Tragedy of the Commons

Water, water everywhere, but . . .

Arkansans don’t usually complain too much about water. When they do, complaints usually come from duck hunters or kayakers who lament that Mother Nature doesn’t always line up the right combination of conditions. There’s either too much or too little.

But that’s all about fun and games. When we think of Arkansas we conjure visions of lush green rolling hills, not mesa-infused arid landscapes of the Southwest. For the most part, our driest times are wetter than their wettest.

That doesn’t mean Arkansas doesn’t have water issues.

Every time there’s a week of continued rain like we had recently, and the ground is saturated and the ditches full, we think that the weather might could be helping the aquifers underground.

That’s probably not the case. We asked a specialist in that area last year, and he let us down softly, saying that most of that will drain into the river. Then to the sea.

Aquifers are filled up over the course of many years. And no matter a recent wet spell, the Mississippi River Valley alluvial and the Sparta-Memphis are in decline at an unsustainable rate.

The last time the state’s water plan was updated was in 2014. That amounts to a lot of water under the bridge. And with time, all things wear down.

In Helena-West Helena, for instance, about 3,500 residents lost water service in January, and it took the city weeks to restore it.

To address this and other water-related issues, the governor tapped Agriculture Secretary Wes Ward and Chris Colclasure, director of the Arkansas Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Division, to perform a comprehensive analysis of the state’s water plan, according to reporting by Cristina LaRue of the Democrat-Gazette.

The first phase of the plan is to be completed within a year of the governor’s order and will include a review of the 2014 plan to determine needed changes, projected usage and demand, and policy recommendations to address all of it.

Director Colclasure said the first six months will be about scoping and setting goals and objectives. Ultimately, it will take a couple of years to execute.

It’s hard to believe this number is not already known, but the Natural Resources Division will also inventory the number of levees in Arkansas and potentially another phase to determine their condition.

In the meantime, to address immediate needs, the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission is handing out grants and loans.

We hope that a big part of the state’s plan will be to increase the number of reservoirs and above-ground lakes for industrial and agriculture use and drinking water. That would take the pressure off the aquifers, and maybe over time allow them to build back up. Before they crash and sink. Which would be awful.

It’s called the Tragedy of the Commons. If every farm and every industry and every town’s city water department took just a little of the underground water, we could all get by. But if every farm and every industry and every town’s city water department takes more each year, eventually our common resource disappears.

Many may disagree on the cause, but few will disagree that the climate is changing. It’s unlikely that Arkansas will ever become another Arizona, but that prospect is far less likely with a conservation plan in place.