Thursday’s thumbs

News about former reactor leaves UA aglow

It’s Thursday and time for our weekly installment of up-or-down thumbs regarding recent news.

As we twiddled our thumbs Wednesday, the email account chimed in with this great news: The U.S. Department of Energy, as a result of a bill Congress approved on March 23, will provide an additional $10 million to dismantle the University of Arkansas’ dormant nuclear reactor facility in southern Washington County. Just last month UA officials said prior funding had been exhausted in the years-long effort to clean up the Southwest Experimental Fast Oxide Reactor, known more broadly as SEFOR. Prior work has hauled away thousands of pounds of radioactive waste, but the job isn’t finished. Once viewed as a site with great potential for university research, SEFOR has instead been an economic burden. Hopefully, the new funding will complete the task and the resources devoted to the site’s maintenance can be used for future-oriented education rather than cleaning up the problems of the past.

Camping on the Razorback Greenway? That’s the idea behind a company’s plans for a property known as Magnolia Gardens on Huntsville Avenue and North Main Street in Springdale. The Planning Commission this week voted 8-0 in support of limited camping on the site, which Springdale Downtown LLC will operate as a bed-andbreakfast business. Biking enthusiasts who use the trail will be able to bring their own tents and stay Thursday through Sunday nights. Will it work? Nobody knows, but it’s a creative idea worth a try.

Tyson Foods says it will encourage farmers supplying it with corn grain to “improve environmental practices” on 2 million acres of corn by the end of 2020 through the adoption of better land practices. That includes reduction of fertilizer use, water runoff and soil loss. Tyson touts it as the “largest-ever land stewardship commitment by a U.S. protein company.” We certainly hope the measure will produce results that make that kind of claim a reality. Companies of all sizes, but particularly huge corporations like Tyson, must be as concerned with their impact on the environment as they are their day-to-day operations. We applaud Tyson’s effort.

“We always hear “Development’s fine as long as it’s not around me.” That’s the remark of Lowell Planning Commission Chairman James Milner after the panel rejected, in a 3-3 vote, the rezoning of an Old Wire Road site where a developer planned townhouses. Milner speaks from experience, the kind often witnessed at planning commissions and city councils around Northwest Arkansas. In this case, neighbors argued for single-family homes rather than townhouses, which they said would cause increases in crime rates, traffic, noise and pollution as well as overcrowding in schools, with the requisite predictions about lost property values. The facts are that not everyone can afford or wants single-family homes. At the rate Northwest Arkansas is growing, multifamily housing is critical. A mix of housing options is healthy for a community. Such reactions may be predictable, but they’re not always right.

It’s unfortunate Northwest Arkansas’ effort to open a state-funded crisis stabilization unit, where people who have run-ins with law enforcement but need professional mental health care can be admitted, may get mired in a dispute between Washington County Judge Joseph Woods and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. Woods has targeted the fifth floor of the former Washington Regional Medical Center building at North Street and College as site for the unit, but UAMS officials say they have other plans for the floor. UAMS leases the facility from the county, but Woods is threatening to simply retake control of the floor from UAMS despite the state agency’s plans. This is a vital and needed service that will keep mentally ill people out of the jail. We hope the county and UAMS can work out a reasonable solution.