LITTLE ROCK – Arkansas will receive nearly $14.85 million in federal disaster assistance to assist in cleanup and recovery efforts after a massive January ice storm.

Members of the state’s congressional delegation made the announcement Tuesday in Washington about the funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Of the money, about $2.02 million from FEMA will go to Craighead Electric Cooperative and about $2.98 million from FEMA will go to the North Arkansas Electric Cooperative.

About $9.85 million from the DOT will be alloted for 30 counties. The counties are Baxter, Benton, Boone, Carroll, Clay, Cleburne, Conway, Craighead, Crawford, Cross, Franklin, Fulton, Greene, Independence, Izard, Jackson, Johnson, Lawrence, Madison, Marion, Mississippi, Newton, Poinsett, Pope, Randolph, Searcy, Sharp, Stone, Van Buren, and Washington counties.

LR won’t pay for home damaged by drain collapse

The Associated Press

LITTLE ROCK – A Little Rock assistant city manager says the city won’t help pay for repairs to a house damaged when a private storm drain collapsed.

Assistant City Manager Bryan Day says heavy rains on Sunday led to a six-foot-deep hole under the house in the Heights neighborhood. Slabs of concrete fell away from the house’s foundation after the drain collapsed.

The house was surrounded by water, and firefighters rescued the homeowner, Quinton Smith; his cousin, Lucy Leach; and Leach’s young son.

Day says city officials feel bad for Smith, but there isn’t much the city can do. The house has been declared unsafe.

Washington County quarry can’t expand

The Associated Press

FAYETTEVILLE – Washington County’s planning board has decided that a limestone quarry won’t be allowed to expand onto 98 acres next to its current operation.

The board deadlocked 3-3 on Monday in a vote concerning the proposed expansion by Rogers Group, which wanted to expand its current 45-acre quarrying operation. Neighboring landowners opposed the expansion.

Rogers Group spokesman Terry Sossong says the company could appeal the ruling to the Quorum Court, but hasn’t yet decided what its plans are.

About 30 residents protested outside the quarry in May, when county planners toured the operation to observe a blast and its effects on surrounding areas.

New UAMS campus in set to open

The Associated Press

LITTLE ROCK – A new northwest campus for the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences will open to students for the first time Tuesday.

Six third-year medical students will study at the Fayetteville campus this year and perform clinical rotations at area hospitals. Another half-dozen third-year students will be added to the campus next year, bringing the total to a dozen students in their third and fourth years of medical school.

The new campus is housed at the former Washington County Regional Medical Center. Based in Little Rock, UAMS is the state’s only medical school.