UPDATE: Be sure to see jump for Leslie Peacock’s deeper reporting on the somewhat amazing testimony at this black helicopter freak show.

WHOD WANT TO PROTECT THIS? The Bayou DeView watershed would fall under the Blueway umbrella.

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  • U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
  • WHO’D WANT TO PROTECT THIS? The Bayou DeView watershed would fall under the Blueway umbrella.

COUNT US OUT: Randy Young of Natural Resources at Blueway hearing.

  • Brian Chilson
  • COUNT US OUT: Randy Young of Natural Resources at Blueway hearing.

Legislative committees are hearing this afternoon about the White River Blueway, a thoroughly establishmentarian and voluntary federal conservation program that enjoyed widespread support, even among many Republicans, until conspiracy theorists got hold of it.

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Republican congresssheeple are now running like scalded poodles from the issue.

Leslie Peacock will be back with a longer report, but she signals that one of the most perpetually disappointing career bureaucrats in state government, Randy Young of the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission (once laughingly known as a soil and water conservation agency) has said he’s heard from landowners (all as ill-informed as he apparently) and also wants the Interior Department to withdraw the blueways designation. Pitiful. More pitiful still is news that the Game and Fish Commission, another agency not known for its backbone, has also turned yellow tail on the proposal, according to a legislator’s Tweet.

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If facts, not fantasy, are your preference, check the Fish and Wildlife Service explanation. (It was on hand today to try to quell the controversy, along with USDA, Army Engineeers and Interior Department.) The Arkansas Canoe Club, a dangerous group of one-world radicals, had endorsed this, too, among many, many others. If not Jeannie Burlsworth. But the canoeists have apparently jumped overboard, too. CORRECTION: The Canoe Club held firm, contrary to a report I’d heard that all in the original coalition had decided to stand down at least temporarily.

It gets worse. The influential Nature Conservancy has taken down its page in support of the project and has dumped the project, too, because of the outcry. Also Ozark Water Watch. All fear alienating supporters.

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As Leslie put it in a note to me from what she’s been hearing:

They all say designation would be good and no ‘taking’ and could make it harder to get fed money if no blueway… but they dont want to piss off landowners they work with on conservation

Bullying works. Facts don’t count. Paranoia trumps. Chapter Umpteen of the Republican majority legislature. Also to those who thought otherwise and gave up: Appeasement begets only more appeasement.

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BLUEWAY CROWD: Hearing drew big crowd and occasional applause.

  • Brian Chilson
  • BLUEWAY CROWD: Hearing drew big crowd and occasional applause.