posted March 11, 2015 When I was in college I did at internship with the AGFC and my area of focus was with stream bank stabilization. While I was there we completely re vamped the vertical banks at Kelly's Slab on Crooked Creek by Yellville. We did several cleanups on the white River near West Fork but did not do any bank stabilization projects. I believe the guy that I interned with is now retired, however you can contact the AGFC and they should be able to put you in touch with the new Bank Stabilization guru. At the time there were government grants that helped to find the projects but that was several years ago. I will say that if you don't own part of the bank or the person that does is unwilling to take action on it there's little that can be done.
JohnF52 Posted March 11, 2015 Posted March 11, 2015 Beaver is a drinking water supply for hundreds of thousands of people. If the West Fork gets enough bad publicity, it is likely the state will take action. I cannot understand why a landowner would refuse a stream bank stabilization project that costs him little or nothing, but it looks like some may have refused. For a watershed as important as Beaver, maybe a riparian law is in order for the major tributaries.
PigSooner Posted March 11, 2015 Posted March 11, 2015 When I was in college I did at internship with the AGFC and my area of focus was with stream bank stabilization. While I was there we completely re vamped the vertical banks at Kelly's Slab on Crooked Creek by Yellville. We did several cleanups on the white River near West Fork but did not do any bank stabilization projects. I believe the guy that I interned with is now retired, however you can contact the AGFC and they should be able to put you in touch with the new Bank Stabilization guru. At the time there were government grants that helped to find the projects but that was several years ago. I will say that if you don't own part of the bank or the person that does is unwilling to take action on it there's little that can be done. Found this information interesting... It looks like there is an active plan (although this is dated) "Watershed Restoration Action Strategy" There might be an updated plan/ version. And here are a few projects that have been completed http://www.bae.ncsu.edu/programs/extension/wqg/nmp_conf/2012_tulsa/25formica.pdf
JohnF52 Posted March 11, 2015 Posted March 11, 2015 That project covered less than 1/5 of a mile on the West Fork. It is only a start. The turbidity of that stream is disgusting compared to only 30 years ago. I used to fish it and spring and early summer visibility was commonly over two feet.
Members Middleton369 Posted March 11, 2015 Members Posted March 11, 2015 Unfortunately a lot of this comes from farmers cutting their fields too close to stream banks, and landowners wanting a better view of streams therefore they cut down all of the trees around the banks. If the soil has no vegetation to hold onto then during high water periods the banks just continue to erode, causing steep vertical banks and causing a serious decrease in water quality. Although it's a long term solution, planting trees and shrubs near the stream banks can have a positive impact and that's one thing we did during my internship. Another cause of the problem that we found were low water bridges. We noticed that a lot of the eroded banks were not far from low water bridges. I do remember during one of the clean ups near West Fork that we cleaned up an area beside a low water bridge. Even in the Kelly's Slab project a key part to improvement was cutting out a section of the low water bridge to better facilitate the water flow. But your correct in that if enough folks get involved that steps can be taken to improve. There's no better place in the state to get folks to jump on board with improving water quality that in NWA. I'm sure that if the EPA and environmental quality folks got involved that some improvements could be made.
Members Middleton369 Posted March 11, 2015 Members Posted March 11, 2015 Of course another plus is that when a bank stabilization project does occur one of the key ingredients is adding in large amounts of rock and keying in large logs into the bank, which creates great fish habitat and great bedding areas for all the fish species, great news for folks like us.
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now