Shane Khoury (left), secretary of the Department of Energy and Environment, and Bailey Taylor (right), director of the Division of Environmental Quality, are pictured at a legislative committee meeting on April 7, 2025. (Ainsley Platt/Arkansas Advocate)
Arkansas environmental regulators updated the state Pollution Control and Ecology Commission last week on efforts to help storm-stricken areas of the state recover from multiple rounds of severe weather.
The commission also gave final approval to state water quality standards that address surface water pollutants and are up for review.
Bailey Taylor, director of the Arkansas Division of Environmental Quality, said the agency issued an emergency order to address a large spill of red dye diesel in Craighead County. The tanks storing the fuel were severely damaged after being struck by one of the many tornadoes that have touched down in the state over the last month and a half, Taylor said.
The emergency order, which was posted on DEQ’s website, said the fuel leaked into ditches that “flowed through a nearby residential area and near the Monette Manor nursing home,” with the potential to reach the St. Francis River. The order noted that heavy concentrations of the diesel were seen in the ditches by a government inspector who visited the site.
“Given the extent of the storm impact and damage, imminent heavy rainfall and the forecast for additional severe weather and heavy flooding in the area, it was apparent that immediate action was required to protect human health and safety as well as to mitigate further impact to waters of the state including the St. Francis River,” the emergency order read.
Taylor said she ordered remediation contractors to the site, and authorized use of funds from the Remedial Action Trust Fund to address the spill if it was necessary to protect public health, safety or the environment on April 3.
Additionally, DEQ staff has been working with local and county officials to set up debris burn sites for trees and other plants, Taylor said, and has been doing additional outreach to areas not impacted by recent storms to plan where a burn site could be, should those communities be affected by storms in the future.
Taylor also updated commissioners on legislative activity, saying that 12 bills proposed by the Arkansas Department of Energy and Environment had been signed into law, most of them bills aimed at cleaning up language in existing law.
Later, commissioners voted to give final approval to Rule 2, which governs the state’s water quality standards and is going through a federally-mandated triennial review. The rule will now go to the Arkansas Legislative Council’s rules committee, and then to the council itself, for review.
Rule 2 water quality standards apply to the concentrations of pollutants in surface waters themselves, such as lakes and rivers, rather than the concentrations of pollutants in discharges from permitted facilities. They are also separate from drinking water regulations, which rely on a different set of rules and laws at both the federal and state level, and are regulated by the Arkansas Department of Health rather than DEQ.
The changes proposed by DEQ to Rule 2 include the addition of five new regulated pollutants: benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylene and phenol. Two of those – benzene and ethylbenzene – are known or suspected carcinogens, respectively. The other three are known to have other detrimental health effects in humans in sufficient concentrations.
In documentation included with the rulemaking, DEQ said the new water quality standards were necessary to protect human health.
In addition to the new standards, DEQ is also proposing updates to existing ammonia and chromium standards.
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