Fayetteville's Red Oak Park is near the center of Google's aerial photos above.
Please click on images to enlarge.
RED OAK PARK appears as a narrow band of timber running north and south. The road running left to right (east and west) near the bottom of the screen is Wedington. The road running roughly east and west near the top of the screen is Mount Comfort. The road at right running from Wedington to Mount Comfort is Rupple.
To the left of Rupple Road is the subdivision from which water flows north down the streets and storm drains and enters the south end of Red Oak Park through culverts on each side.
On the east (right) side of the wooded portion there is a treeless space of about two square blocks with a walking/cycling trail inside its periphery. An embankment running northeast/southwest across the northern third of the park carries New Bridge drive.
Dave Evans of the Game and Fish Commission presented a fine plan to the Fayetteville City Council during an agenda session Tuesday.
It shows less modification of the stream corridor than did his original plan, which means it cannot be as effective.
Dave assumes there is no will to develop a system of storm gardens upstream. He may be correct in that assumption because better solutions will cost money, probably more money.
The neighborhood's idea of damming up the south end (upstream) to create a pond to catch and temporarily hold stormwater would destroy excellent wildlife habitat in the upstream portion of the park. However, the trees are not as impressively straight and tall. But some are works of natural art, nonetheless.
The mayor summed it up that there were two options: Do Dave's plan or do nothing. He didn't mention rain gardens.
A raingarden in every upstream yard will solve most of the problem. The problem is allowing water to run into the streets and through storm drains to the creek (gully) through the woods.
The REAL solution means routing water FROM the streets to the yards to soak in.
This means revising the city's whole primitive, outmoded idea of using streets as conduits for quickly moving stormwater and related silt and pollutants directly into streams and thus to either the Illinois River (into which Red Oak Park's water eventually flows), or into the White River and Beaver Lake, through the Town Branch, West Fork and other tributary streams on the east and south.
Dave says the Corps of Engineers would not allow damming the creek as some of the neighbors suggest doing. If they allow a destructive dam on Lee Creek to provide water for projected growth of cities in the Arkansas River Valley, why wouldnl't they allow a useful, protective dam in that flashflood-created gully to protect a city park?
The city could cut curbs in appropriate places upstream to get water onto the land and subsidize the building of rain gardens. Anything less will be ineffective in saving the park for people and other living things.
Rain gardens offer an incredible improvement to all those mowed lawns. And the open portion of the park could become a huge rain garden where a large amount of the water could be routed to be cleaned naturally by settling out any sediment and debris before being allowed to flow into the creek well after rain and the threat of flashflooding has ended.
The neighborhood has to get behind rain gardens or forget the timber in the park. And the basketball court and pavilion and trail all will remain at risk.
If rain gardens were authorized, Dave's plan could be further modified to encourage the gully to become more of a meandering stream without removing a mass of big trees. But, as long as the volume of water coming from the surrounding streets and yards is not reduced, Red Oak Park will remain a northwest Fayetteville disaster.
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