State devising actions to take with drought

One-third of counties said to have severe conditions

Arkansas officials plan to implement recommendations for actions the state should take during drought conditions, a water resources leader said.

Several Arkansas state agencies should start a network for drought monitoring by Thanksgiving and create councils for responding, communicating and evaluating drought risks, according to a report released in June. The report was compiled by FTN Associates for the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission.

No council has met yet, said Edward Swaim, water resources division manager for the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission, which spearheaded the drought planning efforts. But two meetings among local, state and federal officials in the past year have gotten people engaged in the process, Swaim said.

About one-third of Arkansas’ counties are currently in severe drought, according to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s National Drought Mitigation Center.

That’s already hurt a lot of cattle farmers, said Vic Ford, associate director for egg natural resources at the University of Arkansas Extension Service. Those farmers have been forced to feed cattle with hay that is often stored for use in winter months, he said. Cattle prices have dropped.

“It’s going to be very tough this year for farmers to make a profit,” Ford said.

When state officials first began work on a drought plan more than two years ago, Arkansas was one of only three states in the country that didn’t have one. The other two were Wisconsin and Alaska.

Droughts in other states have cost millions, even billions, of dollars. Drought plans anticipate droughts and resulting complications, and prepare responses to them before they happen.

Swaim has characterized the state’s response to the exceptional 2012 drought as being reactive.

In coming up with a drought plan, the Natural Resources Commission used the guidance of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln National Drought Mitigation Center and the Southern Climate Impacts Planning Program at the University of Oklahoma.

Later, the commission met with dozens of officials from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, University of Arkansas Extension Service, the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management and several other entities to discuss recommendations for the state’s path forward.

“It’s just a work in progress, and we started with nothing, so now we have a way to move forward,” Swaim said. “So I’m encouraged, and we’ve got that work group.”

The report issued by FTN Associates recommended a tiered drought network, with the council being the top tier and leading the network. The council would be comprised of members of the Department of Emergency Management, the Natural Resources

Commission, the Arkansas Department of Health, the National Weather Service, the Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Geological Survey.

The whole network should include public and private representatives, the report said. The other two tiers should consist of dozens of such entities, ranging in scope from local to national.

They would oversee monitoring, risk evaluation, responses and public outreach. Proactive steps to manage or mitigate a drought could include informing the public about water conservation practices or encouraging the storage of surface water and rainwater.

The U.S. Climate Prediction Center’s long-term projections from now until the end of October call for dry conditions to persist in Arkansas, despite recent rains, said Chris Buananno, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in North Little Rock.

University of Arkansas System’s Division of Agriculture data show that heavy rains can cost the state tens of millions of dollars and even top $100 million in a particularly rainy season, but the division does not have similar data on the costs of drought.

Drought costs come in ma- ny forms, and the impact of a drought depends on location.

For example, so far this year, drought conditions have lowered water levels in Washington County rivers, rendering them too low to float on, according to the Drought Mitigation Center’s Drought Impact Reporter.

The grass in hay yields has been lower than usual, and some farmers have had to feed hay to their cattle because the grass has stopped growing.

Fire risks have risen. Several counties have had burn bans, and some Fourth of July fireworks displays were canceled.

Droughts can also reduce dissolved oxygen levels in water that can kill fish, Ford said. Droughts can kill farmers’ crops, and herbicides that need rain to activate them don’t work. Some farmers have been concerned as recently as last week about their ability to use such herbicides, he said.

Fortunately, so far this year, row-crop-heavy eastern Arkansas has been mostly free of severe drought, Ford said.