Even with the best of "expert advice "and the most honorable of intentions, sometimes people can make the wrong choice.
That is what appears to have happened with a recent incident involving a local company and some old concrete mixer drums.
It seems, based on information from their own expert, that Cooper Communities Inc. was not going to violate any state or federal hazardous waste laws by putting those old metal drums into a landfill.
To make it easy on themselves, and not have to transport them a great distance, they turned to the closest facility available, right here in Bella Vista - the Stump Dump.
And it would seem the man who owns that property told them to "Bring 'em on."
They did just that, and the story could have ended there.
But then the Bella Vista Patriots, who call themselves a watchdog group, got wind of the deposit of the drums and went immediately to one of the groups for which they seem to have the most disdain - the government - to report it.
That led to a representative from the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality investigating and finding that, in fact, the drums needed to be taken out of the dump.
So, the state called the company who owned the drums, and they relocated them. (See related story Page 1 A )
No harm, no foul.
But in retrospect, perhaps the Patriots, knowing who owned the drums, could have gone to those folks and done the neighborly thing - ask them to take their property back and no longer use the dump in such a way.
The people at CCI say they would have welcomed the Patriots'comments and would have investigated had they had any inkling they had done something wrong.
And it would appear that, for the most part, they had done nothing wrong. A representative from the ADEQ came to the site last week and reported finding no violations related to the drums.
There were no weapons of mass destruction, no boogeymen, nothing except some people doing what they thought was the right thing. And when they realized it might not be what they thought it was, they remedied it.
There's not a whole lot to read into this incident.
CCI acted on good authority and took the appropriate action when they needed to do so.
They also say they have learned a valuable lesson from this.
Maybe next time somebody "hits their ball "into the Patriots'yard, they'll talk to the owner of the ball, not call the police. It makes for better neighbors and neighborhoods.
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