Beaver Watershed Alliance asks Washington County to renew funding for Beaver Lake source‑water protection

Miss Rourke of the Beaver Watershed Alliance told the Washington County Finance & Budget Committee that the alliance is seeking continued county support to protect Beaver Lake, Northwest Arkansas’ primary drinking water source.

Rourke said Beaver Lake ‘‘serves 1 in 5 Arkansans’’ and that roughly 30% of the Beaver Lake watershed lies within Washington County. She outlined the alliance’s work — conservation planning, GIS and drone assessments, stream‑bank restoration and landowner technical assistance — and highlighted landscape‑scale projects including a $5 million Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP) that pays farmers to implement cost‑share best practices. She cited tracked results since 2011 (a cumulative 376,000 units of project work in the watershed, equated by the presenter to roughly 75,000 dump‑truck loads of sediment kept out of Beaver Lake) and said the alliance has assisted 424 landowners in Washington County since 2017.

Rourke told the committee the alliance uses county funding to leverage state and federal grants and spends most funds on on‑the‑ground best management practice implementation (~76% of local funds, per her remarks). She encouraged county staff to use alliance datasets when prioritizing unpaved‑road upgrades and low‑water crossing repairs.

Committee members asked for fact sheets on unpaved‑road practices and the alliance offered to share assessments and data with county staff.

What’s next: The alliance asked the committee to consider continued funding in the FY26 budget cycle; committee members acknowledged the request and said staff would follow up about where local match funds might be appropriated.