Buffalo brouhaha
Gone whole-hog
By Mike Masterson
This article was published today at 3:14 a.m.
Legal and political aromas from that misplaced hog factory in the Buffalo National River watershed at Mount Judea continue to waft across Arkansas.
U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. ruled the other day that he'll file an injunction against the questionable and cursory manner in which loan guarantees were awarded to C&H Hog Farms.
I'd say the judge is not only insightful but right on the money with his findings in the civil suit. The word hamstringing leaps to mind.
The judge wants the U.S. Farm Service Agency to finally complete the detailed environmental assessment of this factory it should have done initially. The hog factory, supported by Cargill Inc., now must specifically describe potential negative effects on surrounding wildlife habitats including the country's first national river.
Dr. John Van Brahana and his team of volunteers, along with the National Park Service, the National Parks Conservation Association, and other interested parties such as the Ozark Society, the Arkansas Canoe Club and the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, have been learning a lot of late about water flow and quality around and below this factory at Mount Judea.
I'd say this injunction means folks at the Farm Service Agency have one heck of a whole-hog task ahead.
Contained in the suit from some of those groups is the allegation that the agency (a key official of which is married to a relative of the factory's owners) ignored several federal laws when it deemed the hog factory would have "no significant impact" to the environment and national river.
Perhaps it made that assessment from its offices in the federal building at Harrison, located just down the hallway from the National Park Service, whom the Farm Service Agency failed to notify of this farm's proposed existence as it approved the loan.
All part of the unbelievable way all our supposedly responsible bureaucratic gatekeepers quietly pushed this factory through in the state's worst possible location without adequate public notice or hearings. They even failed to notify, or seek input from, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The agency's staff apparently had no problem (alongside the Small Business Administration) issuing $3.4 million in federal loan guarantees so the family that owns the factory could purchase property and equipment in this watershed that draws a million visitors each year who spend more than $44 million.
Judge Marshall found it was abundantly evident that the agency's environmental assessment and finding of no significant impact are defective, according to a news account by reporter Ryan McGeeney. "They're too brief, and there's no chain of reasoning. There's a 'cursoriness' about them," said Marshall.
The environmental assessment featured 600 pages of pre-existing documents, which included the hog factory's nutrient management plan and copies of other existing permits. It's an impressively thick stack that reveals little, if nothing, about potential impact from millions of gallons of raw hog waste routinely applied to land fractured by limestone and chert just beneath its surface.
Hannah Chang of Earthjustice, the plaintiffs' lead attorney, called this factory permitted by our state's Department of Environmental Quality (cough) to raise and nurture as many as 6,500 swine "unprecedented" in the Buffalo National River watershed.
She emphasized that the unprecedented size of this hog factory in the karst-laden environment meant every agency connected with it should have been more diligent in their scrutiny and calculation of possible effects to the watershed.
In McGeeney's story, Chang said: "All [the defendants'] arguments rely on the central idea that they have no discretion, no control and no redress. We will show that's simply not true."
Lawyers for each side were given 21 days to submit final briefs recommending what should be included in the injunction order. It's unclear what effect, if any, the judicial injunction could have on the factory itself, as the owners have been in full operation for about a year in this deeply controversial location.
Then there is the letter sent last week by GOP former Arkansas congressmen Ed Bethune of Little Rock and John Paul Hammerschmidt to leaders in the state legislature.
Both men asked the legislature to review and support proposed reforms to state regulations to allow the Pollution Control and Ecology Commission to extend a temporary moratorium on any new large-scale corporate hog operations in the Buffalo River watershed. The commission is to consider extending the ban at its Friday meeting.
As a 13-term congressman, Hammerschmidt, of Harrison, shaped and introduced the legislation that made the Buffalo the country's first national river in 1972.
Meanwhile, I've heard from a French documentarian in Arkansas to produce a special on the effects of big, corporate agriculture on America's politics and environment (including Cargill's involvement in the Buffalo's watershed).
Good to see the French paying attention to the now internationally newsworthy threats to preserving the purity of our country's first national river.