SPRINGDALE, Arkansas -- The dispute between Oklahoma and Arkansas over pollution in the Illinois River started as a tit-for-tat squabble between states. But in its 19 months, the dispute has served as a wake-up call for a northwest Arkansas region that is growing so quickly that it is straining even the newest roads, schools and airports ... and rivers.
In March 2002, Oklahoma complained about phosphorus flowing into the state from Arkansas through the Illinois River. In response, Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee threatened stricter chlorine standards for the Arkansas River, which flows eastward from Oklahoma through the heart of Arkansas. Oklahoma passed tough new phosphorus standards for six scenic rivers, including the Illinois, which meanders out of the burgeoning home of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, and hundreds of poultry farms that supply Tyson Foods Inc., the world's largest meat producer.
Mr. Huckabee said Oklahoma's requirement that the river contain less than .037 parts of phosphorus for every million parts of water was unattainable without dedicating millions of dollars to additional treatment facilities, a cost he said would destroy a regional economy recently ranked best in the nation by the Milken Institute, an independent economic research organization based in Santa Monica, Calif.
Despite some recent optimism about settling the dispute, Marcus Devine, director of the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, said last month that federal regulators probably will intervene. In the meantime, he said, Arkansas is better prepared to keep water clean. "I still don't think Oklahoma's standard is reasonable, but through this whole thing, we've had some significant monitoring developments," he said. "Our latest data showed we've reduced the amount of pollutants in the whole watershed."
The latest round of settlement talks, held last month in Monkey Island, Okla., were fruitless, Mr. Devine said. "We're still opposed to the .037 standard because even with the controls we put in place, we don't think we can achieve it," he said.
Regardless of what Oklahoma demands, northwest Arkansas leaders and state water specialists say they are more concerned than ever about controlling water pollution. They focused on two main types of pollution sources: single-point sources, easily measured discharge of treated wastewater from municipal sewer plants, and non-point sources, which include storm runoff or erosion from fields, construction sites and other hard-to-pinpoint places.
Northwest Arkansas cities have agreed to limit the phosphorus in their sewage discharge to 1 part per million, and scientists are testing what happens to nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen when sludge -- the processed residue discharged by sewage treatment plants -- is applied to farmland. The Arkansas Soil and Water Conservation Commission wrote a new law regulating "best practices" for poultry farmers' use of chicken litter, which is rich in phosphorus.
Washington County Judge Jerry Hunton, who is also a farmer, said poultry growers felt threatened by the new law. U.S. Rep. John Boozman, R-Ark., said farmers have told him the blame for phosphorus discharge is misplaced. "They see the [urban] growth threatening their farms, and they can't believe they're being blamed for pollution," Mr. Boozman said.
Martin Maner, ADEQ's chief water engineer, is confident the cities' new standards for sewage discharge are sufficient to keep phosphorus levels below the .037 parts per million limit by the time the nutrients travel downriver and cross into Oklahoma. "With cities like Rogers and Fayetteville already below 1 part per million and Springdale getting close, I don't foresee it getting worse through point sources," he said.
But because storm runoff, chicken litter, construction materials and erosion can't be measured like discharge from a state-of-the-art municipal sewage plant, as much as half of the pollutants entering the Illinois River in Arkansas are practically untraceable. And, possibly more significant, there is still some uncertainty over phosphorus' scientific qualities -- such as how it is used by vegetation and how much it dissolves in flowing water as opposed to stagnant. That means the effect of phosphorus as a pollutant in the Illinois River is still under debate.
"In our scientific assessment of the Illinois River and its tributaries, we looked at fish, algae and other organisms in 1994-95 and found no water quality violations, even though we knew phosphorus was high in those streams, especially back then," Mr. Maner said. He said the greater concern is sediment and nutrient buildup in static drinking water sources like reservoirs, where flow helps disperse the pollutants.
While responding to allegations from Oklahoma over pollutants that drain westward into the Illinois River watershed, Arkansas officials became more concerned with the sliver of urbanity where storm runoff and wastewater run the opposite direction into the main regional drinking-water source, Beaver Lake. Mr. Maner said he is concerned about Tenkiller Ferry Lake downriver, the main water source for northeastern Oklahoma, near where the Illinois flows into the Arkansas River, which heads back east into Arkansas. But he added: "I want to focus more on our own reservoir" Beaver Lake, which feeds the upper White River of Arkansas and Missouri.
Ed Fite, director of Oklahoma's Scenic River Commission, said that kind of regionalism is holding up negotiations between the states. He said Oklahoma is part of the northwest Arkansas' cities' expansion because the bulk of the growth and poultry activity is expanding westward, toward Oklahoma and squarely within the Illinois River watershed. "We have built surface transportation routes that make it real easy to work in Fayetteville and live in Muskogee [Oklahoma] and the basin," Fite said. "Other than the hollows, which are too steep, every square mile will be affected by development, and I am fearful of what that will hold for the Illinois River."
And yet, despite these negotiation pitfalls, Mr. Fite and Oklahoma's secretary of the environment, Miles Tolbert, say they have been encouraged by what Mr. Tolbert calls Arkansas' ingenuity to meet the 1-part-per-million standard without spending millions of dollars. "The remarkable good news is that cities in northwest Arkansas can meet 1 part per million even with their existing technology," Mr. Tolbert said. "They're 24 times cleaner than two or three years ago, which means there's a lot of room to increase population there without adversely affecting the streams." Added Mr. Fite: "I don't know what will happen in 20 years with all the growth in Arkansas, but I am convinced that we can have our cake and eat it, too."
Arkansas River Shiner Coalition (Associated Press)
TULSA, Oklahoma -- No one is budging in the battle over an endangered species of fish called the Arkansas River shiner. Fish and Wildlife Service officials say they will continue efforts to protect the fish. Meanwhile, Oklahoma cattle producers vow to continue fighting those efforts.
The fish, about 2 inches long, is a silvery minnow that once flourished in the rivers and streams of Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas and New Mexico. Today, only a few thousand remain in the entire Canadian River system.
The Arkansas River Shiner Coalition, which includes the Oklahoma Cattlemen's Association, recently won a court battle in New Mexico, where a federal judge struck down a rule that designated parts of the Arkansas River as "critical habitat". But the ruling might not last. The judge struck down the rule only because the Wildlife Service failed to conduct the appropriate study on the economic impact of designating the areas "critical habitat". The Wildlife Service plans to conduct that study and reinstate the rule, said Ken Collins, a biologist for the service's branch office in Tulsa.
"It's not really that harmful a setback for us," Mr. Collins said. "We knew that we were going to have to do an economic impact study anyway. Now we'll speed up those plans."