by Catherine McCarley
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – As subdivisions replace fields and forests in Washington County, dump trucks going to and from construction sites carry controversy in their beds. Red dirt is essential for developers to turn the Northwest Arkansas landscape into profitable ground, said Bob Daughtery, a realtor and vice chair of the Washington County Planning Board. The scale of the operation necessary to extract the red dirt, however, has some citizens concerned.
For more than two years, the residents of the neighborhoods surrounding the red dirt mine at Heritage Farms in the Wedington Woods have worked to make their opposition to the dirt pit known. Driving along Highway 16 outside Fayetteville, signs that read “Save the Neighborhood” and “No Dirt Pit” stand in yards and adorn fence posts. One year ago, landowners successfully petitioned the county’s Planning Board to deny the permit for a red dirt mining operation located at Heritage Farms. The “Save the Neighborhood” initiative celebrated a victory, but the Heritage Farms dirt pit operation went ahead without a permit, said Mac Childs as he stood at the edge of a large mining operation off Greenburrow Road.
“The Quorum court voted against it. Before that the planning commission voted unanimously to deny this and still it marches on. We are standing here right now looking at mining going on without a permit. Red dirt being hauled out by trucks with no permit,” Childs said.
Childs lives less than 100 yards from the red dirt mining operation at Heritage Farms.
The consequences for people living near Heritage Farms began when the land was deforested to prepare for mining operations, Childs said.
“For days, they burned these giant brush piles. This was all forest. Everything you see in front of you now,” Childs explained, his hand sweeping across the barren land before him, “was forest. A lot of it was old growth forest.”
“Hot ash rained out of the air for days on end. We called the county and they said we have no authority over that. I had ash so thick on my truck’s windshield that I had to scrub it off with a wet rag.”
Now that the mine at Heritage Farms is fully operational, the biggest concern for residents of the area is the heavy traffic.
“This particular strip mine, they are excavating over 100 loads a day, possibly more. They’ll haul out 40,000 pound loads that will run down these narrow country roads, endangering everybody,” Childs said.
“We live in a free country, so it is tough sometimes to make it all work and make everybody happy. We are always going to have some unhappy people but we try to protect them the best way we can,” said Robert Daughtery, speaking about his experience with the dirt pit debate.
Growing the potential of the Northwest Arkansas area is about finding a balance between industry and the citizenry, Daughtery said.
“It’s in our purview to decide if it’s a good fit. We try to promote commercialism as much as we can and also try to make it as pleasing for the neighbors as we can. The sad thing is you can only put the quarries where the red dirt actually is, where god placed it.”
“We’ve got to have red dirt. No one is going to be happy when there’s a red dirt quarry next to them. No matter what part of the county, no matter what part of the state,” Daughtery said.