A project is underway to restore a portion of land alongside Lake Bella Vista, which is expected to increase resistance to erosion and improve water quality.
Sandi Formica, executive director of the Watershed Conservation Resource Center, said that the work between the lake and U.S. Highway 71 is part of an agreement with the city of Bentonville and is wholly unrelated to any discussion regarding the fate of the Lake Bella Vista dam.
The WCRC has previously worked on a portion of streambank downstream from there, alongside the recent Razorback Greenway extension, as well as Tanyard Creek.
The project is funded by an EPA Wetland Program Development Grant, she said, and it was started last year.
The goal was to stabilize and restore a natural depression, she said, where water collects during rains before flowing back into the nearby waterway. This project should be particularly helpful, she said, in reducing erosion during floods.
The first step was to stop mowing and see what came up, she said, before bolstering the native plant population.
"There were a lot of invasives," she said.
These invasives -- including curly dock, Johnsongrass and plantain -- needed to be removed, she explained, while seeds were placed for native plants.
The goal is to have a network of plants that can stabilize the soil and slow water flow, she said, as well as filter water as it is reintroduced to the waterway.
While the project isn't attractive now, Formica said the end goal should be more attractive. But it's important to note that this is a very long-term project, she said, and will look better each year.
"Hopefully it will be beautiful, but this takes time," she said. "We're in it for the long haul."
Joe Hixson, a field technician for the WCRC, said one major benefit for this project is that it will help filter runoff from the interstate and reduce the pollution making its way into Lake Bella Vista and Little Sugar Creek.
The most intense work has been done where the depression tapers and forms a channel to the lake, he said, where workers have placed stout flowering grasses and others to form a network of thick vegetation that will slow water flow and stabilize soil, forming something of a biofilter.
The water will flow through this vegetation mass, he said, before going under the Lake Bella Vista trail and into the waterway.
Once the plant life is established, he said, workers will need to keep an eye on it and maintain the land for a while. There are some projects, he said, that are years old and still under examination.
"It's early on for one of our projects," he said.
General News on 09/19/2018