[Eds. note: these are too long for letters, too short for guestatorials and too important to ignore]
Editor,
I am writing to express my deep concern over the proposed Rockhouse Road community rock quarry mining operation by Legacy Mining Co. My wife and I have lived on Rockhouse Road for 39 years, and watched this area develop from a sleepy bedroom community to a thriving tourist destination.
They come to swim, float and fish the Kings River, one of the most beautiful and serene rivers in the state, to hike the Nature Conservancy, and to play in Keels Creek. Virtually every motorcyclist and car club member that visits Eureka will travel the stunning picturesque back road drive through the Kings River Valley and the 6000 acre Kings River Nature Conservancy from Eureka Springs to Berryville that is Rockhouse Road.
Beyond the threat to tourism, the source of Eureka’s sustainability, there is an even deeper concern for the people that call this historic community home. Rock quarry operations, as confirmed by numerous government studies, are one of the most environmentally destructive forces known, particularly in a Karst formation. The mining operations of this sort can render local wells unusable, pollute surface water, including the Kings River, Keels Creek, and Winona Spring, plus numerous smaller unnamed springs that are all part of the watershed feeding the Kings River.
Underlying all of this is the Roubidoux aquifer, an important source of freshwater supplying public, commercial, industrial, and rural water districts in northeastern Oklahoma and northwest Arkansas, and the source of our personal well. The aquifer is already polluted on its western edge in Oklahoma from mining and fracking. Once polluted, groundwater a thousand feet below the surface is virtually impossible to purify.
Legacy Mining Co., on notice from the ADEQ for violating the Clean Water Act and accused of failing to repair damage to adjoining property is already proving to be a poor neighbor to the Rockhouse community – dangerous precedents and Legacy Mining Co. has not even started mining yet!
We can expect to see declining property values, visual impact, air pollution, groundwater contamination, surface water contamination, noise and vibration. Increased heavy truck traffic and damage to county roads will create hazardous traffic conditions on a narrow two lane county road for residents and tourists.
This can’t help but remind us of the $6.2 million C&H Hogs Farm fiasco. I would think that the land over time can recover from a hog farm, but when you remove hundreds of feet of soil and rock from the side of a mountain and pollute an aquifer, that damage is forever.
The Kings River has been designated by the state of Arkansas as an “Extraordinary Resource Waterbody.” This designation imposes restrictions on stream bed alterations and development and pollution in the river basin, and should be enforced.
Please, do not allow this to happen to our community in our “Natural State!”
Rick and Sara Armellini
Editor,
There was a time when humans didn’t know any better. They used rivers to flush sewage and waste from industries, they dammed them without thought to disrupting the creatures living in them. Water was harnessed to our needs with little concern for how our activities impacted the environment.
But now we know better. Our supplies of clean, healthy water are not unlimited, and there are more people sharing the same planet than ever before. We must learn to live thoughtfully.
Which is why recent reports of heavy equipment bulldozing trees below the high water line of the Kings River is so upsetting. Especially since it follows on news of a mining company looking to build a quarry in the watershed, and of possible illegally installed septic systems being put in at night due to the inability to pass perc tests. If the ground is unable to filter waste effectively, human sewage will instead run through the karst geology and into the river.
The Nature Conservancy just spend many hundreds of thousands of dollars to restore stream banks where the protective barrier of water oaks and sycamores had been cleared to increase pasture, inadvertently changing the course of the river. People didn’t know better back then, and the result was tons of soil washing into the water over time, smothering native mussels and changing the ecology of the river.
For the past six years many folks have been actively working to save the Buffalo National River from the impacts of a 6500-head hog farm of industrial scale. Within three years, we began to see miles of riverway filled with long ropes of algae that flourished as nutrients were flushed into the river. When the governor finally said “enough” and hammered out a deal to get the facility shut down and a permanent moratorium in place, thousands of people breathed a sigh of relief knowing that eventually the river will heal.
Now, within two weeks’ time, the Kings River is under similar assault. Mining interests and careless developments by people who don’t understand the fragile balance a watershed requires to remain healthy are putting the river at risk. What happens on the land will end up in the water. That’s a fact.
In karst, it can happen fast because not only is there runoff, but there is trickle-through. Septic tanks without sufficient soil will not work properly. People who want a sweeping lawn down to a river view will inadvertently fertilizer the river when they maintain that lovely lawn. Trees removed to enjoy that view destabilize the banks.
High waters will claw out denuded riparian zones, filling the river with dirt and sand. Heavy equipment cutting down trees and pushing piles of gravel into tributaries will all contribute to killing the river. Like the Buffalo, the Kings River is a treasure. But forces for “progress” see it as a treasure to be pillaged. Let’s not stand by and allow our shared resources to be used and abused for private profit. Humans may own the land, but the river belongs to all of us.
Lin Wellford