Sustainability Alliance Highlights The Impact Of Zink Lake On Arkansas River

We are just weeks away from the new Zink Lake opening along the Arkansas River bringing more recreation options to Tulsans.

Along with that comes preserving it and the river watershed for the future. Missy Lukenbaugh with the Sustainability Alliance to talk about an event to do just that.

Reagan: Let's talk about an event that does just that. Welcome. And Missy, thank you. Good to have you here. We'll talk about the significance of Zink Lake and what this will mean for the region, the water, and everything like that.

Lukenbaugh: Okay, for the Sustainability Alliance, we are excited about what the Zink Lake has done for the attention to the Arkansas River. Before this project. There wasn't a lot of pride in the river, there wasn't a lot of attention. And now there are concerns. There's pride, there's excitement about, you know, recreation at the river. And so we are glad that everyone's focused on it and are now concerned about doing something to preserve it.

Reagan: What kind of impact does this have on this major waterway? What impact does this have on the rest of the region?

Lukenbaugh: There's a there's an impact on the ecosystem. Obviously, there are water quality issues. And with the dam, you know, their concerns about fish migration, but we know that the city and their state officials are doing everything that they can to take a look at those practices. And our event this week is a place where we can talk about that a little bit more. How does this affect fish migration? How does this affect the lease turns? How does this affect the floor or the font of the vegetation? And so this is a space that we are creating for both the community state officials and city officials to come together and have the conversation about what we can do forward at this point.

Reagan: So this is an event welcome for everybody to come in and learn more.

Lukenbaugh: This is an event where we will have a presenter, we're going to have Dr. Robert Nairn of OU. He's at the Center for restoration of watersheds and ecosystems. And we're also going to have Ellen Ray of the city design studio. And we're very excited about Dr. Nairn coming to talk to us because he has been responsible for this substantial cleanup of the Tar Creek Superfund site. And so for him to come and share with us about nature-based solutions and ecological engineering and really the promise and the hope that we can have that the Arkansas River can improve from this point. That that it's it's a bright light forward.

Reagan: It's no longer really a neglected River. It was just kind of a I don't want to say neglected, really. But it was just kind of there now was what efforts going into it. So what can people expect what people didn't know if they want to come out tomorrow?

Lukenbaugh: So tomorrow, we will have the presentation, again, from Dr. Nairn. A lot of education. And we're also going to hear about updated plans from Ellen Ray, what are the plans? What is the sustainability design that's been built into the plan so far at St Lake, and then what are the plans for the future? And then part two of our event is going to be what we're calling a rotation station where we'll have areas of interest sort of topical tables will have resident experts that will sit at each of the tables in six-minute rotations will have folks come to have conversations, ask questions at ideas and have a brainstorming place where we can come together, work together on a sustainability framework and look forward for the future.

The event is from 11:30 a.m. to 2p at the McKeon Center for Creativity at TCC Downtown.