Future of the Buffalo 

My wife and I have a place at Centerville south of Dardanelle. The Petit Jean River is less than a couple of miles away, and it runs dirty. I have asked some of the people that were raised in the area of Petit Jean River, and they tell me that the river ran clear when they were children about 60 years ago.

A person can drive across the pontoon bridge or anywhere from there to the other side of Blue Mountain Lake and see the river runs brown from the runoff of farms with chicken litter being placed on pastures and cropland. When litter is placed on the land, vultures will land in fields, thinking something is dead in the fields. The other day the stench was so bad on the Petit Jean River that vultures were lined up on the bank of the river at Slaty Crossing.

To make a long story short, I believe this is the future of the Buffalo River, with all the hog-waste runoff into the river, and most of the fish will go missing. As in the Petit Jean River, the Buffalo River will run brown.

JOSEPH L. BERRY

Redfield