The Beaver Watershed Alliance recently received a more than $618,000 grant to expand its efforts to reduce flooding and protect water quality across Northwest Arkansas. The funding, awarded through the Arkansas Department of Agriculture’s Section 319(h) Grant Program, will provide the nonprofit with funds to complete three nature-based projects.
The $349,529 federal grant, along with $268,707 in community funding, will enhance the alliance’s Smart Growth Initiatives, Ayden Duncan, director of communications at the Arkansas Department of Agriculture, wrote in an email.
Beaver Watershed Alliance Executive Director Becky Roark said the initiatives aim to use data to guide regional development with a holistic approach to improve water quality.
“This grant is going to help us understand flooding and stormwater issues across the urban area,” Roark said. “When we have that data, we can work with the cities.”
The cities selected for the nature-based projects are Fayetteville, West Fork and Rogers. Roark said the alliance has worked with these communities for a long time and has sought opportunities to advance previously identified projects.
“Sometimes projects sit in the queue for five or 10 years before you actually get funded for them,” she said. “In this case, we’ve been wanting to do something with West Fork for a long time at Riverside Park. It’s right there on the West Fork of the White River.”
The alliance aims to restore natural environments and processes through these initiatives. Roark said that could include projects as simple as installing rain gardens and permeable pavers —which allows water to seep through paved surfaces and into the ground —to bigger plans like the revegetation of riparian zones—areas between land and rivers.
These projects help increase rainwater absorption. According to the Beaver Watershed Alliance’s website when areas of land that reduce water absorption exceed 10% it can degrade a region’s water quality. These areas include roads, sidewalks, rooftops and more.
“Most [of] East Fayetteville is roads and parking lots and schools and homes and all those things we need,” Roark said. “But it’s really shifted a lot of storm water to Town Branch, and so that is an impaired waterway.”
Another key component of the grant project will be the development of a riparian management plan. The plan will provide a framework for local governments to gauge the health of riparian areas and guide environmental protection efforts.
She added that managing water health projects in a rapidly growing region like Northwest Arkansas requires work beyond city borders.
“Stormwater does not know jurisdictions,” Roark said. “It’s just not saying, ‘Oh, I gotta stop here.’ So it’s a regional thing, and watersheds are the same thing. They don’t follow jurisdictional lines. They follow a geographical line.”
City efforts to implement plans will contribute to the grant program’s community match requirement. Duncan wrote in an email that 60% of grant funds are provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and 40% are provided by a nonfederal sponsor. The community match can include financial and in-kind contributions. Roark said time spent at meetings and volunteer tree planting will also count toward the match.
The grant project follows a three-year timeline. The Beaver Watershed Alliance plans to select a firm to conduct a flooding and hotspot modeling assessment by January 2026, which Roark said will take about a year to complete. Then, the alliance will develop the riparian assessment and management plan and begin working on city implementation. The three nature-based solution projects will follow.