Tanglewood Branch, a pretty little creek, flows through the heart of Fayetteville this morning in a new city park named the Lower Ramble. The stream drains a large downtown commercial and residential district, yet runs amazingly clear, small fish darting through the shallows.
The creek has been impaired for decades by flash flooding, littered with forest debris and trash, and overgrown with invasive greenery. Watershed Conservation Resource Center staff based in Fayetteville collaborated with the Fayetteville parks staff in 2021 to initiate the Tanglewood Creek restoration project. Tons of debris and trash were removed, boulders and cut block were hauled in and strategically placed in the creek bed and along the banks to reduce water velocity and create pools and cleansing riffles. Native plants and trees were installed to prevent soil erosion. Upstream, a tiny wetland was also restored along a spring-fed tributary. Wetlands, also referred to as marshes, swamps, bogs, and fens, are disappearing on the Ozarks due to agricultural and urban development.
“Wetlands are very simple, they’re just areas that hold water,” said Sandi Formica, executive director of the Watershed Conservation Resource Center. Formica hikes above Tanglewood Branch, just below the new Fayetteville Public Library addition, to show us.
“The hydrology with all the development had changed, and so there were wet springs coming out of the hillside that had emerged," she said. "So we ended up restoring that whole area into a wetland. We harvested seed from wetlands on the West fork of the White River and we put that seed here and now there's several species of wetland plants. And we added a lot of boulders, hoping that we have salamanders that come and populate this area.”
The Watershed Conservation Resource Center has restored or improved more than thirty aquatic ecosystems in the region, with the help of federal, state and local grant funding. Measurable data from this work reveals vastly reduced streambank erosion, sedimentation and agricultural phosphorus pollution.
“You need wetlands to help keep the water clean so it’s less costly to treat," Formica said. "For example the West Fork flows to the White River which forms Beaver Lake and that's a northwest Arkansas drinking water source. It's in everybody's best interest to protect wetlands in order to keep our drinking water and our rivers clean. We like to fish, swim, boat in our rivers. We need those wetlands to make it a nice experience.”
Formica walks deeper into the terraced Tanglewood wetland, lush with native rushes called junkus, brilliant red cardinal flower, rose mallow, and blue lobelia.
“Wetlands are essential for protecting water quality and a lot of times we think of them as a nuisance," she said. "But they’re actually working for us, and they're not a nuisance at all. We need wetlands. They filter pollutants, they create special habitats that other land features don't create, so you get more species diversity, they retain water so they reduce flows to our streams, preventing streambank erosion.”
EPA and the US Army Corp of engineers have ecological jurisdiction over what’s referred to as WOTUS or “Waters of the United States." These agencies protect oceans, lakes and rivers. That also includes ephemeral or intermittent streams and wetlands. But that protection ended last May, when the Supreme Court ruled that the Clean Water Act extends only to wetlands that have a “continuous surface connection” with navigable waters. Many developers and private property rights advocates have long pressed for this change, leaving protection of ephemeral waterways to states, counties and cities.
We queried the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers in Little Rock for comment on the ruling. Public Affairs Chief, Randall “Jay” Thompson says he couldn’t comment due to litigation by EPA.
For now the rule’s immediate effect requires the Corps of Engineers and EPA to pause all Clean Water Act jurisdictional determinations, until next steps are decided. In the near term, agencies may issue informal guidance to ensure that Clean Water Act permitting decisions are consistent with the court’s decision.
Sandi Formica declined to comment on the Supreme Court ruling or the political debate surrounding the decision. But she says this Tanglewood Creek wetland is one of several types of Ozark Highlands wetlands.
“On the West Fork of the White River, a mountain stream, you have more riverine wetlands," she explained. "There are also prairie features near the floodplains of the West Fork, called 'wet prairies.' But you also have quite a few natural riverine wetlands and they are generally created from old channel scars from when the river was in a different location. And in the lower part of the West Fork we have some really special wetlands. We worked with a government agency that coined the term 'Ozark Highlands Oxbow.' And what makes them special is they act like a river oxbow that you see in central or southern Arkansas but they're connected to the channel at what we call the bankfull flow, where the fish use it for a nursery."
Formica says wetlands provide critical aquatic ecosystem services creating rich habitat for aquatic and terrestrial wildlife, and people.
