Thursday, January 1, 2009

Holiday a good day to violate stormwater regulations with impunity

Please click on images to ENLARGE photos from the Hill Place student-apartment development site on New Year's Day 2009.

A person who lives adjacent to a construction site has to wonder why a crew is working every day through the holidays, including Christmas and New Year's Day. Obviously, the answer is simple: The project is on a dangereously short deadline.
But, when a few guys are out on a holiday missing two or three bowl games, some suspect they may be doing something they don't want to have reported to the authorities and assume it can not happen on a holiday when all city, county, state and federal offices are closed.

The top photo shows what I could see this morning through a zoom lens from my own yard. A big trackhoe is busily digging out and piling up dirt near the Town Branch of the West Fork of the White River on New Year's Day.



The second photo shows the machine from the the east along with the deep trench it is digging for a sewer line.


The third photo shows a pump bringing water out of the trench and sending it eastward downhill to the Town Branch.


The fourth photo shows the end of the plastic pipe with muddy, silt-laden water pouring into the Town Branch of the West Fork of the White River in a blatant violation of water-quality regulations. This water is headed to Beaver Lake, the drinking-water reservoir for four counties in Northwest Arkansas.

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