"Rethink that Permit " by
Mike Masterson In the Northwest Arkansas Times February 16, 2014

The unbelievable saga of the Cargill-sponsored hog factory our state wrongheadedly permitted in the Buffalo National River watershed just became more twisted where reason and common sense are concerned. (As if that were possible.)

Now we read that attorneys for the national law firm Earthjustice (representing four public-interest groups) sent a letter last week to the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (cough) that spelled out alleged misrepresentations and problems with the permit this agency so quickly and quietly issued to the controversial hog factory.

And this latest development means the entire matter of the permit likely will be reopened for public hearings.

Among the Earthjustice concerns was a real doozy. C&H Hog Farms said in the nutrient management plan of its permit application that it had access to 17 fields around the 6,500-swine factory on which to spray tons of the resulting waste. However, the rightful owners of three of those 17 fields say they never gave permission to C&H to use their property.

It gets worse. Last year our state agreed to spend over 500,000 of our tax dollars to monitor water quality around this factory.

University of Arkansas researchers began testing on three fields.

And, you guessed it, two of those three belong to those who denied their permission in the first place. (And none of those three fields being tested had even received waste applications.) Huh?

Farmers and landowners around little Mount Judea, which borders the C&H factory, wrote to the university last week asking its researchers to stop testing and water monitoring on the fields where C&H was denied approval.

Moreover, the letter to the Department of Environmental Quality contends that the agency and C&H owners have known about the ownership issues and even acknowledged as much in inspection reports. So just what the whole-hog, half-ham has been going on here?

As a result of these alleged misrepresentations in the permit, Earthjustice says it has presented the state agency with legitimate reasons to reconsider the permit issued late in the summer of 2012. They are seeking a public review and full reconsideration of the permit.

In a resulting news release, Ozark Society President Bob Cross of Fayetteville said: “The people of Arkansas and the university research team have been seriously misled … both ADEQ and C&H previously knew that three fields were improperly identified as fields set to receive manure applications. So why did they erroneously allow the University of Arkansas research team to use these fields to conduct monitoring and consequently waste a lot of taxpayer money?”

Nothing I see worth arguing over. Just answer one simple question:Why would you allow such nonsense to stand up in the permitting process?

Earthjustice lawyers concluded: “Public involvement and transparency from the start could well have prevented the ill-advised siting of a factory farm in the watershed of the treasured Buffalo National River and the subsequent waste of taxpayer dollars to monitor and study the facility.”

The Earthjustice and activists’ concerns extend to a ground-penetrating radar study by the university’s team which shows evidence of subsurface features capable of allowing water contaminated by hog manure to rapidly travel into adjacent surface waters rather than being absorbed into field crops, as the factory’s disposal plan shows. Big Creek (a major tributary of the Buffalo National River) runs adjacent to some application fields and close to others.

“C&H is contracted with Cargill, one of the world’s largest privately owned businesses, which had sales and other revenues of $136.7 billion in fiscal year 2013 alone,” says the letter of complaint. “Despite this, C&H put taxpayers on the line for $3.4 million in federal loan guarantees in order to obtain a loan for construction.”

Earthjustice says the Department of Environmental Quality granted C&H coverage under a state general permit on August 3, 2012. And that permitting process flew under the radar and was devoid of public participation.

Now the hog factory is seeking what amounts to more than a half-million dollars in taxpayer assistance to conduct the water-quality monitoring studies around its facility “that could and should have been performed by C&H and Cargill before the permit application was ever filed and before ADEQ granted any permit,” Earthjustice so correctly adds.

“In short, C&H, contracted with a corporation worth billions, has now cost the Arkansan taxpayers more than half a million dollars and continues to rely on the public [treasury] to address problems that it and ADEQ should have addressed before the permitting of an industrial-sized hog facility in the karst terrain of the Buffalo River watershed. In exchange, C&H has created six local jobs.”

So there you have the latest installment in this unbelievably cartoonish drama I hereby propose we title “ Buffalo before Swine.” -