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Northwest Arkansas Times Monday, June 3, 2002 Reprinted with author's permission Fayetteville's valuable sponge: Wetlands are treasures to be protected BY FRAN ALEXANDER - "Squish, squash, squooch" are the sounds humans make walking on water, or almost walking on water, that is. For the last few months, several folks have been slogging around in one of the town's wettest areas in pursuit of information. Have you heard them? The citizens of Fayetteville own a wetland approximately 84 acres in size that is sitting smack in the middle of an almost 300 acre (overall) parcel. This property has long been touted as a good location for commercial use since e much of it fronts Interstate 540. Currently the idea is for development of a business technology park, and engineers have been busy drawing up different land use options for the site. After centuries of draining our nation's landscape, the United States now has less than half the wetlands that existed in the 1600s and continues to lose a half million acres each year. Drying out land seemed the logical thing to do at the time of settling this country, but we are now beginning to learn the practice might not have been so clever after all. Humans can take a long time to find value in some of Mother Nature's more dubious ideas, and we pursue our notion that we must dominate instead of understand the natural world. Troubles in watersheds, water tables, and wetlands are certainly cases in point. Sloughs, fens, bogs, swamps, prairie potholes, playas, vernal pools, marshes, and my favorite, pocosins, are all names for different types of wetlands. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, "An estimated 5,000 plants, 190 amphibians and reptiles, one-third of all birds, and 35 percent of all the federally listed threatened and endangered species depend on wetlands for their survival." These kinds of land features also serve as flood sponges, capturing excessive water and slowly filtering pollutants and dirt particles out before they enter larger creeks and rivers. Wetlands are even used as a sewage treatment method by some towns. Approaching development in soggy areas or near them is different from locating on more simple ground chiefly because of all the ingredients, which are combined in a wetland recipe. If there is a desire to keep this system intact and to keep it working, several precautions must be taken. First and foremost, brain power must be applied to the site and basic scientific protocol for learning followed. Brains that know how to identify what is going on with the water underground as well as on top and brains educated about soil types and that know how to recognize and survey plant and animal ranges are all needed to examine the land's evidence. Fayetteville has contracted an engineering firm to investigate how the region outside the wetlands could be designed for development and to recommend which of the soggy areas on more desirable locations might be "mitigated" elsewhere on the property. It is this mud mitigation possibility, as well as crisscrossing roads in the lower areas, that has sent up red flags to some local environmentalists, yours truly included. It certainly would seem that moving a hole or depression should not be too hard or that big a deal. But, wetland characteristics have usually taken decades to form. The "hydric" soil under water does not get air and layers of plant material accumulate over time changing the soil chemistry. Specialized plants, like lilies that float or reeds which are living tubes or cypress trees with knees, figure out how to breathe on or in water. With plants come animals that feed and live in the location, quite often in communities containing a lot of diverse characters. (Sounds like Fayetteville doesn't it?) The trick to moving all of these players somewhere else is in understanding how much change is too much. Since we do not yet know what all is living in this particular wetland, we do not know how much we can damage or sacrifice without bringing down this ecosystem as it is currently functioning. So moving (mitigating) a hole can get quite complicated if you are truly trying to not throw things out of balance. People often ask me if the wet areas are not touched by construction, will the ecosystems be OK? No one knows because we have never had that kind of research done. If study shows that use of the higher drier side of the property is safe to develop from an environmental standpoint, and I certainly hope that is the case, maintaining the integrity of the wetland will then really depend on how well behaved the next bull in the china shop acts. Construction is sloppy brutal work and more eroding dirt washing into the wetland than it can filter or too many pollutants from machinery, road materials, and other sources could greatly harm the site. Unfortunately it has been my observation that just keeping a construction fence around a tree, or silt fences catching silt, seems to require more effort than some work sites are capable of exerting. Protection is certainly possible but people must care enough. The city has several creative low-impact strategies for the development and use of this property, and I commend them for committing to this philosophy of design. It is already a miracle that this wetland has survived the impacts upon it over the years so we need to understand as thoroughly as possible how we can delicately proceed in using this ground. Several people who have been asking environmental and financial questions do not feel there has been a process set out to systematically have these issues answered before more decisions are made and money spent. The city's Environmental Concerns Committee is therefore holding a meeting at City Hall Wednesday at 7 p.m. and inviting citizens to frame questions about their concerns regarding this project. Please come and let's talk -- not sling -- mud! |