Marcia Yearsley is one of about 500 property owners identified for eminent domain acquisition of their waterfront property on Beaver Lake. Yearsley’s property has an erratic boundary line along 1,200 feet with some land reaching into the water. Depending on lake levels, varying amounts of her property can be underwater.
Yearsley’s property is in Penitentiary Hollow in an area considered one of the more scenic spots on the lake with waterfalls at the end of the hollow. Her property is mostly high rock bluffs with a steep natural staircase down to the water.
Yearsley worked hard to prevent her waterfront property from being taken by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and doesn’t see that she is doing anything that harms the lake. She said the USACE could do more to control erosion that threatens water quality and the amount of water that can be stored in the reservoir by establishing no wake zones in places like Penitentiary Hollow.
“Every weekend from Memorial Day through Labor Day it is a circus down here,” she said. “Every year it gets worse. We get a lot of boats from Oklahoma and Texas that come Friday through Sunday. There is a lot of drinking, loud music and fast boats that make big wakes. The jet skis are even worse. If you are swimming, you can get wiped out. It gets really dangerous late in the afternoon with boats coming in at such high speeds that they make big wakes that are causing erosion and are dangerous to people swimming, kayaking or floating. I wish they would make it a low wake zone out here.”
Corps spokesman Jay Townsend said the placement of buoys in coves to moor boats or to carry no wake zone signs are not allowed.
“The placement of buoys on Beaver is done by marinas/resorts (with our permission) or our agency for hazards or around beaches,” Townsend said. “The Corps does not place buoys on individual coves on the lake. I would advise her (Yearsley) to talk to our Duty Ranger, Arkansas Game & Fish Commission and/or the County Sheriff’s Office about issues in her cove. We can step up our patrols or be on the lookout for issues she is seeing.”
Yearsley said she was glad to hear that the Corps wants to limit the number of boats on the lake. Each year there seem to be more and larger boats. An 81-foot-long boat visited Hogscald recently.
Yearsley recalls that the last big controversy about Beaver Lake was in the early 2000s when there was a petition to move Starkey Marine to the Cliffs near the dam so the applicant could build a tourist attraction similar to Big Cedar at the site of the Starkey Marina.
“Eureka people got wind of that and went to war,” Yearsley recalls. “We had about two hundred people gathered on the cliffs. The Corps did act to save the Cliffs across from the dam.”