Cotton underappreciates miracle of water
It isn’t clear to me if U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton appreciates the often overlooked miracle of clean water. His column in this paper “Bad for Arkansas: EPA water rule an overreach” (Nov. 7), expresses opposition to the federal EPA’s attempts to update a Clean Water Act that dates to President Nixon’s time.
I’m just a retiree, but even I see enough of the world news, and even the news inside our own country, to know a generous miracle when I see one. Federal and state water quality protection laws support the miracle.
Sen. Cotton and those who share his views don’t seem to appreciate what these protections mean to average citizens. When I rise in the morning, I know clean safe water, in any amount I need, will come from my kitchen faucet. I’ll have a glass of water, make coffee and wash an apple. I will do so with no thought for availability or safety. And even on my Social Security pension, I can afford the monthly bill.
As one of Sen. Cotton’s constituents, I want him to know I don’t have to haul water jugs from a tap up the road. I don’t have to own a truck that can handle a 500-gallon tank. I don’t have to operate a private water treatment plant. There are many Americans, and many billions more all over the world, who must do these things.
I’d also like Sen. Cotton to know we citizens in Northwest Arkansas are currently and voluntarily spending millions of dollars to extend clean water lines to rural homes. Private citizen groups have formed here to foster protection of clean water in the watersheds of both our White and Illinois rivers. Taxpayers here have repeatedly voted to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build state-of-the-art wastewater treatment plants to protect water quality in our watersheds and Beaver Lake.
My thought is that Sen. Cotton can’t appreciate the miracle of clean water because he’s gotten stuck deep in the useless muck of opposing anything supported by President Obama, even in the case of Obama’s EPA basically updating rules signed into law 40 years ago by President Nixon. Our population has grown a lot since Nixon’s days. The law and its effects need to change with the times and with the new pressures that come with population growth.
Of course, stoutly opposing President Obama on anything and everything is good politics in Arkansas. It may be good electoral politics today, but in terms of the miracle of clean water, it’s counter-productive tomorrow.
JOE NEAL
Fayetteville
Keep the clocks
unchanged
Clocks forward. Clocks back. Just a pain.
The sun and the moon remain on their own schedule. No change to suit us. Would countries do not change to suit us. Time schedules for TV, planes, trains, businesses, etc., are disrupted, and the beat goes on.
Leave the clocks alone.
Just my opinion.
JOHN BELITSAKOS
Fayetteville