The DEQ identified 52 streams as impaired in the earlier efforts. However, the lawsuit requires EPA to look at 144 streams and 34 lakes that made the state s original list of impaired streams in 1997 but did not make the final list, including Crooked Creek, the Illinois River and Beaver Lake. The three north Arkansas waterways received top priority because the plaintiffs demanded it. The Illinois River runs through Northwest Arkansas, going into Oklahoma near Siloam Springs in Washington County. Beaver Lake s watershed takes in most of Northwest Arkansas.
Crooked Creek runs across north Arkansas through Harrison.
Ditches Improve Surface Water Quality A study of the transport and fate of two pesticides in vegetated agricultural drainage ditches suggests ditches are valuable tools for reducing the amount of chemicals entering bodies of water. Drainage ditches are a common feature in the agricultural landscape. They carry runoff water from fields following storm events or controlled water releases from rice fields. They simulated storm runoff events by injecting a liquid agri-chemical formulation into a drainage ditch in the Mississippi Delta. Their findings were that the ditch trapped 60 to 90 percent of the atrazine and a commonly used insecticide, Karate, carried in runoff water.