Creek’s tributary changes approved
The Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission has adopted a company’s request to change the allowable levels of minerals in a tributary to Brushy Creek in northeast Arkansas and to remove that tributary’s drinking water designation.
The tributary is not a water supply, and it contributes less than a 10th of 1% of water in the actual water supply it’s connected to, argued Jordan Wimpy, an attorney representing the company, Vulcan Construction Materials.
Corporations and utilities often make such requests. They contend that the state’s minerals standards are often financially impractical to meet because of the process required to treat their wastewater.
Commissioners approved the request without dissent Friday morning.
Commissioner Richard McMullen, the Arkansas Department of Health designee, abstained.
McMullen thanked Wimpy and his fellow attorney, Allan Gates, for meeting with him and alleviating the department’s concerns. He said the department will continue trying to protect waters within drinking supplies’ watersheds.
Vulcan Construction Materials owns and operates the limestone Black Rock Quarry in Lawrence County.
The Arkansas Division of Environmental Quality has renewed the company’s permit twice with levels of total dissolved solids high enough to prevent the tributary from meeting drinking-water standards, until the company could change the tributary’s water-quality standards.
The division considers the tributary “impaired” because its total dissolved solids exceed drinking-water standards of 500 milligrams per liter of water.
By default, all surface waters in Arkansas have drinking-water designations.
The sulfate and total dissolved solids standards for the Ozark Ecoregion are 17 milligrams per liter and 240 milligrams per liter, respectively.
The petition approved Friday alters those standards in three spots, allowing concentrations as high as 725 milligrams per liter of total dissolved solids and 260 milligrams per liter of sulfate at Vulcan’s discharge point.