On Tuesday evening, July 8th, 2014, the Pulaski County Quorum Court unanimously agreed 14-0 to send a proposed Lake Maumelle Watershed Zoning code amendment forward out of committee to the full Quorum Court for consideration.

This proposed amendment will be read 3 times starting at their July meeting and then will be sent to the Pulaski County Planning Board for a 30 day public hearing.

The proposed amended zoning code is a document resulting from the collaboration of stakeholders from a variety of backgrounds including land owners, environmentalists, city planners, conservationists, and others who came together to form the Lake Maumelle Watershed Stakeholder Task Force. This group met for the first time in August 2013 and logged over 3,400 hours during the course of several months in order to come up with a better zoning code for the area.

Background, controversy

In April of 2014 this year, the county adopted the Lake Maumelle Watershed Zoning Code, and it is in effect today. The zoning code covers nearly 137 square miles of the Maumelle Watershed in unincorporated Pulaski County including much of the area known as Little Italy. It is the opinion of many land owners that the adopted zoning code has been successfully marketed as much-needed to protect the drinking water supply from area developers, but in a heavy-handed way goes beyond clean water in order to also control the area's look and economy. Read from the early Task Force meeting minutes on October 29th, 2013 for a conversation between a land owner and environmentalists about zoning for clean water only vs. zoning for clean water plus other things they'd like to see you do with your property that don't have anything to do with clean water [NOTE: These minutes as of this date are not yet posted to the Arkansas Public Policy Center website but the staff has been notified. Please keep checking back to their website if this is of interest to you.] Zoning is an inexpensive way to control a large area.

Coming to a town near you

Perry and Saline counties need to be on their guard as well as there will be discussion (this is not a rumor) that their leadership will be approached to adopt a "holistic, conservation based strategy" in those areas of those counties that are also in the Watershed. This is a good time to consider incorporating Little Italy and Wye areas on both sides of the county line into a town in order to be in control of our own future planning with the option to not have any future zoning whatsoever. See announcement about the Town Hall in this newsletter. Please note that there are other excellent reasons to incorporate, which will be explained at the Town Hall.

The straw man argument

Those who argue for protecting property rights are accused of not being concerned about protecting clean water. It is the classic straw man argument and was used to success. No land owner wants anyone to drink dirty water but fear overcame reason. We now have a code that employs a type of zoning known as Euclidean (or single-use), which many experts say contribute to urban sprawl among other problems. Many land owners and experts contend that the adopted archaic police-state type zoning ordinance was also designed without much thought to science.

Economic benefits for the city

The economy of the Little Italy and Wye area is of much interest to many including Judge Buddy Villines himself who envisions a bike trail from Little Rock to Hot Springs. Read the article on his idea of a River Trail that is estimated to cost between $20-25 million. Please note that parts of Highway 300 that run through Roland, Little Italy, and Wye are already renamed "Arkansas River Trail", which you can see on Google Maps.

Needed vigilance

Although the proposed amendment would improve the already adopted code thanks to land owner input, there is much work yet to be done on the zoning code to #1 keep the drinking water protected and #2 protect the interests and property and way of life of the land owners in the Watershed. Land ownership and the rights that go with that are part of the blessings of being an American and nothing says we can't have clean water and our rights too. Stay tuned.

Source: Little Italy Arkansas