Deadline Nears for White River Petition.

Petitioners for the White River Irrigation District have until Feb. 29 to collect 198 more signatures before plans to preserve the Sparta Sand and Mississippi Alluvial aquifers can procede, the WRID says.

The WRID is working to develop alternate sources of water for crop irrigation in four counties: Arkansas, Lonoke, Monroe and Prairie.

"If Arkansas' underground water supply still had the recharge capacity it had 400 years ago, the urgency faced by Grand Prairie landowners and farmers today would hardly exist," says WRID Board Chairman Tommy Hillman of Carlisle says.

Workers in the irrigation district's Stuttgart offices say that as of the morning of Jan. 6, they have 380 signatures from landowners in the Grand Prairie region. They need 578. Farmers in the area who have built their own irrigation and water collection systems have been slow to sign up for a project for which they will then have to pay.

The WRID's Grand Prairie Area Demonstration Project would "divert water from the the White River through a series of canals and pipelines to area landowners," the WRID says. With water back in the Grand Prairie, the WRID hopes to preserve the two aquifers and irrigated agriculture, as well as increase wildlife and waterfowl habitats there.

Once water is diverted to the area, the Arkansas Soil and Water Conservation Commission estimates that ground water use in the area will drop from 86 percent to 7 percent. The WRID also says diverting water will improve economic conditions in the area.