Arkansas Reporter
THE
IN S IDE R
Gay away in Imboden Another Arkansas school district has provided another negative educational experience (remember Midland and the homophobic school board member Clint McCance?) for all students, particularly those who happen to be gay. The latest is the Sloan-Hendrix District based at Imboden in Northeast Arkansas. Its school board president is Steve Huddleston, a retired state trooper. He talked to school Superintendent Mitch Walton in January about inviting Huddleston’s son, TV producer Bryant Huddleston, to be the high school graduation speaker this week. Bryant Huddleston is a Sloan-Hendrix graduate. Huddleston thought the deal was set. When Walton said he was planning to invite someone else to speak, Huddleston said he reminded Walton about his son, a former TV news anchor in Jonesboro who now lives in California and is currently working on a new series for the Bravo channel. According to Steve Huddleston, Walton said he’d talked with the four other school board members and two of them, reportedly banker Preston Clark and dentist Aaron Murphy, said it would create a community backlash to have a gay man speak at graduation. Bryant Huddleston is gay. Rather than have him, there will be no graduation speaker this year. Graduates include Steve Huddleston’s daughter.
The reaction The decision to have no graduation speaker in Imboden prompted Bryant Huddleston to write a long letter to Walton, reprinted first on the Imboden Live website, then the subject of a news article in the Jonesboro Sun and elsewhere, including the Arkansas Blog, which picked up 30,000 readers for our account of the story on a normally slow Sunday. Huddleston said he’d had no plans to promote an “agenda,” as Walton apparently feared. Huddleston wrote: “... I was hoping to empower your students to continue their education. My speech would have also touched on the importance of women, like my sister, who will go out into the world and know that they can now pull their chairs right up to the table of equality. To encourage them that they can no longer sit in the back and let men make the important decisions for them. And for that matter, letting them know that someday a woman or two or three can become a member of the Sloan-Hendrix School Board. After all, there’s an opening, since my father will resign from the Board later this month.” Bryant Huddleston, who has an adopted son, said he decided not to let the issue slide because discrimination would CONTINUED ON PAGE 13 12
MAY 9, 2013
ARKANSAS TIMES
Drawing the line Groups battling SWEPCO power line project that could encroach on some of Arkansas’s most scenic landmarks. BY DAVID KOON
A
n odd set of corporate, municipal and grassroots bedfellows has coalesced in Northwest Arkansas around opposition to a proposed Southwestern Electric Power Co. power-line project that critics say could encroach on some of the most scenic places in the Ozarks. The proposed project would push through a 150-foot-wide cleared right-ofway studded with 150-foot-tall electrical transmission towers. One route for the project would bring the power lines within 1,000 feet of the iconic Thorncrown Chapel in the woods near Eureka Springs. On April 3, SWEPCO filed an application for a Certificate of Environmental Compatibility and Public Need with the Arkansas Public Service Commission, requesting approval to build a new 345,000-volt transmission line from SWEPCO’s Shipe Road station near Centerton to a proposed power station on Kings River northwest of Berryville. The proposal includes six alternate routes. If any one of those routes is approved by the APSC, the certificate would give SWEPCO eminent domain powers, allowing the company to condemn and purchase the land of any landowners who refused to willingly sell for the power line right-ofway. Peter Main, a SWEPCO spokesman based in Fayetteville, said that all power facility projects have an impact on the environment, but “it’s very much a balancing act — a balancing of impact.” Main said the new project would “directly reinforce the local transmission system” and will provide power to the area, with a stepdown transformer in Carroll County that will take the voltage down from 345,000 volts to 161,000 volts so it can be used by the local power grid. Main said that a 150-foot-wide easement is “the typical right-of-way” for a power line that size. Once the right-of-way is cleared, Main said, it will be maintained at least partially through the ground application of EPA-registered herbicides. Public comments about the project, posted on the APSC under docket number 13-041-U and available at its website, have
THORNCROWN CHAPEL
been strongly against the project, with more than 2,000 people writing to express their opposition. More than 50 individuals, organizations, corporations, and cities — including the American Institute of Architects, the Walmart Real Estate Business Trust, and the cities of Bentonville, Cave Springs, Springdale, Garfield and Gateway (whose city park would apparently be cut in half by one of the proposed routes) — have filed requests to intervene in the case, meaning they could give testimony before the commission when the hearing on SWEPCO’s application convenes. The date of the hearing is not listed on the APSC calendar as of this writing, but APSC executive director John Bethel said it should take around 180 days from the time of the application before the commission reaches a decision, with “several rounds of testimony” addressing the application. Bethel said the commission “always appreciates and gives consideration to the comments from the public.” Jeff Danos is with the group Save the Ozarks, which opposes the SWEPCO project. Danos, who lives just outside Eureka Springs, said that depending on the route, the easement, transmission towers and lines could pass close to or be visible from a host of well-known Northwest Arkansas landmarks, including Lake Leatherwood, the Christ of the Ozarks, Beaver Lake, Spring Street in Eureka Springs, Thorncrown Chapel and Pea Ridge Battlefield. One route would cross Highway 23 just north of Eureka Springs, near the North Arkansas and Eureka Springs rail-
way station. Danos said another potential route could cross the proposed path of the Razorback Regional Greenway mountain bike trail project, which would run from Bella Vista to Fayetteville. Danos said that potential conflict led Springdale and Bentonville to file interventions in the case Part of getting out the word about the project, Danos said, is helping people understand the impact it would have on the area. “Everybody’s trying to wrap their minds around this, and it’s very difficult to do because we have no power lines of that size anywhere in this area,” Danos said. “We’re talking power lines that are the height of cell towers. It’s definitely something new. Personally, I’m seeing this as the single largest act of utility-driven destruction that we’ve seen in this region.” Danos said that he believes “sound planning” should be able to find a route that doesn’t encroach on landmarks and environmentally sensitive areas. He said he feels positive about the fight, which he calls “a David and Goliath story,” because of the outpouring of public and municipal support. “We’ve got strength in numbers,” he said, “but what it’s ultimately going to come down to is: Is the PSC going to listen to us? ... When you look at previous documents, utility companies tend to get their way.” Doug Reed is the pastor at Thorncrown Chapel, designed by the Arkansas architect E. Fay Jones. The chapel, which opened in 1980, is run by a non-profit, and holds weekly services. Potential encroachment on Thorncrown is why the American Institute of Architects has filed to intervene in the case. Reed said more than 300 weddings a year are performed there. One potential route for the power line, designated on SWEPCO plans as Route 91, would cross Highway 62 around 1,000 feet south of the chapel. Reed said it’s unclear whether the transmission towers would be visible from Thorncrown if the line goes through there, but added that he has been amazed and moved by how many people have mentioned Thorncrown in their letters to the APSC in opposition to the SWEPCO project. “Fay Jones’ architecture is organic,” Reed said. “His buildings were designed to be part of their environment, almost like someone dropped a seed there and they just grew with everything else. When you harm the environment around a Fay Jones building, you harm the building. There’s just no way around it.”