Editor,
Thanks for the paper and the excellent staff and especially this editorial by Becky Gillette on the dumping of Hog Waste in The United States’ first National River, the Buffalo.
Each year since 1989, Arkansas has spent between $150 to $160 million dollars to establish the branding of The Natural State. Last year, tourists to Arkansas spent 8 billion dollars visiting Arkansas and the number one attraction was and is still The Buffalo River National Park and, of course, our other quiet and clean lakes, rivers and streams.
Their next favorite tourist destination is always Northwest Arkansas where we are lucky enough to live.
So what do our Little Rock political parties do: we pay them to come in and dump upstream and then when the Buffalo River Alliance and anybody with brains complains, we pay them to go. Brilliant, eh?
Pilgrims, citizens, all of us need to get on the ball, research what’s going on, get active or more active. The money is easy to get when the regulations are weak, invisible or never enforced in a manner that costs lots of money.
We are the Republic and we will stay a Democratic Republic as long as we help our leaders, our representatives, know what we think and what’s important to us. Remember Tip O’Neill’s famous guide, “Never Forget All Politics is Local.”
Faith Shah