‘Stump dump’ fire’s origins need a look

Wafting up through the ground in a Bella Vista ravine is a heavy dose of choking smoke that signals a failure to protect Arkansas’ environment and her people.

Whose failure? The politicians have so far shown eagerness to ride to the rescue with taxpayer dollars to clean up the mess most people know as the Bella Vista stump dump fire, but there has been precious little so far in terms of pressure for an investigation into what created this environmental debacle in the first place.

It would be a shame if, at the end of all of this, the Arkansas taxpayer is the only one to get burned.

Last Thursday, the Legislature’s Joint Budget Committee endorsed a bill to give the state Department of Environmental Quality $20 million more in spending authority for contractual services to extinguish and clean up the slow-burning underground fire in Bella Vista.

The Legislation is Senate Bill 406, run by state Sen. Jim Hendren, R-Sulphur Springs. Hendren hopes the state will allocate money to get the fire under control and clean up the dump to the point it no longer represents an environmental threat to the area. Credit goes to Hendren for leading the charge for the money, which is a large enough sum that its expenditure meets with some resistance from other parts of the state, especially ones with their own unresolved environmental concerns.

Bella Vista’s situation is quite acute. This is not a dormant burial site of old stumps that represents some potential environmental threat. It’s burning and sending pollutants into the air right now. It’s been going for months and, because this dump was created the way it was, could continue burning for years if left alone.

“We have got kind of a man-made natural disaster in Bella Vista,” Hendren told the committee last week.

State officials originally thought a response and solution could cost $5 million to $10 million. A state contractor specializing in engineering such solutions estimated in January that putting out the fire and properly remediating the site would cost somewhere between $21 million and $37 million. Ever since, Gov. Asa Hutchinson and others have been busy trying to find less costly options that will bring the situation under control.

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A man-made natural disaster? So far, the pursuit of funding and potential solutions have largely focused on the disaster part of that evaluation: It’s here, it’s causing problems and what are we going to do about it?

Naturally, the state’s response has to first be focused on eliminating the threat, to people and the environment. But this isn’t a house fire or a response to a tornado. This has been going on since last summer. The state can, one hopes, walk and chew gum at the same time. So it seems there should be at least as much political chest-beating about an investigation into this environmental disaster as there is about a taxpayer-funded cleanup.

Who is responsible for this, and will they be held accountable for the impact of their actions?

Hendren got pretty close to asking those questions last week.

“I would also agree that one of the things that I at least have taken away from this is we need more oversight and investigation about how did we get to this point, how did a landfill like this operate for so many years and how do we stop [it] from happening in future years?” Hendren told his colleagues.

An investigation needs to examine the role of property owners — did they do something wrong through ignorance or was it through indifference? It should also examine whether the state Department of Environmental Quality is equipped to be an effective monitor and enforcer to an extent it can prevent such environmental disasters.

Putting out the fire will end the crisis, but one can argue these longer-term questions are far more important to answer for the good of Arkansans.