Pine Bluff, Arkansas 101

                             

                                       ARKANSAS

                                               BY 

                                               RICHARD MASO N

                                     Pine Bluff 101

“When the center of your city is a failure, then the perception is your whole town is a failure.” No, that’s not my original thought. It came from one of the community leaders in San Antonio, Texas in the mid-1960s as they started an effort to renovate and restore their downtown. I lived in Corpus Christi and visited San Antonio numerous times during the start of that effort, and open carry would have been an excellent idea if you visited downtown San Antonio after dark. Downtown was a rundown, drug-infested, boarded up place that desperately needed help. The help came after the community leaders banded together and in 1968 put on Hemisfair, a World’s Fair type exhibition confined to the Western Hemisphere. Hemisphere kicked off the restoration-renovation process where public and private money and a lot of hard working individuals banded together to produce a new-old downtown that is currently a showpiece for how to bring a city center back to life, and in doing so revive an entire city.

Pine Bluff is a 1960s San Antonio, and from all the press I read, it seems the city is getting ready to tackle the revitalization of the town. However, I don’t believe the focus of the initial work is directed at the root of the problem.  I guess, paraphrasing a well-known politician, “It’s the Downtown stupid!”

Yes, I believe Pine Bluff is considered a failure because the downtown is not just a failure, it is an embarrassment to the entire state. I know that’s a little strong, but downtown streets closed for months because buildings are collapsing in the street? How do you get worse than that? You don’t!

I can remember growing up in the 50s and 60s considering Pine Bluff being Arkansas’s second city, but now? Well, it can be again, but until their downtown is once again the center of the town, and it is restored and vital, it won’t happen. You can increase traffics to downtown, but until you give someone a reason to go there, it’s no different than increasing the traffic to a cemetery.

The effort to restore Pine Bluff back to being the preeminent City in southeast Arkansas to be successful, must be focused in removing the negative image the downtown—bricks-in-the-street—has given it. Now, let’s look at the root problem confronting the town. Loss of population signals the skilled professionals who are critical to a town’s growth are not coming, they are leaving. Unless you can reverse that trend, the city won’t be revived. Skilled professional people are the one who create jobs and this high technological workforce is centered in mega cities, but many of them are looking to relocate because of congestion, pollution, and a raft of other big city problems. Attracting these skilled professional is the key to any medium or small town survival, and to attract them, you must give them what they want, and they don’t want jobs. They have jobs. They are job creators.

A town must have several key items all built around an attractive city center if that town is to grow.  But first, before we get to exactly what these skilled professional people want, how do you get a vital, attractive center of the city? This first point is an absolute must: Your center city buildings, which are potential retail, restaurant, and entertainment venues, must be better or equal to any comparable real estate in the city. This is step one, and if you don’t complete step one forget steps one, two, three, etc. that is because step one is critical to the remaining steps. Of course, that means you must restore the Pines Hotel and the Sanger Theater along with most of the core downtown buildings. To attract the skilled professionals you must give them the items that want and that list of wants depends on quality real estate. These folks demand good restaurants, entertainment, and retail located in an attractive setting. Now let me suggest how city government and other community leaders can make step one happen. Either re-zone the center of the city to require properties to be upgraded, or give financial incentives to developers who will restore these buildings to meet today’s standards. Of course, the renovation of Pine Bluff’s center city will be a decades jobs, and it won’t be cheap. The 5/8s of a cent tax is just a drop in the bucket. If the city council is serious about seeing the city return to his preeminent position in the state, then they will have to raise at least five times that amount of money, and make step one, the downtown restoration, a must before launching into outlying projects. The worst thing the city can do is scatter shoot their funding, and wake up with their money gone and very little to show for it.

After step one is complete, the remaining work is primarily to present an attractive surroundings for these buildings, and of course that is adding almost everything you can imagine to the downtown. Brick sidewalks dozens of flower planters, information kiosks, and focus on everything starting or happening downtown. Of course, every holiday should feature something downtown, 5k races and pep rallies should be downtown, and the goal should be to etch in everyone’s brain that downtown is the center of the city, and when Pine Bluff’s downtown becomes the pride of the town, the community will have taken a giant step toward reviving.

thenorphletpaperboy: Rewilding Arkansas

thenorphletpaperboy: Rewilding Arkansas:              ARKANSAS                                            BY                        RICHARD MASON                    ...

Rewilding Arkansas

             ARKANSAS  

                                         BY

                       RICHARD MASON

                                                  Rewilding Arkansas

            Rewilding? Yes, rewilding is just what it says and means, and here in Arkansas it is a plan to restore a portion of our forests and some of its wildlife to what it was in the past. When we look back on our recent history, let's say 200 years ago, I am confident that we wouldn't recognize most of our state. We've essentially cut all of the massive, virgin timber, drained the great swamps near most of our rivers, and killed off at least 90% of the animal life. What now? Are we satisfied just to accept the disaster we have created? Or should we join a movement that has started in Europe called Rewilding Europe. This is the concept: Certain large forested and lightly inhabited areas of the European Continent would be selected to be rewilded. In other words, allowed to become as wild as possible. I know we think, if a program such as “Rewilding” was important, the United States would be leading the world in adopting it. Well, we’re not leading the pack. We’re not even in the pack. In fact very few Americans even know what ‘Rewilding’ is, so let me bring you up to date.

Rewilding is a movement to recreate an area or a species of wildlife as close as it was before it was inhabited by humans, and not just  a National Park, but a woodland where as many of the original animals that inhabited an area would once again live there.

Of course, rewilding would be selective, and essentially that’s what many of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s programs are doing now, but it would be more extensive. Restoring the turkey and deer populations are good examples, but that’s only a starting point.

Arkansas was once the Bear State because bears were so plentiful, and I would venture a guess that bears were in every county in the state. Of course, the restocking and reestablishing of the bear population has started, but it is confined and limited, and with a bear hunting season, it seems as if the Game and Fish Commission is trying to only recreate a token bear population. Why not let the bear population increase until we reach a rewilding level equal to the turkey or deer population? I can’t see how, if it’s okay to have a bear population in a couple of Northwest Arkansas counties and one Southeast county, why wouldn’t it make sense to have bears in all 75 counties again? Of course, if there is nothing wrong with having more bears, having a bear season is a stupid way to achieve that. Eliminate the bear season until the bear population has a 300 to 500% increase. That would put the bear population at something over 75,000, and it would probably have a positive effect on reducing the feral hog population.

Well, while I’m writing about increasing an already small population of wild game, why not let the elk expand their range? What’s wrong with elk being in the Ouachita Mountains or along the Red River in southwest Arkansas? Of course, there is nothing wrong with that, but having an elk hunting season to keep the herd along the Buffalo River at about the same size is just one step from having a hunting season at a petting zoo. Eliminate the elk season until we have substantial herds of elk throughout the state, and yes, a substantial statewide herd of elk would be in the hundred thousand range instead of a few hundred.

Next let’s talk about the harvesting of alligators in the state. How many 12 foot alligators are left in the state after that big one was killed last month? Ten maybe fifteen; and what is the alligator population in southern and eastern Arkansas? 1500 maybe 2000? Okay, maybe you’re not ready to see more alligators in south Arkansas, but how many beaver are there? Hundreds of thousands, and more are on the way, and the over-abundance of beaver has wreaked environmental havoc by flooding thousands of forest habitat acres.  Of course, we are overrun by beaver because we have eliminated all the predators that prey on beaver, and guess what helps control beaver? Of course, it’s the alligators, especially the big ones! We should eliminate the gator season until we reach some equilibrium with the beaver population, and that would let the few thousand gators in the state expand to several hundred thousand.

Now before you start thinking I’m anti-hunting consider the effect of what I have proposed. By allowing the population of elk, bear, and alligators to expand until those populations are as plentiful as deer, would create a much better opportunity to hunt. When I grew up in South Arkansas deer were so scarce that just seeing a deer was a big deal, and now after rewilding the deer population, deer hunting is a huge part of the hunting season in Arkansas.

But just having more wild game is only part of the rewilding we need here in Arkansas. There is another large area of our state that needs more habitat restoration, and this area will surprise you. We should rewild a portion of the roadways and median right-of-ways especially on our Interstates and other major roads in the state. The Arkansas Highway Department, which has done a super job of road construction, is probably responsible for more habitat destruction than any entity in the state. I walk and jog on the 167 Bypass in El Dorado and the medians are mowed grass, and the cleared right-of-ways are 40 to 50 yards of mowed grass on both sides of the road. Multiply that extra unneeded right-of-way by a 5000 or 10,000 and you will understand the magnitude of the loss. I believe the right-of-ways could be reduced by at least 50% without any appreciable hazard to drivers. I have driven on dozens of interstate highways where the right-of-way were a third of Arkansas’s, and I have noticed the nationwide trend to plant trees and bushes in the medians and reduce the right-of-ways in surrounding states. Louisiana, Texas, and even Mississippi have tree planting programs to reforest medians and over-extended right-of-ways. Of course, by allowing part of the right-of-ways to have major vegetation instead of grass, it would save the state thousands of dollars in mowing expense.

Yes, Arkansas has already benefited immensely from rewilding, but if we will ramp up the process and rewild other species of wildlife and habitat, our state and our hunters will reap huge benefits.

 

thenorphletpaperboy: Hogs Named Feral

thenorphletpaperboy: Hogs Named Feral:              ARKANSAS                                                                     By                                    Ri...

Hogs Named Feral

             ARKANSAS

                                                                    By

                                   Richard Mason                

                                                  Hogs Named Feral

This is an open letter to the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, and the subject is the proliferation of feral hogs in Arkansas. In my opinion, these animals that are reproducing at almost unbelievable rates are the greatest threat to native wildlife and wildlife habitat in our lifetime, and we are doing very little to solve the problem. No, it is not just a few wild hogs rooting up someone’s back yard. It is literally millions of feral hogs decimating both wildlife habit and contributing to the ever decreasing quail and turkey population in our state. Feral hogs are quail and turkey egg eating animals that roam the woods, and they are finding most of those nests and eating the eggs.

I live on thirty-seven acres with a couple of small ponds surrounded by mixed timber and open grassy areas—excellent quail habitat, and up until about 15 years ago, I had a large covey of quail on the property. When I first built my house in the mid-1970s the covey was somewhere between 15 and 20 birds and seeming very stable. I didn’t allow hunting since we were in the city limits. Over the next fifteen years, I began to notice the covey becoming smaller and smaller until about ten years ago I heard the last bob-white call—and there was no answer. What happened to my quail? I believe feral hogs were a primary contributing factor in the disappearance of my quail.

Let’s consider the size of the feral hog problem: Conservative estimates of the feral hog population in Arkansas puts the number at over two million, and that’s growing daily. A mature sow will have three litters a year, usually 6 to 10 piglets, which mature into breeding stock in less than a year, and since we have killed off most of the natural predators, most of those litters reach maturity. You don’t have to do Calculus to get an understanding of the problem. It is huge and it will require drastic measure to solve it.  However, our Game and Fish Commission is fiddling while the expanding feral hog population soars. Around 1000 feral hogs have been added to the feral hog population in Arkansas while I’m writing this columns. In order to just stay even with the expanding population at least a half million feral hogs will have to be taken out of our ecosystem---each year! We are not even scratching the surface of the problem.

Our Game and Fish Commission needs to think outside the box if they are to solve the problem. Evidently, they need some suggestions so here goes: First, let’s reach back to the 18^th Century for part of the solution. Put a bounty on feral hogs. Well, we managed kill off a healthy wolf population by putting a bounty on them, so why not do this: A $5.00 bounty for every feral hog tail submitted to local game warden. If you consider the destruction of wildlife and wildlife habitat one feral hog inflicts each year, that $5.00 to remove a hog is a tremendous bargain for the state.

That is step one. Step two is to restore the natural predators of feral hogs.  We are the ones who have put nature out of balance by killing off essentially all the natural predators that would keep the feral hogs population under control. Along with the bounty, the second part of the solution is to reduce the number of feral hog is by rewilding Arkansas. Rewilding, which is rapidly gaining acceptance in Europe, is a reintroduction of species that were once abundant in an area. In Arkansas it means to restock the feral hog predators we have killed off, and stop the killing of the few existing predators that are still here. That, along with a bounty, is the only way to reduce the number of feral hogs.  It’s that simple. We must reintroduce as many as 150 mountain lions and several 100 wolves into the State, and close the bear season. Those predators will thrive and multiply because of the abundant food, and they will reduce the feral hogs that are destroying habitat along with quail and turkey nests.  With the small number of bears we have in the state, it borders on stupidity to even have a bear season. In addition, we should stop the killing of other predators such as coyotes and bobcats. No, little Jonnie is not going to be gobbled up by a mountain lion or wolf. According to statistics, he would be in more danger from being stuck by a meteorite.

If we don’t do something drastic about the feral hog population, you will see the problem continue to grow and become more and more difficult to control. A bounty and the re-introduction of predators into the ecosystem is the only way to counter this wildlife crisis.

thenorphletpaperboy: Let's Join the War on Dirty Coal!

thenorphletpaperboy: Let's Join the War on Dirty Coal!: ARKANSAS By RICHARD MASON Let's Join the War on Dirty Coal First, just to set the record straight, I am a na...

Let's Join the War on Dirty Coal!

ARKANSAS

By

RICHARD MASON

Let's Join the War on Dirty Coal

First, just to set the record straight, I am a natural gas producer, and dirty coal is a competing fuel.

So I do have a vested interest in putting the few dirty coal miners that are left out-of-work, but let’s consider the reasons to join the war on dirty coal, other than my economic ones.

           Of course, the out-of-work miners in West Virginia aren't ever going back to work mining dirty coal, but it's not because of environmental concerns; it’s because dirty coal simply costs more to use. That’s right, cheap, clean natural gas is eating dirty coals lunch cost-wise, and over 200 dirty coal-fired plants have closed during the last few years and more are on the list to be closed. The environmental problems have only a minor part in the closing.

The war on dirty coal is one we need to win, because the spoils for winning are lower utility bills, and a cleaner environment. Maybe, you’re a ‘coal miner’s daughter’ and you’re in dirty coal’s hip pocket. If that’s the case, you support the use of dirty, coal-fired generating plants to provide electricity, then you’re on the hook with all the negatives that come with it. Of course, at a minimum, dirty coal plants spew out huge amounts of carbon dioxide that contributes to climate change caused by global warming, but there are a whole host of other problems in the burning of dirty coal. Take a look at major Chinese cities where thousands are wearing masks, and the air is so dirty you can’t see the sun. Of, course their incidences of lung disease are off the wall as well as numerous other ailments. Yes, dirty coal is a big part of the problem!  Are you okay with that?

But that's not the main reason I have in joining the war on dirty coal, and that problem is directly related to what a dirty coal-fired plants put in the atmosphere here in Arkansas. All dirty coal and dirty, dirty, lignite plants spew thousands of pounds of mercury into the atmosphere each year, and that vaporized mercury comes down in the frequent rains we have here in Arkansas. Our weather systems almost always move from west to east, and that brings the mercury leaden air from Texas right over Arkansas. Texas has four out of the top five dirty coal and lignite plants in the nation that emit mercury, and a  stunning 4500 pounds of mercury from these plants goes into the atmosphere every year in Texas, and a lot of that drops into the lakes and rivers in Arkansas. But Arkansas has nothing to brag about since around 800 pounds of mercury is put into the air from Arkansas’s three dirty coal-fired plants. As the mercury contaminates the streams and lakes it entered the food chain at the very bottom, and is ingested by the smallest organisms. However, the problem with mercury is very simple. It is not passed through, but stays within the organism, and when the larger fish in the food chain consume these small fish the mercury is slowly added to the larger fish until at the upper end of the food chain in large predatory fish such as bass and catfish it become concentrated enough to be harmful to humans who consume those fish. That's the real problem with dirty coal as far as I’m concerned.  Numerous studies have shown the harmful effects of ingesting contaminated fish, and the Arkansas Department of Health has issued a warning about consuming fish from certain lakes and streams. Studies have shown babies born from a mother who consumed more than the recommended amounts of mercury contaminated fish during the early months of pregnancy are very likely to produce a child with a lowered I.Q. So that's the big problem with dirty coal fired generating plants.

The combination of the Texas and Arkansas dirty coal-fired plants and industrialization of America in the last 50 years has caused the mercury in fish problem. It's a tough problem to solve, but a good start would be to convert the dirty coal and lignite burning electrical generating plants in Arkansas and Texas into clean burning natural gas fired plants. Then our mercury in fish problem would begin to slowly disappear. 

However, we seem to be taking a step backwards. Arkansas's attorney general is suing the EPA to stop them from enforcing the new standards that would force these dirty coal-fired plants to add scrubbers to remove the various harmful elements they emit, if they continued to burn dirty coal, or have them stitch to clean burning natural gas, and this week the head of the EPA announced he was suspending the new rules that would lower the coal-fired plants harmful emissions. He announced “The War on Coal is over!” Yes, you guessed it: it's all about making a buck now and facing the consequences later. What we should be doing is trying to eliminate the use of dirty coal as an electrical generating fuel, and not trying to dodge regulations that would solve the problem, and for God's sake don't open National Forests for dirty coal mining as has been proposed.

Okay, I know most of us could care less about what mercury will do to us, since we're primarily adults passed the child bearing age, but what about the young, country girl in Bradley County who knows nothing about mercury in the fish that she is eating several times a week while she's pregnant? Consider this: If she hadn't eaten the mercury contaminated fish, her son or daughter might have become doctor or an attorney, but instead his lower I Q. will turn him into a high school dropout. Shouldn't we do something to prevent that from happening? What if that child was your grandchild?

Arkansas Department of Health: Fish Notice: Pregnant or Breastfeeding Women, Women Planning to be Pregnant, and Children under 7 Years of Age--General Public 1. Felsenthal Wildlife Refuge – including the Saline River up to Stillions Bridge (Union, Bradley, Ashley Counties) Should not eat largemouth bass (13 inches or longer), flathead or blue catfish, pickerel, gar, bowfin or drum from this refuge. Should not eat flathead catfish, gar, bowfin, drum, pickerel or largemouth bass (16 inches in length or longer). No more than 2 meals per month of blue catfish and largemouth bass (13-16 inches in length) should be eaten from this refuge. 2. Ouachita River – from Camden to the north border of the Felsenthal Wildlife Refuge to include all associated ox-bow lakes, backwater and overflow lakes and barrow ditches (Union, Ouachita, and Calhoun Counties) Should not eat largemouth bass, flathead catfish, pickerel, gar or bowfin from this river. Should not eat largemouth bass, flathead catfish, pickerel, gar or bowfin from this river….