Critters Curtail Construction

Blind fish, burying beetles, barn swallows and Indiana bats can slow down construction projects in Northwest Arkansas.

It has cost millions of dollars to veer highways around the habitats of the Ozark blind cave fish, said Jonathan Barnett of Siloam Springs, a member of the Arkansas State Highway Commission.

“A healthy planet needs to have an intact ecosystem, in other words, all its parts,” said Tom McKinney, chairman of the Sierra Club’s Ozark Headwaters Group.

The blind fish inhabit seven caves in Northwest Arkansas and another 14 caves in Missouri, Oklahoma and other parts of Arkansas.

Interstate 540 was routed a mile to the east at Lowell to avoid the cave fish habitat in Cave Springs. Highway commissioners also had to take the tiny fish into consideration when planning the U.S. Highway 412 bypass north of Springdale, which is still in the pre-construction, red-tape phase.

The Ozark blind cave fish aren’t on the federal endangered species list, but they’re officially “threatened.”

After living in caves for millions of years, the fish have lost their eyes and pigmentation. They basically have see-through skin with visible blood vessels. Their eyes have become small spots of residual nerves, so they use tiny, whiskerlike sensory organs on their head and sides to feel their way through the water and detect the movements of their prey.

Before large construction projects can begin in Northwest Arkansas, environmental studies must be done, and highways have to be routed around the habitat of the blind cave fish as well as the habitats of other threatened or endangered species in the area.

“Even though the blind cave fish may not seem important, it’s very sensitive to groundwater pollution,” McKinney said. “So it’s an indicator to groundwater health in Northwest Arkansas.”

Scott Van Laningham, director of the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport in Highfill, said the airport board immediately threw out three of the six proposed corridors for a new access road linking the facility to Interstate 540, eight miles to the east.

The three corridors were in the recharge area of Cave Springs Cave, one of the habitats of the blind cave fish. Rainwater that runs off from the area could get into the underground aquifer that flows into the caves, and pollution (such as jet fuel) from the runoff could kill the fish. Van Laningham said he remembered this issue from the mid-1990s when he was working on plans for the airport, which opened in late 1998.

Van Laningham said three pairs of ponds were built on the airport property to catch the first one-half inch of rainfall runoff from all paved surfaces on the property. The theory is the first half inch of rain would contain the majority of pollutants from the pavement.

An environmental study of the proposed airport access road has been under way for a year. Van Laningham said he hopes to have a draft of it available for public inspection this spring. That $35 million project is scheduled to be completed in 2005.

Hard to Swallow

The Arkansas Department of Highways and Transportation is behind on three of its 53 projects, most of which involve the $1 billion, five-year overhaul of 380 miles of interstate highways.

One of those projects concerns the renovation of two pairs of bridges on Interstate 40 just east of Clarksville in Johnson County. One pair of bridges spans Spadra Creek. The other goes over Little Spadra Creek.

The $18.9 million project, which involves a total of 12.2 miles of roadway, was held up because of swallows — cliff swallows and barn swallows, to be exact. Swallows are protected under the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918.

“They’re such a common bird, unfortunately we didn’t know they were protected,” said Randy Ort, a spokesman for the highway department. “Our focus had always been on endangered species.”

Ort said the AHTD first learned that swallows were protected a couple of years ago when working on bridges that spanned Beaver Lake on U.S. Highway 412.

A Johnson County resident told the highway department the birds were nesting under the bridges near Clarksville, Ort said. Swallows are “colonial nesters,” so there were dozens of nests under the bridges, he said.

Because of the nests, the AHTD had to hold off on its demolition of the old bridges. Traffic is still moving over those bridges, so it hasn’t caused any driving delays, Ort said.

“We fall under the purview of the federal Fish and Wildlife Services,” Ort said. “[They] will not allow you to remove the nests. However, they will allow us to place protective netting under the bridges to prevent the birds from getting to the nests.”

But that has to be done when the birds are away from the nests. The migratory season in Arkansas is officially from April 1 to Aug. 31 each year, so the construction that was planned to begin last summer had to be delayed.

Work on the project didn’t begin in the fall because a “full construction season” in warm weather was needed for the nine-month project, Ort said. Now, the highway department plans to start the demolition this spring with the swallows netted away from the bridges. APAC-Georgia Inc. is the contractor for that project.

On Jan. 24, the highway department awarded a contract of $98,958 to Time Striping Inc. of Van Buren to place netting on 13 bridges slated for renovation in Arkansas to keep swallows away. The work is under way and must be completed by April 1 so construction can take place this summer on those bridges.

“This should let us avoid what happened last year in Clarksville,” Ort said.

Arkansas Darter

The proposed Fayetteville Business Technology Park has run into several problems since the city purchased the 289-acre site for $3 million in the late 1980s. Construction has yet to begin at the property west of the intersection of Interstate 540 and Arkansas Highway 112, but the city plans to take bids in October to begin work on roads and other infrastructure.

Southwestern Bell laid fiber optic cable at the site in 1990 as part of a settlement with the Arkasas Public Service Commision. Since then, however, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has designated about 100 acres of the site as wetlands.

Mayor Dan Coody said he knew back in 1990 that about 80 acres of the site could be classified as wetlands. When the city bought the land, and cattle that had been grazing there were moved to other pastures, wetlands plants grew in an additional 20 acres of the city’s property, he said.

The property is also home to the Arkansas darter, a three-inch-long cousin to the walleye and yellow perch that is a candidate for the federal endangered species list.

“I don’t know if anyone’s ever seen a darter fish out there,” said Jeremy Webb, president of IFworld Inc. “That water is filthy.”

IFworld, previously known as Interface Computer, was to be the first tenant of the technology park. The company purchased two and a half acres of land on a hill there. After the wetlands and darter problems arose, IFworld decided to back out of the deal. The city refunded the company $134,000 in March 2001.

Webb said he was concerned that the wetlands and darter would hamper development at the park, and technology thrives on technology.

“Technology companies feed off each other and can really help each other,” he said. “We wanted to be in a technology park, so we were concerned with future development there.”

Instead, IFworld moved to the former IBM building on College Avenue in Fayetteville. That building also has fiber optic cable. The technology park was the only place in the area that had fiber optics back in 1990.

But when given lemons, Fayetteville’s mayor decided to make lemonade. Coody now is pitching the proposed technology park as a unique business park nestled up against a 100-acre natural preserve with natural trails and preserved habitats.

“That will be the centerpiece for the office park,” he said of the wetlands.

“We’re going to turn this into a one-of-a-kind deal,” Coody said. “The city bought a bunch of swampland. We’re going to convert it into a habitat. The thing sat out there for 12 years, and we didn’t get started on it. We’re bound and determined to make it start coming out of the ground this year.”

Stomped Chickens

Barnett said the highway department has encountered construction obstacles other than living critters.

The AHTD is currently waiting for the Osage Indian Tribe of Oklahoma to give it the O.K. to continue with construction on Arkansas Highway 94 (New Hope Road) in Rogers, where Indian artifacts were discovered in late January.

Then there’s the dip in Interstate 540 just south of Springdale. That’s critter-related, but it’s a totally different story. Barnett said a gigantic chicken burial ground exists under the interstate there. That’s where the area’s poultry companies used to discard chicken carcasses.

Instead of routing the interstate around the chicken burial ground, engineers thought they had figured out a way to pave over it.

“It wasn’t feasible to go around it,” Barnett said. “Some highway engineers figured out they could use some sort of hydraulic stomper to stomp down and pave over it. It didn’t work. The road is continually sagging. They keep going back in there to pave it out.

“There were tons and tons and tons” of chicken remains buried there, he continued. “It was more than they could remove. It was really deep, and there was lots of it. They compressed and smashed it, and it’s still moving.”