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Back on the Buffalo

11 Feb 2017 11:54 AM | Anonymous member

Back on the Buffalo

By Mike Masterson

Posted: February 11, 2017 at 1:57 a.m.


NWAOnline


The single bore hole drilled by our state's Department of Environmental Quality apparently found no leakage beneath the waste lagoons at C&H Hog Farms in Mount Judea. Anyone surprised?

The hole was drilled through mostly solid rock to examine the results of an electrical resistivity imaging test conducted in March 2015 by Oklahoma State University hydrogeophysics professor Dr. Todd Halihan. Halihan's study initially identified a fracture and a sizable plume of unknown substance at 120 feet down.

Although some indications of waste were detected by the drill hole, there wasn't enough to trigger official alarms. Wonder if the chlorinated water they used in drilling had anything to do with that? Critics, which include geoscientists and hydrologists, contend a single hole was insufficient to draw meaningful scientific conclusions.

And so now we've been informed (by the state that wrongheadedly permitted the factory into our precious and fragile Buffalo watershed) that the tainted water found where Halihan's test had noted the plume was neither an alarming collection of raw hog waste nor peanut butter.

The hole did reveal a sizable fracture characteristic of the limestone splits and caverns that permeate karst subsurfaces. It's this problematic karst subsurface that makes any hog factory such an environmental threat to the watershed of country's first national river. The Buffalo runs six miles downstream of Big Creek, where C&H is located.

So we can all catch a few more winks at night knowing this single hole didn't reveal a lagoon leak, right? I only wish this bad dream was over.

There remains a larger matter. How much continuously applied waste is required in karst terrain to finally overload the spray fields along Big Creek and seep into groundwater and on downhill to the Buffalo?

University of Arkansas geoscience professor emeritus John Van Brahana and his team of volunteers have been studying that question from the time this factory began operating.

Brahana, who's voluntarily performed the enormous public service, has lately prepared a peer-reviewed paper about his dye studies. Bottom line: The subsurface water on and around the factory's spray fields inevitably flow into Big Creek and underground openings to reach multiple locations along the Buffalo.

"The Buffalo is the product of all activities that go on in its tributaries, and these waste-spreading fields are on very porous and permeable rocks," Brahana told me. "Sampling only surface water is looking at only a small entity of what caused those horrible algal blooms in the Buffalo last summer. Ignoring the subsurface carries a very serious risk."

The personable scientist went on to say results of their dye studies enabled his team to document how groundwater flows rapidly from its input to output (about 2,500 to 3,000 feet daily). "When water levels are high from a lot of rain, the water in some locations flowed underground into basins on either side of Big Creek," he said. "It flowed through conduits and mini-caves in the limestone to reappear in creeks that were tributaries to Big Creek.

"The dye we injected showed up at five locations in the Buffalo National River," he continued. "These results were verified by two external scientists who ran duplicate samples from our dye receptors. "

He provided anonymous neutral samples along with the duplicate samples that tested positive. "The scientists did not know which contained dye," he said. "They found the same positives as our traces found."

The Big Creek Research and Extension Team from the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture, which the state agreed in 2013 to fund for five years to monitor potential waste discharges from this factory, has released no findings of similar dye testing. Brahana said they don't do such studies.

"Because [the Big Creek team] only samples surface streams around the farm and does not sample ground-water, which is a major component in the hydrologic budget in the Buffalo, they are missing contamination that bypasses their data collection stations," he said.

Quick review: A state-funded research team from a department with a mission to promote agriculture rather than environmental protection is paid handsomely with state tax dollars to ensure our beloved Buffalo National River isn't contaminated with hog waste. With that purported goal in mind, you suppose this agri-oriented team, which answers to the state's environmental quality agency, might join Brahana in carefully analyzing groundwater flowing through the fractured subsurface as a most likely carrier of the nasty stuff?

Brahana emphasized that Arkansans need to know the full picture of what's happening: "The politics of this continue to reflect decisions that impact our state. And the details of describing the science involved require that well-informed citizens be willing to become open to educating themselves so as not to be seduced by misinformation."

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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at mmasterson@arkansasonline.com.

Editorial on 02/11/2017

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