N E W S R E L E A S E
TO:Area Media
FROM:Robert Reynolds, President
DATE:January 6, 2010
CONTACT:Sherrel Johnson, 314-0749
Congressman Ross Announces $300,000 Appropriation to Continue Monitoring Sparta Aquifer Recovery
In a ceremony today in the Charles H. Murphy Boardroom at the
El Dorado Chamber of Commerce, Congressman Mike Ross announced a $300,000 Interior Department appropriation for the Union County Water Conservation Board to continue monitoring Sparta aquifer recovery in South Arkansas and North Louisiana.
“The third time’s the charm,” said Board President Robert Reynolds, “and we are grateful to Congressman Ross and his staff for taking a personal interest in and aggressively pursuing this funding for the people of South Arkansas.”
When the Board’s 2002 federal grant for studying Sparta recovery approached its termination date in 2007, the Board began applying for additional federal funding. Although unsuccessful in 2007 and 2008, the Board’s appropriation request in 2009 for 2010 funding was approved by the House and the Senate in 2009, and the President signed the Interior appropriations bill into law in late October 2009.
Contributed Photo by Shayne Crawford, El Dorado Chamber of Commerce
Ross Presents $300,000 Check to UCWCB. Cindy Woolsey, Union County Water Conservation Board Administrative Asst. and Administrator for 11 of Union County's 17 Rural Water Associations accepts a $300,000 federal appropriation to continue monitoring the Sparta aquifer's recovery in South Arkansas and North Louisiana. Other Sparta stake holders standing left to right: Patty Cardin, Great Lakes/Chemtura Central Plant and El Dorado Chamber of Commerce Board Chair; County Judge Bobby Edmonds; Greg Withrow, El Dorado Chemical; Tom Burger, Entegra/Union Power Station; Robert Reynolds, UCWCB President; Johnny Loftin, Union County Farm Bureau; State Representative John Lowery; UCWCB member Larry Andrews; and Steve Cousins, Lion Oil Company.
Ross said “My staff and I are very pleased to have been able to carry this project’s message successfully to my colleagues in the House and Senate, and that Senators Lincoln and Pryor and their staffs worked closely with the Board and my staff to secure passage in the Senate.” “In most parts of the country, communities are measuring declining groundwater levels, while in Union and surrounding counties and Louisiana parishes, we are measuring rising groundwater levels.”
“This extraordinary success is a testimony to the level of cooperation the good people of Union County, South Arkansas, and the state can achieve when they put their minds to it.”
Sparta aquifer recovery in South Arkansas is in contrast to a decade ago when Sparta well water levels in and around Union County were declining rapidly, some as much as seven feet per year nearest the deepest cone of depression beneath El Dorado. Today some well levels in Union County have risen over fifty-nine feet since 2004.
According to the Board’s grants administrator Sherrel Johnson, the $300,000, along with a $48,000 grant from the state of Arkansas and a $42,000 grant from Louisiana, will support Sparta aquifer recovery monitoring and reporting for at least another year.
The federal funds will be administered through the U.S. Geological Survey’s Arkansas Water Science Center in Little Rock, an agency that, according to Reynolds, “has provided the scientific study of the Sparta’s recovery and has been crucial to project success since before this Board formed.”