They’re just puddles

Recently, President Trump was on camera—again—this time signing another executive order to end the Environmental Protection Agency’s oversight of clean waterways. He spoke of angry farmers and a few others in this category of profiting on some basis (business) and needing to pollute, or potentially pollute, waterways. Of course, he brought the sarcasm along as well, degrading the EPA and its overstepping bounds, calling it out for fines on businesses that were polluting their own “puddles” of water on their own lands. I still have not found the humor in any of it.

Anyone who has lived in a place with nature abounding (e.g., Arkansas) would tell you that polluting nature in any potential manner is not a positive ideology or action in any manner! Ya see, us hillbilly, barefoot and backward folk (majority of us) still hold true to the motto of “The Natural State,” nixing the old motto of “The Land of Opportunity.” We love our rivers, streams, creeks, ditches, puddles, lakes, and the like. Having any profiteering business (farmers and the like included) allowed to pollute without adhering to rigorous guidelines and penalties for not complying seems like a bad idea for most. As the water cycle makes its way through our state in many ways, the potential pollutants are then into our faucets and our bodies, our lakes and streams, our wildlife and fish. It then is not just a minority issue, but a holistic issue affecting everyone potentially in harmful ways. And quite frankly, the small proportion of bothered businesses have a hapless effect that could have been regulated as was, or even more rigorously. However, President Trump signed it out and signed nothing in its replacement.

Maybe Arkansas and the surrounding states have a system to somewhat circumvent this neglect and to stave off some perceived damage this could cause. SHANE HAMPTON Fayetteville