Tale of two letters

On the Buffalo

Mike Masterson (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Tue, Aug 12, 2014)


For valued readers who mistakenly believe all public reactions to my columns about the state’s unbelievable decision to permit a hog factory in the Buffalo National River watershed are roses and light, I invite you to meet the e-mailer named “Salty Dog.”
The dog showed up the other day obviously to lead me back on the proper path in my intractable zeal in advocating for the purity of our precious stream.
“You can write all you want,” Salty admonished. “But like the people have explained to you, your hardheadedness is not going to change the fact the permit was issued and the farm is in operation, like it or not … It’s time to move on to other news and use my dime for something more profitable!!
“Get something else straight, that is not your river,” the canine of brine continued. “You did not create it or have anything to do with the location and maybe there is a better use for it!! Thanks for getting out of the rut you are in.”
Ouchy! Salty verbiage. But now you can appreciate the functioning level of those who argue for me to leave well enough alone whenever our state bureaucrats issue dictates.
While I’m on letters, Duane Woltjen, a high-functioning board member of the state’s respected Ozark Society, wrote one of his own to Cargill’s guru of public relations, basically pleading with the multinational, multibillion-dollar corporation to remove this factory it sponsors at Mount Judea from the precious Buffalo watershed as soon as possible and clean up the millions of gallons of waste that remain in its two lagoons.
He tells Mike Martin he’d waited until some “irrefutable facts are on the table concerning the presence of the C&H hog concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) on Big Creek.”
Woltjen, also a board member of the Ozark Regional Land Trust and co-founder of Fayetteville’s Natural Heritage Association, said he’s examined the 264 pages of the original application asking our state’s Department of Environmental Quality (cough) to place the factory in this wrongheaded location. He’s also studied geological maps where Woltjen says, “the fact this [factory] is built and spreading manure on karst directly connected to the Buffalo River is clearly revealed. Karst (fractured limestone) conditions here have been known for many decades.”
He tells Martin that respected hydrologist and karst expert Dr. Van Brahana and his team of volunteers recently proved what a state-sponsored research team from the University of Arkansas still hasn’t, and without using ground-penetrating radar, test wells, USGA gauging stations, runoff weirs, etc. Brahana has shown how groundwater flows “from the Big Creek’s main stem basin over three miles under the surface hills and terrain to appear in the Left Fork. I don’t need any more proof of the fact that nutrients spread on the former end up in the latter and will unavoidably eventually appear in the Buffalo.”
“I read the engineering design as reported in the ADEQ application and was amazed to see ADEQ approved holding ponds that by design can leak as much as 5,000 gallons per day per acre of pond,” his letter continued. “Now, in view of Dr. Brahana’s dye-test mentioned above, I leave it to you to analyze where that leakage will go. A little calculation reveals 5,000 gallons a day from these ponds will lower the fluid level in the pond just a little less than 3/16 of an inch.” C&H is required to report leakage, which they have no realistic way to detect, he adds.
Woltjen then tells Martin that C&H’s management of the nutrient application (sprayed hog manure) is based on phosphorus levels found in the uppermost four inches of soil, and grasses won’t always absorb all the phosphorous, leaving the pollutant to seep into groundwater.
“It is not rocket science to see that the application of these nutrients in the slightest excess of plant absorption is the culprit in the nutrient-poisoned wells of American farmland, and likewise it is obvious who is most culpable,” he writes.
Woltjen sharpens his point, saying Cargill and the family that runs C&H supposedly successfully jumped through all the state and federal administrative and regulatory hoops in creating this factory in this worst possible location to nurture up to 6,500 swine. However, not all the crucial hoops were raised in that process, he says, which “will be proven in court.”
He concedes that everyone involved has a right to make a living. “Unfortunately, the handling of manure for virtually all CAFOs has contaminated rivers, lakes and groundwater wherever it has been tried. No person or corporation had a right to do that … .
“Cargill has a unique opportunity here to become a corporate hero instead of a corporate villain,” Woltjen tells Martin. “Please remove C&H from the Buffalo National River watershed?”
If you ask me (ol’ Salty Dog probably is gagging at this point), it’s only a matter of time before contamination tracked to hog waste winds up in the country’s first national river and yet again, the many thousands who value this treasure will be asking why Cargill didn’t act back when knowledgeable people were pleading with it to do the right thing.
 
Mike Masterson’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email
him at mikemasterson10@hotmail.com. Read
his blog at mikemastersonsmessenger.com.