The award of two matching grants of $150,000 to be used in producing a management plan for the Arkansas side of the Illinois River watershed were announced this week by the Illinois River Watershed Partnership in Fayetteville, Ark.

The grant announcements were made at the quarterly meeting of the partnership by executive director Delia Haak and former Oklahoma Speaker of the House Larry Adair of Stilwell.

The Oklahoma Scenic Rivers Commission produced a management plan for the Oklahoma side of the Illinois River watershed in 1998.

OSRC administrator Ed Fite said he believes there is legitimate need for OSRC to re-visit the Oklahoma management plan, expanding and focusing water improvement strategies and modernizing the plan to attract the next generation of water quality supporters.

Fite also said he believes that the management plan will receive greater public support as a result of a review. He pointed out that OSRC commissioners only approved the plan in 1998 by one vote.

In addition to discussing the management plan grants, the Partnership also approved contracts and processes related to a $135,000 water quality monitoring grant from the Arkansas Natural Resource Conference.

In other actions, the Partnership also:

*Approved a $900 investment in the completion of a stakeholder survey in the Clear Creek drainage being conducted by a University of Arkansas doctoral candidate. The Clear Creek drainage encompasses most of the lands in the vicinity of Tontitown, Arkansas.

*Paid tribute to Tim Snell with the Nature Conservancy for his work in teaching tree planting techniques to almost 200 volunteers who planted 3,000 trees as part of the Partnership's 2008 Riparian Project completed in March.

*Announced the Oklahoma Scenic Rivers spring clean-up for May 30th and the Lake Fayetteville Clean Up July 11th.

*Heard from IRWP president Susan Thomas that the Partnership website (www.irwp.org) had 23,000 hits in March as a result of the Partnership's Online Challenge campaign to promote watershed awareness.