Partners air differences at Bayou Meto meeting

The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission held an enlightening meeting Wednesday with the major partners in the Bayou Meto Irrigation Project, which encompasses Bayou Meto Wildlife Management Area.

One thing we learned is that the project is too large and too unwieldy — with too many partners and too many objectives — to function properly.

We also learned that if the project is not completed in a timely manner, the state of Arkansas could forfeit all the money it has invested in the project back to the federal government.

Thirdly, the Game and Fish Commission misunderstood the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission’s role in the project. Only Wednesday did Ryan Benefield, the Natural Resources Commission’s deputy director, clearly articulate the ANRC’s role.

While the Natural Resources Commission is the primary partner in the project, Benefield said the agency is essentially a bank. The ANRC itself is not appropriated to do any of the physical work, nor does it delegate or originate any of the work to other partners. It loans money to the various partners to enable them to do their work.

Think of the Natural Resources Commission as a reservoir, with multiple aqueducts branching out to the partners.

The Game and Fish Commission fulfilled its financial obligation to the project long ago, but it gets nothing in return. In fact, it has been damaged by the project’s dysfunction, which is symbolized by a giant pump station at Reydell that is not even connected to electricity.

Why is the project not finished?

Apparently, the Bayou Meto Water Management District has no mechanism to fund draining the southern portion of the district south of Arkansas 79.

The north portion is structured for irrigation, but the irrigation pump station at Scott doesn’t work, either, despite landowners north of Arkansas 79 having paid taxes to the irrigation district for years.

George Dunklin, a major landowner in Arkansas County and a former member of the Game and Fish Commission, attended the meeting. He said a solution would be to persuade landowners to form a new district south of Arkansas 79. Another solution would be to simply expand the existing district to cover the entire project. After all, landowners north of Arkansas 79 benefit from draining the area south of Arkansas 79.

Jennifer Sheehan, the Game and Fish Commission’s interagency and federal liaison, stunned the attendees when she said that continued inertia could trigger a financial default.

“If we don’t build this project, the state has to pay back every single cent that has been spent on it,” Sheehan said, adding that it has happened in similar situations in Louisiana and Mississippi.

Benefield seemed mystified by the revelation.

“There’s always a possibility, but I don’t read that into our two agreements,” Benefield said.

Game and Fish Commissioner Bobby Martin of Rogers said it is imprudent to dismiss remote possibilities.

“We would be delinquent to not acknowledge risk and liability where there is precedence,” Martin said. “We need to be more sober about it than to say it’s just not going to happen.”

On the upside, there has been progress in other areas. Originally, Entergy was to assess a demand charge of $11,500 per month power to the Reydell pump station. Before his term ended in June, former Game and Fish Commissioner Ford Overton of Little Rock brokered a deal with Entergy to waive the demand charge. The AGFC will only be charged for the power the pump station actually uses, which will save the AGFC $138,000 a year when the pump station isn’t used.

Game and Fish Commission Chairman Ken Reeves of Harrison summed up the commission’s frustration with a closing statement.

“Everybody that knows anything about Bayou Meto knows that Game and Fish Commission owns it, and when they see something wrong, they blame us,” Reeves said. “We’re not a party to the principle agreement. We’re a third-party beneficiary. More lately, we’re more like a third-party victim.

“This project was supposed to have been completed in 2017,” Reeves continued, “but it’s very likely this project could go up another 10 or 15 percent or more. Nobody is waiting on the AGFC to do anything. We’ve done everything we were committed to do. We’ve paid every penny we were supposed to pay, and we paid it on time.”