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Northwest Arkansas Times Monday, June 17, 2002 Reprinted with author's permission Of carts and horses: How the I-540 business park vision is or isn't shaping up BY FRAN ALEXANDER Deciding what step to take first in a huge development is probably much like writing the first sentence in a novel. There is a lot to come after the initial plunge and if anyone is going to be convinced to join the journey, whether through the pages of a book or through construction of buildings, that initial foundation had better be good. When first purchased by the city over a decade ago, a 300-acre property on I-540 was, I seem to remember, supposed to be an industrial park. Then that vision changed and it was to become a research and technology park. Next, and until last week, it was being called a business tech park, and now the mayor has decided to clear up the confusion and dub it the "Wilson Springs Business Park." Gee, now things are certainly crystal clear. In my last article I wrote about this land and the wetland characteristics that exist over at least a third of it. The very few scientists who have done any research there have found some amazing critters living in the wet conditions, especially amazing because that land has had some extreme pressures put upon it. A highway is built on its east side, and Clabber Creek has been channelized to drain water away even as other drainage water is dumped on the property from other sites. Much of the natural vegetation has been removed and replaced with pasture grasses, both sewer and cable lines have been put in, and bulldozers have pushed dirt around for a variety of reasons. It is a tribute to her tenacity that Mother Nature continues trying to keep this parcel of land alive with animals, plants, and the water that supports them. But, as is proven every day across the globe, there is a tipping point where too much disruption causes change from which there is no recovery for numerous species of plants and animals. Sometimes poor water quality or extreme temperatures kill aquatic life, and other creatures that fed or depended on that resource must move on, if they can, to find food or habitat elsewhere. Or, more likely, they simply die out. This has become a worldwide situation as we humans ignore how life, including ours, works. The hardest uphill battle in any environmental effort is dealing with people who laugh and scoff at those trying to prevent the loss of diversity in ecosystems. By deflecting away from science and simplifying issues with name-calling (we environmental messengers get dubbed such things as "whackos," "treehuggers," or "ecofreaks"), those who want to do whatever they wish to the environment get a lot of attention. The more fun detractors can poke at the value of saving something as seemingly insignificant as a small fish or unusual bird, the more headway is made in the media race to put environmental issues in the closet. Another method used to make sticky situations go away is to pretend they just do not exist, the famous head-in-the-sand technique. Both of these tactics have been in play lately in Fayetteville. The one continuous statement heard from local environmentalists in regard to the city's plans to develop this 300 acres is that professional assessments be made of the physical and biological systems functioning on that land. If we do not know what we have there, we will not know what we could lose. Since their position has always been for development to stay out of the wetlands completely, no environmentalists ever asked the city to present any different options. That approach came from council members and administrative officials in what apparently was an effort to try on different sizes of land impact plans to see if any of them would fit this property economically . As the months have passed, much information has begun to be gathered by interested volunteer researchers about this special place in Fayetteville. Those who wanted these findings to be considered in the discussions about planning for this business tech park continued to ask questions and spoke up at meetings. To them it seemed only logical that basic scientific information should come first before plans were drawn up showing roads and building areas. They felt that what was on the land and how it survived should be the horse pulling the cart of decisions, not the other way around. However, because they seemed unimpressed with what they were given instead -- lines on maps and acres tallied up like poker chips -- the environmentalists were told they could not be satisfied. Their information and data seemed to be invisible as the only discussions about the site always centered on where development would go, not how such activity might change or harm what is there now. The whole premise to woo business and technology to Fayetteville has been that we want to attract high paying jobs for our young college graduates and professional citizenry. This is a noble and worthy goal with which I have no argument, especially since my husband is the owner of a technical software development company in Houston. But, part of being intelligent and technically astute is in recognizing the inherent value of what is right in front of our faces and putting it to work for us. The true "high tech" in motion on this planet is in our natural world's living systems, and we need to try and figure them out. We have been blessed with an incredibly diverse place right here in our town that harbors a few rare life forms. Instead of carving up this laboratory for some fragmented vision of dubious financial benefit, perhaps we had best lift the lid of this treasure chest first and find out what we have here. What is living in this spot may be far more valuable than any fancy buildings or high-sounding companies which could be constructed anywhere, and eventually may even provide more research, educational, and tourist value than widget-gadget companies can ever generate. |