By Wally Kennedy

wkennedy@joplinglobe.com

Some area residents are planning to attend a regional meeting Thursday in Springfield on the proposed exemption of several small streams in Southwest Missouri from state bacteria standards.

The meeting is slated for 6 to 8 p.m. at the Southwest Regional Office of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, 2040 W. Woodland St.

The meeting is one of seven to be scheduled by the DNR for discussion of the department’s proposal to modify standards on certain streams in Missouri.

The meetings were organized by the DNR after the department became aware of what it has described as “misinformation” about what is being proposed.

In a prepared statement released July 22, Doyle Childers, director of the DNR, said: “There has been a great deal of information about this; unfortunately, much of it has been misinformation. Oversimplification and misstatements from several groups have caused public alarm that is totally unnecessary.”

But critics of the proposed changes, including the Sierra Club and the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, have questioned why the streams are being considered for exemption.

That’s the question Ruby Wilks, of Purdy, and some of her neighbors are asking. Wilks, who lives near Little Flat Creek in Barry County, one of the streams proposed for exemption, said she is planning to attend the meeting.

“We need to get that question answered,” she said. “Why would they want to declassify a stream at all for bacteria?”

Wilks said the DNR’s proposal to declassify a two-mile stretch of Little Flat Creek has generated local interest. The DNR has received letters from Purdy-area residents, she said, that indicate Little Flat Creek is used for swimming and other types of recreation.

The department has said streams proposed for bacterial exemptions will not be declassified if local residents can show that the streams are used for swimming or whole-body contact.

Wilks said other residents in Barry County who live near the South Fork of Capps Creek, another stream proposed for exemption, also are planning to attend the meeting Thursday in Springfield.

Other streams proposed for exemption in Southwest Missouri are Glendale Fork in Barton County, Truitt Creek and Douger Branch in Lawrence County, and Carney Creek in Barry County.

During the meeting, DNR representatives will explain the department’s Use Attainability Analyses, or UAA, and how it selected the streams for exemption. A UAA is a structured, scientific study of a stream to determine if whole-body-contact recreation, or swimming, is an attainable or existing use. The standards set for the protection of public health depend on the findings of the UAAs.