Arkansas Game and Fish Commission leads Lake Conway clean-ups as budget questions linger

Staff with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission collect trash on the shoreline of Lake Conway on June 13, 2024. (Mary Hennigan/Arkansas Advocate)

Given the current state of Lake Conway in Central Arkansas, it’s likely there is more litter than fish in the remaining 18 inches of water.

Last summer, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission approved an estimated $15 million renovation project for Lake Conway, which included draining the water into Palarm Creek in September. The renovation is the largest infrastructure project the commission has ever taken on, and it is expected to modernize equipment, improve lake access and create better wildlife habitats.

The project is an example of one of the services that could be interrupted if the Game and Fish Commission’s budget is not approved by lawmakers during next week’s special session. The Legislature failed to pass an appropriation bill during last month’s fiscal session over disagreements about the director’s salary cap.

Director Austin Booth in May told the Arkansas Advocate that “a lapse in appropriations actually happening is incredibly unlikely.”

While the water levels are low — and the Southern heat hasn’t yet spiked — Game and Fish has organized a handful of clean-up events to remove debris. In the last few months, crews collected 36 tons of litter and 20 tons of tires, most of which came from about seven miles of the 50-mile shoreline.

The final clean-ups before summer will go through Saturday and the public can participate from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. by contacting the Game and Fish Commission.

On Thursday, about two dozen Game and Fish employees and a few volunteers donned protective gloves and rubber boots and dispersed along the shoreline to collect trash. The group pulled tires from mud, picked up metal debris and hauled out obscure objects such as a bed frame, an intact glass window, a vacuum and one small roller skate.

Nick Feltz, a fisheries supervisor with Game and Fish who has taken on a project manager role for the lake renovation, barely batted an eye at the items being removed from the shoreline. He expertly wielded his “trash grabber” tool, helped carry especially large items to a nearby trailer and maneuvered an ATV over rugged terrain.

Feltz said cleaning up all 50 miles of shoreline is an aspirational goal, though it’s unlikely it will be met. Public participation for previous clean-up days has been “extremely low,” Feltz said, which he guessed was due to nearby residents being elderly and the general unawareness of events.

Delayed construction

The two largest pieces of the renovation project — construction on the Palarm Creek Dam and creating boat lanes by mulching down tree stumps in designated areas — were expected to start this summer, but they have both been delayed by issues with permits, Feltz said.

The Palarm Creek Dam in Central Arkansas on June 13, 2024. (Mary Hennigan/Arkansas Advocate)

“We don’t just want to sit on our hands and wait,” he said. “I still want to make sure that we’re being productive and making good use of this summer because obviously folks aren’t able to use the lake this summer, and I don’t want that to be for nothing.”

The existing dam has 15 operational gates, which can be opened and closed based on a water management plan. The planned construction will remove this infrastructure entirely, Feltz said. 

In its place, the Palarm Creek Dam will be equipped with a passive spillway that will allow all water above the dam’s level to flow outward, Feltz said. An additional, smaller structure will also be built nearby so the water levels are still manageable.

The planned boat lanes will save time, money and thousands of tree stumps, a recognizable feature of Lake Conway. 

Loose estimates put the total number of stumps in Lake Conway’s 6,700 acres at about half a million, and removing all of those would be impractical, Feltz said.

“This is a 75-year-old lake that’s really foundational to the communities around the lake,” Feltz said. “…To cut down all the stumps would be changing the identity of the lake, and we don’t want to do that either. But we do need to create safe paths from point A to point B.”

The Game and Fish Commission has already planned out the boat paths where specific stumps will be turned into mulch, he said.

Summer work

With high temperatures quickly approaching, the June dates will be the last clean-ups until the weather cools down. The sun will naturally help dry up the lakebed, as will evaporation. Vegetation will also develop over the summer, which will make for diverse fish habitats when the lake is refilled in 2028, Feltz said.

“Not all habitats are created equal,” Feltz said. “You want it to be more complex, and lakes over time, there’s a need to replenish that.”

As is, the stumps in Lake Conway make fair fish habitats, but the straight vertical element of the stumps don’t offer much value to fish, Feltz said. The primary species of bass, brim, crappie and catfish each have different preferences.

Game and Fish crews will lay pea gravel and install cement pipe to encourage fish spawning this summer.

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