Residents crowded a drop-in open house late last month at Fayetteville Public Library to learn about and comment on planned enhancements to the Combs Park complex. City officials want to expand the remote sports facility located in a southeast industrial district by creating the city's first "true river access," as planners refer to it, along the West Fork of the White River. Ted Jack is the city’s Park Planning Superintendent.
"The West Fork White River is great. I mean, it's just a really cool place, but getting there can be difficult." Jack said, referring to the hazardous shoreline.
A scant number of visitors visit this section of the West Fork flowing through the Pump Station dam, a late 19th-century drinking waterworks shuttered in the 1960s. But attempting to access the stream can be perilous. So the city has proposed removing the derelict dam to install a nature preserve and river beach access.
"This will make it easy to get to the site," Jack said. "It'll actually even have a [disability] access route going down to the water. So it will be a real neat destination that's different than anything we have, a great place for people to go without leaving the city, a great natural area."
The historic native-stone pump house and caretaker’s cottage will be restored as part of the planned nature preserve. Located four miles from Fayetteville town square, the enhanced park will also feature built surface trails to interconnect to the city's transportation trails system — as well as a regional "blue way" along the West Fork.
"Where you can put your canoe or kayak in," Jack said, "and if you want to do a two-hour paddle you could do that, if you want to do a four-hour float you could do that."
The Combs Park enhancement will be developed in phases costing an estimated $2.4 million dollars, the funding provided by sales tax bonds approved by Fayetteville voters in 2019.
A flock of Canadian geese flies over the dam on a recent morning as Matthew Van Eps, associate director of the nonprofit Watershed Conservation Resource Center headquartered in Fayetteville, stands downstream of the structure, surging with snowmelt and rainwater, and clogged with tons of forest debris.
"The damn itself has a maximum height to the top of the structure of about eight feet, and typically, the height of the water upstream and downstream of the dam has about a six-foot differential," Van Eps said. "The dam is about 100 feet wide."
Van Eps said the Watershed Conservation Resource Center is working with the Arkansas Natural Resources Conservation Service to accomplish the complicated and controlled demolition of the 135-year-old dam. He says when the design work is finished and funding approved, a specialist will be hired.
"The method of removing the dam would be to use a large hydraulic excavator with a hammer on the end of the arm to slowly pound out the concrete that composes the dam."
Sections of historic stonework tied to the riverbank will be preserved, Van Eps said. Demolition will be scheduled only during low flow, likely summer months, with drawdown gates opened to first slowly and safely release impounded water.
"As part of the design process, we looked at what kind of sediments were built up behind the dam, and we've come to find that most of the sediments that are in the backwater behind the dam are composed mostly of gravels and cobbles," Van Eps said. "And so there's not a lot of mobilized silt potential when we do remove the dam. So more than likely there won't be any dredging required, in fact we may end up having to add gravel material to the channel upstream of the dam because historically this channel has been dredged to encourage storage capacity."
"And once removed," Van Eps said, "that's going to allow ecosystems to really increase their diversity and populations of aquatic species and terrestrial species. All of the ecosystem will benefit by removing this dam."
Once complete, the shoreline adjacent to Combs Park will be improved.
"That will enable safe river access," Van Eps said. "And there will be a myriad of types of recreation activities."
The new public river access will be assessed and then monitored by the Arkansas Dept of Health Swim Beach Program. The West Fork of the White River originates in the Boston Mountains and has a seasonal, limited flow rate compared to high-volume whitewater streams like the Mulberry River.
"In the springtime, it's gonna be a really convenient place for somebody in Fayetteville after they get done with work to come down here, get on a kayak, have a float for an hour, and be able to return home for dinner with the family,," Van Eps said. "And you know we feel like when we're able to get the public onto rivers and streams that increases their interest in conserving and protecting those assets for everybody else."
According to American Rivers, more than 30,000 obsolete dams like this one are needlessly congesting our nation's waterways. Dam removal, the nonprofit claims, revitalizes streams.
Sandy Formica, executive director and founder of the Watershed Conservation Resource Center, and her team have completed 33 river and wetland restoration projects on the Arkansas Ozarks since 2008, with seven more in the works, including Combs Park enhancement.
"Currently, this dam is backing up water for about a mile, and it's creating a lake environment in the middle of a river environment," Formica said, "therefore we don't have the benefits of the river and the aeration through the riffles that we have in a natural system. So here, there's a lot of scour and that's because of the elevation difference between the height of the dam and the base of the river, and what that does is it blows out river banks downstream."
After the dam is removed, Formica's team will coordinate work to stabilize several miles of stream bed, as well as revegetate the river bank — an important terrestrial habitat referred to as riparian zones.
"The types of plant materials are based on the local ecoregion so everything we select to install or to revegetate the site will be plants that have been growing here for more than a thousand years," Formica said. "And we [source] plants on the existing site that have not been disturbed, to grow new plants from collected seeds and from bare roots."
Once complete, the new river access will link with the 32-mile West Fork White River Regional Water Trail, with access points extending from Brentwood Community Park south to State Highway 45 White River Access to the north. The water trail is a project led by the Watershed Conservation Resource Center in collaboration with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.
The West Fork is one of three main forks that comprise the White River System, which flows north into Missouri, then south into east Arkansas.
"This part of river has been neglected for decades," Formica said, "and we started this process back in 2015 suggesting to the city to maybe restore it and make it part of the community," Formica said. "And here we are today, we have a design at this point, we have the community supporting it and of course the city supporting it, and so the next step is to finalize the design, finalize the application for the funding and then to build it."
Back at the public meeting, Dirk Thibodaux, a landscape architect with Halff Associates in Bentonville, under contract to design the Combs Park enhancement, stands by a placard, fielding questions.
"Sidewalks [will go] through the park connecting to future trail systems," Thibodaux said. "And we're looking at pavilions so you could picnic, we're looking at ADA access so we're having everybody down into the river to play, kayak, tube, all those things that the river will allow us to do, [with] the city of Fayetteville providing amenities, including bathroom facilities, pavilions, and cookout places."
Thibodaux's team will also install native plants, shrubs and trees on the new dam site park preserve.
Fayetteville native David Baltz is excited about the project.
"I don't think many people know there's a blue heron rookery on this stretch of the river, on the oxbow," Baltz said. "I'm glad I came today because I think a lot of people look at that backwater as a drainage and overflow, and not part of an ecosystem. We love to fish for sunfish and brim, but also to take in the natural life. I mean we've seen mink, otter, beaver, groundhog, deer, fox, and the rookery is amazing if you can get there in the spring."
David's father, John Baltz, said he's fished this stretch of the West Fork for fifty years.
"I feel that it is the most unique place the White River has," Baltz said.
Elkins resident Julie Holland said she especially values the ever-expanding work of the Watershed Conservation Resource Center.
"I've been observing these river restoration projects for a few years," Holland said. "and I see that they are doing a fantastic job with this, so I see no reason to not further [Combs Park] to make the river as accessible as possible."
Even Fayetteville Mayor Lioneld Jordan plans to spend time on the Combs Park river beach access once complete.
"I'm real thrilled about this project, and you know this thing will go on long after I'm gone," Jordan said. "It'll be something that we can leave for our children, and our children's children. That's what's important."
Fayetteville park planners are asking residents to take a look at and comment on the Combs Park enhancement design and planning maps, which can be found on Speak Up Fayetteville.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated Matthew Van Eps name.
