30 Jun 2024 Central Arkansas Canoe Club is saving the state’s waterways
By Judy Riley
The Central Arkansas Canoe Club members have been quietly, unassumingly, yet positively educating Arkansans about waterways since their inception. The Central Chapter is the largest in the Arkansas Canoe Club, which boasts more than 1,700 members from Arkansas and surrounding states and focuses on safety, education and conservation. That is ambitious for a nonprofit, but not too much for this group.
Safety is serious business for the club. “We have had at least two recent drownings on relatively easy Arkansas float streams. One was a flood-swollen stream the day after tornadoes ripped through Northwest Arkansas; the other was on an ‘easy’ section of the Buffalo and occurred at low water. Sadly, I believe both could have been avoided with the right training. People just don’t know what they don’t know,” said Cowper Chadbourn, retired engineer and lifetime water enthusiast.
The club’s largest training session, School of Whitewater Paddling, has been directed by Gordon Kumpuris for eight years. Conducted annually on the Mulberry River, it draws instructors and helpers from a multi-state area. The Central Chapter also hosts dozens of roll sessions throughout the year, where members practice their Eskimo rolls, an important skill for whitewater kayak paddlers, and teach this skill to others. These events are held in pools at UALR and UCA during cooler months and move to Lake Nixon west of Little Rock during summer months. In addition to these club-sponsored activities, Michael and Tonya Sacomani are lead instructors for 20 to 30 classes per year sponsored by the Benton Parks and Recreation Department. Included are Introduction to Kayaking and River Essentials, both conducted at Saline River Canoe in Benton.
Safety is a part of every class, not only from the need to wear a personal flotation device but also how to recognize the most common water hazards like ‘strainers’ and ‘sweepers’ (downed trees that entrap and drown a paddler) and develop the boat-handling skills needed to safely navigate away from these hazards. The club offers Swiftwater Rescue Training several times a year, with one or more courses in Central Arkansas. These courses are not just for hard-core paddlers; they are designed to teach hazard recognition and avoidance and to provide hands-on practice with basic rescue skills that are appropriate for anybody who paddles on moving water. More information on Canoe Club and Saline River Canoe sponsored training can be found by searching for Arkansas Canoe Club or Benton Parks and Recreation on Facebook.
Chadbourn is known as the guru for river and stream cleanup by any Canoe Club member. “Cowper has instilled in us what we call the ‘Cowper Effect.’ When we pass a piece of litter in a river or stream, we paddle over to it and stuff it into our canoe or kayak,” said Chapter President Don Rottman.
“Through the combination of getting some trash with every outing, which may be several per week, plus a few larger organized cleanups per year, the group has collected over 335,000 pounds of trash, including over 6,000 tires,” Chadbourn said.
And then there is Debbie Doss; she is everywhere all at once when it comes to protecting rivers and streams. As a former Arkansas Canoe Club conservation chair for 17 years, she led many projects. One of her favorites is the Happy New Year Red Hot Cider Run each Jan. 1, regardless of weather. Most recently, she partnered with Arkansas Game and Fish and the Nature Conservancy to map water trails and build camping platforms. She has achieved guru status for trailblazing water trails.
Like Chadbourn and Doss, the Sacomanis are proactive in the quest to clean rivers and streams. Both are board members of the Saline Watershed Alliance, a nonprofit working to protect the Saline River. They are partnering with the city of Benton to purchase two trash trouts, devices that will collect trash on two tributaries of the Saline, the McNeil and Depot creeks, preventing it from entering the river. With support from both Street Department Chair John Ritchie and Mayor Tom Farmer, the project awaits City Council approval. “Trash thrown or blown from vehicles, unless picked up there, ends up in our waterways and we are doing what we can to prevent that,” said Sacomani.
To thank this selfless group of volunteers, simply spread the word on the value of training, learn how to be safer on the water, always wear a personal flotation device, pick up at least some trash along the way, and enjoy Arkansas’s waterways.
