Council passes Fayetteville plan for environment

FAYETTEVILLE — The Fayetteville City Council voted 6-0 last week to start work on a natural environment, ecosystems and climate resilience plan.

The idea is to bolster its city’s natural resources so they can better withstand extreme weather that’s associated with climate change. The desired results would be flood mitigation, wildlife habitat conservation and carbon sequestration.

The approved resolution asks Mayor Lioneld Jordan to direct the city staff to draft the plan or hire a consultant to draft it.

Next year’s city budget includes $100,000 to start developing the plan.

Another part of the resolution calls for the city to put at least $100,000 annually into its capital improvements project budget to buy land, pay for conservation easements or take on other expenditures to address recommendations in the plan.

Council Member Teresa Turk, who sponsored the resolution, said she wants to establish baselines from which the city can set environmental goals. Once the city has an accurate picture of its natural assets, it can better understand what measures should be taken to protect them, she said.

“How many impaired streams do we have, or sections of impaired streams? Of those sections, how many have stream-bank erosion and really need to be replanted to reestablish the riparian zone? Maybe trees need to be planted to help stabilize the bank,” Turk said.

The city aims to have 40% tree canopy as it balances development with new tree plantings. It has started using aerial imagery to assess tree canopy coverage and found in 2019 that the city had 39% coverage.

Having a consultant come in could help refine the city’s tree preservation efforts and make recommendations on staffing, what species thrive where and best practices for the future, said John Scott, one of the city’s urban foresters.

An environmental assessment also could help identify parts of the city that are at risk for flooding and what could be done to prevent it, Turk said.

Council Member D’Andre Jones said he hopes the city will be intentional in addressing how environmental issues affect low-income or minority residents. Lower-income families may live in a flood-prone area because homes are cheaper there. Identifying those undeveloped vulnerable areas ahead of time could help prevent people from moving into them in the first place, he said.

Turk said the fund included with the plan is not intended for buying properties from owners unwilling to sell. However, opportunities may present themselves. Someone who owns land with old growth trees or a stream running through may be open to selling a portion of it to the city for preservation, she said.

Or, the city could use the money to create a conservation easement.

The purpose of a conservation easement is to permanently spare a section of land from development. The city has a number of conservation easements through the Northwest Arkansas Land Trust.

A property owner cannot legally own a piece of land and hold a conservation easement over it at the same time, said Terri Lane, the land trust’s executive director.

A dedicated fund would help remove a barrier to land preservation efforts — namely, money, Lane said. Land is expensive and getting more so over time, so any additional money available will make preservation efforts easier, she said.

The city has a map included in its 2040 plan that calls for an enduring green network. It shows hundreds of acres of ecologically valuable areas in which wildlife and plant life could thrive. However, the network has no regulatory teeth.

Developers wanting to build in an area identified on the enduring green network often leads to heated debates at City Hall, Lane said.

“I think a better approach is to figure out what needs to be set aside, have the money to do it, and be proactive and go ahead and assemble that enduring green network before we have to get into arguments,” she said.

The city also has an energy action plan that sets goals for city facilities to run entirely on clean energy by 2030 and for the entire city to run on clean energy by 2050.

Peter Nierengarten, the city’s environmental director, said it remains to be seen how the climate resiliency plan would relate to the energy action plan. The energy action plan delved a little bit into subjects such as heat island effects caused by impermeable surfaces, areas of drought and impact from intense episodic rains, he said.

Some natural areas of the city, like hillsides and properties next to streams, have their own protections under city code. The climate resiliency plan could help fill in any protection gaps, Nierengarten said.

Natural solutions often are the best way to offset the impact of extreme weather, Turk said. Many residents remember the 2009 ice storm or severe flooding of 2017. If climate change persists, residents should expect weather events like those to happen more frequently, she said.

“In some ways, we’ve really been in a sweet spot in the country,” Turk said. “We haven’t had wildfires, we haven’t had these huge floods, and we haven’t had devastating tornadoes. We’ve kind of gotten lucky so far.”