West Fork White River Removed from Impaired Waterbodies List
The West Fork of the White River (WFWR), a tributary of Beaver Lake, the drinking water source for 1 in 6 Arkansans, has recently been removed from Arkansas’s impaired waterbodies list. The AWRC contributed to this watershed success story by carrying out multiple years of intensive water quality sampling on the WFWR, providing the data needed for delisting.
Since 1998, 27.2 miles of the WFWR had been listed as impaired for turbidity and sediment. But, in 2018, the upper 16.5 miles of the WFWR met criteria for removal from the impaired waters list. The delisting has been highlighted by the Environmental Protection Agency in its July 2022 Success Story publication and is the culmination of partnerships between the Watershed Conservation Resources Center, Beaver Watershed Alliance, Beaver Water District, and the AWRC, funded by the Arkansas Department of Agriculture – Natural Resources Division.
Read more about the WFWR Watershed Success Story here
More information about the AWRC’s monitoring and water quality findings for the WFWR are available in the Center’s technical report on the project and an article published in the Journal of Contemporary Water Research and Education.
Image courtesy of the Environmental Protection Agency
