I often become angry when driving in the state's largest city. It's not just due to the drivers who run stoplights and speed because they know they can get away with it. Traffic enforcement is rare here due to chronic understaffing at the Little Rock Police Department.
When walking out of the city's biggest tourist attraction--the Clinton Presidential Center--the first thing one notices are black tire marks in the circle out front. Young people do burnouts here even though security guards watch from inside. Is that really the image we want our out-of-state visitors to have?
The thing that makes me the maddest, though, is the lack of care--mowing right of ways, picking up trash--that's evident when traveling our major thoroughfares. First impressions matter. I drive along North University Avenue and notice that weeds up to four feet tall grow out of cracks in the concrete divider. It just screams "the people here have no pride."
I drive from west Little Rock to downtown along Cantrell Road (which is also Arkansas 10) and see weeds that aren't mowed and trash that isn't picked up. At one spot, a broken utility pole has been in a ditch for months. There seems to be a standoff on streets that double as state highways. The city won't pick up the trash or mow because it claims it's a state responsibility. The Arkansas Department of Transportation, meanwhile, appears to have significantly decreased the frequency of such maintenance.
These are among the basics of government--blocking and tackling, as a football coach might say. City and state government must work together to stop this growing embarrassment.
It isn't a problem confined to Little Rock. This job takes me into all 75 counties. The litter (and lack of mowing) problem is everywhere. We live in one of the most beautiful states in the country, but we trash it. Like some caricature of a 1950s hillbilly (the days before Lady Bird Johnson began changing the way Americans viewed the litter problem), Arkansans continue to toss trash out of vehicles.
There's big money being spent by the likes of brothers Tom and Steuart Walton to make Arkansas an outdoor recreational paradise that will attract people from across the country for world-class fishing, hunting, hiking, cycling, birdwatching, rock climbing and more. But will visitors come back to a place when the first thing they notice is trash everywhere? Is the Natural State simply an advertising slogan rather than a way of life? Do we lack pride in the place we call home?
This crisis is the reason I consider folks like Reed Green to be heroes. Green is paddling our canoe on Fourche Creek, which drains two-thirds of Little Rock and was the subject of last Sunday's column. He's a proud Arkansan and a three-time graduate of the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. Green received his bachelor's degree in botany in 1982, his master's degree in botany in 1985 and later his doctorate in biology-limnology.
"Limnology is the study of physical, chemical and biological interactions within inland waters as opposed to marine waters," he says. "It's like being a marine biologist but in inland waters. I spent my career studying the influence of watershed runoff from various land uses."
Green worked for the U.S. Geological Survey in Arkansas from 1989-2021. He conducted studies of Arkansas reservoirs such as Maumelle, Winona, Beaver, Bull Shoals, Norfork and Millwood. He was on the mercury task force that then-Gov. Bill Clinton formed to study sources of mercury in streams and reservoirs. He brought together people from Arkansas and Oklahoma to address problems in the Illinois River.
These days, he devotes much of his time to Fourche Creek. He picks up trash on either side of the creek and clears obstructions in the middle of the waterway.
"Fourche Creek shares a watershed boundary with the Little Maumelle Watershed and the Upper Saline Watershed," Green says. "The water quality in the Upper Saline and Little Maumelle watersheds is good, supporting native wildlife and fisheries. These resources, though, are being negatively impacted by land-use changes from forest to urban. The water quality in Fourche Creek has been compromised since the first European settlers arrived.
"Fourche Creek and the surrounding Fourche Bottoms have the potential to improve central Arkansas' status as a destination for outdoor recreation. They're different from what any other large city has in the region. Cleaning up the creek and bottoms would be like bringing Bayou DeView in east Arkansas to Little Rock. Why would anyone not want to see that happen?"
The coalition working to make it happen includes Friends of Fourche Creek, Central Arkansas Master Naturalists, Keep Little Rock Beautiful, Audubon Arkansas, the Arkansas Canoe Club and others.
In the past three years, these things have occurred:
There have been dozens of events to extract trash from booms in the creek at Benny Craig Park. Volunteers have also picked up trash in the bottoms. They've picked up 1,399 bags of trash (weighing 19,927 pounds), 63 tires without rims (weighing 2,393 pounds) and 27 tires with rims (weighing 1,297 pounds).
New booms were purchased and installed in May.
Streambank restoration efforts are being planned. The volunteer organizations will partner with the city of Little Rock and the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission's Stream Team program.
"The floating trash booms at Benny Craig Park typically get cleaned on the second Saturday of each month from 9 a.m. until noon during what the Central Arkansas Master Naturalists bill as the Boom Blast," says Norm Berner, the Friends of Fourche Creek chairman. "Colbie Jones, the director of Keep Arkansas Beautiful, likes what we've been doing. She recently announced a grant program to purchase trash booms across the state. This will help people understand that street litter goes to the nearest waterway."
Berner and Suzanne Hirrel, who also volunteers large amounts of time to Fourche Creek, are in the canoe next to Green and me. They also are Arkansas heroes.
"These bottoms are home to 300-year-old cypress trees, almost 100 species of birds, and about 50 species of fish," Berner says. "Street litter and illegal dumping are the beasts we must fight."
Non-native invasive plant species such as Chinese privet, Chinese tallow tree, red-tipped photina and Japanese honeysuckle line the creek and dominate the forest understory in places. Audubon Arkansas has used mechanical and chemical control of invasive plants while working with the master naturalists to clear 12 acres of adjacent land.
Tristyn Perrin, a student at the time at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, was an intern for Keep Little Rock Beautiful in the fall of 2021. Perrin wrote a lengthy report on litter in Fourche Creek.
"There's a major littering problem in Little Rock," Perrin wrote. "During rain events, the litter is transported by water through storm drains. The water empties into streams that, in turn, empty into Fourche Creek. Litter also ends up in Fourche Creek due to illegal dumping that occurs adjacent to these waters. This litter, and the chemical pollutants derived from the litter, accumulates in the Fourche Bottoms.
"The presence of items such as plastics, tires, cigarettes, motor oil, fertilizers and pesticides are affecting the entire ecosystem of Fourche Creek. ... Tires are manufactured to be durable so they take hundreds of years to break down. The tires are a threat to the environment because they contain harmful chemicals that seep out over time."
In 2016, Audubon Arkansas partnered with the University of Arkansas' Clinton School of Public Service to conduct research on area residents' impressions of Fourche Creek. These people wanted more outdoor recreational opportunities.
As is the case across Arkansas, the natural beauty is there. So is the trash in what I increasingly think of as the Unnatural State.
Rex Nelson is a senior editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.