Northwest Arkansas has been one of the faster growing regions in the country in recent years. While that is great for economic development and job creation, population growth and industry expansion are also increasing the amount of nutrient pollution in the Upper White River watershed that feeds into Beaver Lake, the source of drinking water for one in five Arkansans and water for food processing facilities.
Lane Crider, CEO of the Beaver Water District (BWD), said pollution that can lead to algae blooms creating toxic water conditions is increasing in the area. White River watershed phosphorus levels have increased by 35 percent and nitrogen is up 31 percent in the past five years.
“If nutrient levels continue to increase and are combined with the right environmental conditions, it could be catastrophic,” Crider said. “In addition to affecting residential water for 400,000 area residents who are customers of the BWD, poultry plants and food processors in our water district would have to shut down.”
The past few years there have been no contact orders—no swimming or other water-based activities–for Lake Fayetteville because of cyanotoxins, a type of blue-green algae. There have been other bodies of water in the state and elsewhere similarly impacted.
“It depends on the body of water,” Crider said. “The smaller, shallower water bodies are more likely to have conditions ripe for those types of blooms. But several years ago, Toledo, Ohio, a huge metropolitan area on the shores of the Great Lakes, had a cyanotoxin event. They had to stop providing water until they could make sure the cyanotoxin was no longer present. I’m not trying to portray this as a ‘Chicken Little the Sky is Falling’ statement. What I am trying to communicate is how important it is that as we provide updates to watershed management plans and pursue regulatory opportunities to make regulations more protective of water quality.”
There was a long-running lawsuit between Oklahoma and Arkansas regarding pollution from Arkansas leading to nutrient surpluses in the Illinois River that caused poor water quality and algae blooms. Arkansas agreed to reduce pollution from land application of poultry litter, which was considered a major culprit.
“The poultry industry has done a great job being able to reduce nutrient loads in the Illinois River,” Crider said. “But I don’t want the Beaver watershed to be a stepchild taken for granted. Obviously, it is extremely important to NWA to maintain that water quality.”
The Illinois River has seen average reductions of nutrient loading of 15 percent since 2019, while the numbers increased in the Beaver/White River watershed. Crider said the success with the Illinois River experience has provided a lot of impetus.
“The concerns with those nutrients are the same in either watershed,” he said. “We are working diligently to try to maintain the water quality in the lake and the subsequent watersheds. But sub-watersheds like War Eagle and West Fork and others are under a lot of pressure in terms of land application of nutrients and development.
“Without offsets to stem some of those increases, we could see water quality continue to decline because of the application of industrial waste, not just poultry waste, but food waste from other industries. I just want that to be recognized. We still have work to do in the watershed that provides all our drinking water.”
In addition to poultry litter spread on farmland, there are food protein industries in the region that have waste products from processing. Often the simplest and most economical solution is to apply the wastes to farmland closest to the source where industries are producing the waste. Those wastes are typically high in nitrogen and phosphorus.
The summer of 2023 has been in sharp contrast to the period of July and August 2022 when there was a drought and high temperatures. This summer there have been frequent and heavy rainfalls. An extended period of hot and dry weather creates ideal conditions for algal growth.
“And it can become significant really quickly,” Crider said. “When you get a bloom, it can go from a small area to a significantly larger area in short order. That is why we monitor water quality on the upper reaches of the watershed on a daily basis.”
Beaver Dam possibly wouldn’t exist without the need for municipal and industrial water. Crider said when Beaver Dam was being evaluated by the Army Corps of Engineers for hydropower and flood control, it didn’t meet the required cost-benefit analysis to be built. The Beaver Dam Association successfully lobbied Congress to include water for municipal and industrial purposes to the cost-benefit analysis which allowed the Beaver Dam project to go forward.
“It wasn’t built solely for drinking water purposes but drinking water is how it became justifiable,” Crider said.
Eureka Springs, Berryville, Green Forest and Harrison get water from the Carroll-Boone Water District near the dam as opposed to the BWD intakes in Lowell. Temperatures are cooler, and there is less turbidity in the deep waters near the dam.
“If I could pick our facility and put it somewhere closer to the dam, that would be great,” Crider said. “For Beaver Water District, when we were established in the late 1950s, where we located in Lowell was the center of the population. It would have been a significant cost to be farther away. Our staff does a fantastic job of treating water. But because we are farther upstream in more of the riverine section of the lake, we have higher influences of those turbidity events and the potential for large algae blooms that use nitrogen and phosphorus as food sources. The fear we have with a large blue green algal bloom upstream is the risk that it can spread to our water intake facility.”
The I-49 corridor in Northwest Arkansas has been seeing significant growth and development pressure. Crider said there is a ripple effect that spreads out creating demand on not just water infrastructure but roads, electrical transmission and solid waste disposal.
“It is always a Catch-22 to some degree,” Crider said. “We want to maintain what we have here in Northwest Arkansas in terms of natural beauty and resources, and that is difficult to do at the same pace that development occurs.”