Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Cleanup has made impact on bayou Meto
REYDELL — While the air would be cool for another hour or so, the sun strafed the sere flatlands around the Bayou Meto Wildlife Management Area.
An opaque haze cloaked the surrounding rice and soybean fields, and cicadas chirped the summertime song of the South. The humidity was so thick we could almost drink it, and dry grass crackled beneath our feet.
Officially, the third annual Bayou Meto WMA cleanup began at 8 a.m. last Saturday, but George Cochran and Jimmy Jackson started at sunrise. Their mission was to exhume a derelict refrigerator from the mud of the Salt Bayou Ditch, popularly known as the Big Ditch. It is a primary conduit for duck hunters to reach the WMA’s interior.
A sunken refrigerator is a navigational hazard, especially in the dark when duck hunters race to their hunting holes, but it’s also a blight on the crown jewel of the state’s wildlife management system.
Cochran conceptualized the cleanup in 2011 with Roger Milligan, a retired Arkansas Game and Fish Commission biologist who managed Bayou Meto WMA for many years. Like most people who frequented Bayou Meto, Cochran was acclimated to the WMA’s trashy condition. Besides household appliances in the waterways, the woods and access areas contained copious amounts of drink cans, plastic bottles, plastic wrappers and other flotsam that hunters deposited or that floated into the area during floods.
“One day my son David asked me, ‘Dad, has it always been this trashy down here?’ ” Cochran said. “That caught me by surprise, and it hit me. I saw it through his eyes and I realized, by golly, no, it wasn’t always like this.”
Cochran grew up hunting Bayou Meto in the 1960s and 1970s. The area wasn’t as heavily used then, and it was cleaner. Cochran and Milligan organized the first cleanup in which nearly 40 volunteers removed several tons of trash.
Of the volunteers who showed up. Cochran said 10 of them bailed at the beginning when they learned that Mark Hooks, Bayou Meto’s area manager, wasn’t present.
“They wanted to complain to the area manager about water management and things like that,” Cochran said.
Since then, the number of volunteers has hovered around the same 26-30 people. Cochran said his and Milligan’s goal for the cleanup was to send a message that littering was not acceptable on Bayou Meto WMA.
“When people see litter, they think it’s OK to litter, too,” Cochran said. “When they come to a place that’s clean, I think they’re more reluctant to throw something out. Pack mentality, or whatever you want to call it.”
The relative lack of trash during the 2012 cleanup encouraged Cochran, but 2013 was a bit of a setback, as evidenced by the Big Ditch refrigerator.
At about 9 a.m., Cochran and Jackson returned to the Mulberry Access with the fridge precariously perched atop Jackson’s flatbottom boat, along with a couple of discarded coolers and other junk. To get the fridge in the boat, they had to dewater it, bulldog it up the ditch’s steep, muddy bank and roll it into the boat.
Cochran and Jackson are pretty big guys, too. There was just barely enough room in the boat for them.
As the day wore on, the humidity soared and the dust flew. Milligan and I filled several large capacity trash bags with a variety of stuff. Steve Filipek, the AGFC’s Stream Team coordinator, showed up with spring-operated “litter sticks,” which spared us from stooping over to pick up stuff. Jess Essex of DeWitt joined in, as did Talmon Prier of North Little Rock.
The cleanup was supposed to end at noon, but the five of us worked at Mulberry Access, Cox Cypress Access and two obscure access points until 2 p.m. In fact, Milligan picked up roadside trash from Cox Cypress Access all the way past Halowell Reservoir, and a considerable distance going the other direction.
We might have gone longer, but everyone wanted to get back to Cochran’s cabin for the Razorbacks’ 3 p.m. kickoff with Louisiana-Lafayette.
Priorities, and all that.