Buffalo River Watershed Alliance
By John Moritz, Emily Walkenhorst
Posted: February 27, 2018 at 4:30 a.m.
NWAONLINE
Lawmakers on Monday finished drawing up bills they hope to have considered during an expected in-and-out special session to be held later this spring.
Drafts of at least three pieces of legislation -- dealing with all-terrain vehicles, open-container prohibitions and pharmacy benefit managers -- were submitted by the deadline set by legislative leaders, lawmakers said.
Notably absent from the trio of bills was any legislation dealing with guns, and backers of measures related to campus carry said Monday that they would try other options for having their proposals heard.
Meanwhile, some legislators were reportedly looking for a means of addressing the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality's rejection of C&H Hog Farms' application for a new permit, though it was unclear whether they had come up with a proposal to do so by Monday's deadline for draft legislation.
The governor and legislative leaders have sought to ensure that a special session held at the end of the ongoing fiscal session will be compact by avoiding complicated issues that are likely to spawn lengthy debates.
Sponsors of any proposals for the session are expected to gather signatures from two-thirds of members ahead of time to show that their bills have broad support.
In identical letters to the governor earlier this month asking for a special session to be called, the House speaker and the Senate president pro tempore set Monday as the deadline for final drafts of bills intended for the session to be completed.
The first two issues were submitted last week, dealing with the off-road vehicles and alcoholic drinks in cars. They are considered technical fixes to existing legislation that do not have opposition, and their sponsors said Monday that they had near-unanimous support from colleagues.
The most highly publicized issue of the special session -- the regulation of pharmacy benefit managers -- went through its final edits on Monday, said one sponsor, state Rep. Michelle Gray, R-Melbourne.
Lawmakers and Gov. Asa Hutchinson have expressed a desire to put pharmacy benefit managers under the scrutiny of the state insurance commissioner, after a large number of the state's independent pharmacists complained they have been squeezed by cuts to their reimbursements rates for generic drugs that were enacted at the start of the year.
Gray said she collected about 25 signatures from her House colleagues willing to take up the issue, before pausing her signature-gathering last week to focus on drafting the bill. She said last week that she would not try to bring up her proposed regulatory bill during the fiscal session, after Hutchinson assured her it would be put on the call for a special session. The governor sets the agenda for special sessions.
The Bureau of Legislative Research, which assists lawmakers in drafting legislation, on Monday put the finishing touches on legislation Gray is sponsoring with state Sen. Ronald Caldwell, R-Wynne, Gray said. She said she expects to get signatures from about 80 House members expressing a willingness to consider the changes.
Also Monday, Donald Ragland, a Republican from Searcy County who was effectively elected to the House this month but who has not yet been sworn in, said efforts were underway to address a controversial hog farm in his district during the special session.
Ragland said legislators are working on finding a way to keep C&H Hog Farms open through a measure that could be passed in the special session. Ragland said he has been sitting in on meetings with legislators but not participating. He won the Feb. 13 Republican primary for a vacant House seat and is running unopposed in a subsequent special election.
He did not say what measures lawmakers were considering. Messages left for lawmakers said to be involved in the possible legislation were not returned Monday.
C&H Hog Farms, which houses 6,503 hogs, is located on Big Creek about 6 miles from where it flows into the Buffalo National River. It has faced criticism from people who are concerned that hog manure spread on nearby land is causing, or could cause, pollution in the river. The Arkansas Farm Bureau and the Arkansas Pork Producers' Association have defended the farm, arguing that the information C&H opponents is using to prove pollution is occurring does not actually show that pollution.
The department denied the farm's new permit, effectively shutting the farm down pending an ongoing appeal, after determining the farm's application was incomplete because it did not contain a study on the flow direction of groundwater or an emergency action plan.
While most lawmakers intent on getting their legislation considered for the special session deferred to the demands of leadership, others said they were charting their own courses.
Sen. Trent Garner, R-El Dorado, characterized the demands for signature gathering as "extra-constitutional" and said he would push to get his proposed fix to campus-carry legislation on the governor's call without collecting a single name.
The state constitution's section on special -- or "extraordinary" -- sessions doesn't say anything about requiring proof of support ahead of time for legislation that would be on the call. Once a special session is underway, lawmakers can tackle other items not on the governor's call by a two-thirds vote.
Garner helped pass the campus-carry law, Act 562 of 2017, allowing gun owners to receive extra training in order to take concealed handguns onto college campuses and into other public areas. But Garner says the legislation inadvertently required all instructors to teach the "enhanced" courses, even if they disagree with them. The senator says he wants to allow instructors to opt out.
"It's good legislation and it should be on the call, but I refuse to play this game where there is extra requirements to get something in the special session," Garner said Monday.
Both Garner and another lawmaker who has proposed offering opt-out legislation, Rep. Bob Ballinger, R-Hindsville, said Monday that they think the issue also can be solved through rule-making by delaying the requirement until after the 2019 general session. They said they would accept that option as an alternative. The rules for issuing enhanced licenses were developed by the Arkansas State Police.
Democrats, who have proposed their own changes to Act 562, namely prohibiting guns in school dormitories, similarly are not filing legislation for the special session.
The special session will be called once the ongoing fiscal session, which deals with budget issues, ends. Legislative leaders have said they hope to wrap up the fiscal session by mid-March.
Calendar
The calendar of public events of the 91st General Assembly for today, the 16th day of the 2018 fiscal session.
COMMITTEES
9 a.m. Joint Budget Committee, Room A, Multi-Agency Complex.
1 p.m. House Management Committee, fourth-floor conference room.
Upon adjournment of both chambers, Special Language Subcommittee of the Joint Budget Committee, Room B, Multi-Agency Complex.
SENATE
1 p.m. Senate convenes.
HOUSE
1:30 p.m. House convenes.
A Section on 02/27/2018
Arkansas Times
By Mike Masterson
Posted: February 24, 2018 at 2:03 a.m.
NWAOnline
Those intent on leaving C&H Hog Farms in its precarious location along the Buffalo National River watershed are advocating science, rather than emotion, to make their case.
The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (cough) denied the factory owners’ application for a revised operating permit last month, allowing it to continue functioning on its original general permit pending appeal to the state’s Pollution Control and Ecology Commission.
Science, what a dilly-dilly of an idea! I submit a letter written by Gerald Delavan, a former 30-year-veteran professional geologist with the department. His former agency in 2012 issued a permit to establish this swine factory along Big Creek, just 6 miles upstream from our state’s most popular attraction.
Delavan retired in 2014. He understands the science of karst subsurfaces in sensitive regions such as the Buffalo watershed. Below is part of an extensively detailed letter Delavan sent in 2017, edited for space, to Jamal Solaimanian, engineering supervisor for the agency’s Water Quality permitting branch, copied to the governor.
“The review and approval of the initial C&H Hog Farms permit application … to allow the land application and disposal of a large volume of untreated hog waste in the Big Creek watershed under a general permit … was at best poorly conceived and poorly executed by Water Division staff.
“The initial C&H permit application … to land apply hog waste at this location was never reviewed by any of the professional geologists working in the Water Division … prior to the permit being issued. To my knowledge, none of the ADEQ staff geologists were ever offered the opportunity to participate.
“The C&H permit application was reviewed and approved exclusively by the ADEQ Engineers working in the Water Division. Consequently, any potential problems concerning the release of liquid waste into the local groundwater from the manure holding ponds at C&H were never discussed or evaluated by ADEQ geology staff.
“In addition, the potential for waste-contaminated surface water runoff to be discharged into Big Creek and for the infiltration of waste contaminates into groundwater from the land application sites through the underlying karst limestone geology was never discussed or reviewed by any ADEQ geology staff prior to issuance of the … initial permit.
“ADEQ staff engineers never requested any geologic borings be installed, or performed additional geologic evaluation of the proposed holding pond locations prior to issuing the … permit. The known presence of karst geology beneath the proposed locations for the manure holding ponds and the proposed land application sites should have raised a major “red flag” for any ADEQ engineer reviewing this permit application.
“The limestone geology beneath the hog farm site and beneath the land application sites and the region is known to be highly fractured, with numerous voids and conduits which move surface water and groundwater rapidly through a vast system of inter-connected fractures, solution channels and springs just inches below the soil profile.
“Given the sensitive geologic nature of this proposed hog farm location, the appropriate thing to do would have been for ADEQ Water Division to expand the permit application review process to include the ADEQ professional geologist staff … . There was little or no geologic information about the hog farm or the land application sites provided in the C&H permit application.
“[T]o evaluate the geology of a site you need site-specific information. Therefore, the reviewing geologist would have most likely requested an additional geologic evaluation be performed in and around the proposed holding pond locations prior to approving construction.
“Additional borings placed in and around the proposed holding pond locations would have provided the additional data needed to determine if there are any karst features present beneath the holding ponds such as solution channels, caves, or void spaces which could impact the integrity of the constructed pond liners and/or provide an avenue for rapid transport if and when any liquid wastes are released from these liquid waste holding ponds.
“If this data had been requested and provided by the applicant, the reviewing geologist could have in turn had input in the permit review process and assisted the reviewing engineers in making informed decisions regarding the site itself and the larger issue of whether it was appropriate to approve a permit [for] a hog farm at this location at all.
“If ADEQ had given its geologists an opportunity to review and comment on C&H’s permit application, it is highly unlikely any of the professional geologists performing the review would have signed off on or approved the proposed permit for the C&H holding pond locations without requesting additional geologic data be gathered about the proposed holding pond locations and proposed land application sites.
“I believe the permit application review process conducted by the Water Division engineers … was severely flawed, as it failed to adequately consider several issues, the first being the potential impact of locating this hog farm and its associated land application sites on the shallow karstic limestone geology found beneath the site.
“In addition, Water Division engineers were clearly malfeasant in their review of the C&H permit application, as they failed to consider missing key data needed to properly and adequately evaluate the potential impact of this hog farming operation on the local environment.
“The [required Environment Assessment] prepared for and submitted by C&H in its permit application barely mentions and/or discusses the subsurface geology found beneath the sites and failed to even mention the shallow karst limestone found beneath the site and/or discuss any possible impacts hog farm operations may or may not have on shallow local groundwater supplies present beneath the farm and land application sites. The EA also failed to discuss any potential impacts to surface water quality or groundwater quality from waste infiltration or wastewater runoff at the land application sites.
“It is clear Water Division engineers and ADEQ senior staff, by overlooking these omissions in the C&H permit application and by not requesting additional information be provided in regards to these omissions, ADEQ failed to adequately review the C&H permit application as submitted, and therefore should not have issued the final permit to C&H until such time as these deficiencies in the permit application were addressed.
“It is also my opinion, ADEQ was also malfeasant by not having an ADEQ registered professional geologist or any other geologist from any agency, independent or otherwise, review and comment on this proposed hog farm permit prior to its approval and issuance.”
Mike Masterson is a longtime Arkansas journalist. Email him at mmasterson@arkansasonline.com.
By Emily Walkenhorst
Posted: February 19, 2018 at 4:30 a.m.
Credit: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/EMILY WALKENHORSTFILE — Sanders Farm in Newton County contained as many as 3,200 hogs this summer, with some let loose to roam outdoors to alleviate crowding.
Operators of an unpermitted hog farm in the Buffalo River's watershed must clear improperly stored hog manure and develop a plan to manage the manure by March 15, a judge has ordered.
But the farm won't have to shut down or get an operating permit, Boone County Circuit Judge Gail Inman-Campbell ruled this month.
The farm can continue to operate under a dry-litter manure management system, in which hog manure is combined with straw or hay to absorb the manure and create dry bedding that can eventually be used as fertilizer.
Late last year, the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality sued Sanders Farm, located just outside Western Grove, for operating without a permit in a watershed that had a moratorium on new hog farms of its size and for letting liquid hog manure leak to a nearby creek.
But permits -- and the regulations and moratoriums that dictate them -- are required for only liquid manure systems, which the department failed to prove Sanders Farm was using, Inman-Campbell ruled.
The department at one time required dry-manure farms to have permits, but the department changed its regulations in 2012 to exempt them, records show.
The department did not respond to a question about whether it would appeal the judge's ruling.
"I thought the judge was fair and reasoned in her judgment and fair with her ruling," said Robert Ginnaven, Sanders Farm's attorney.
The liquid manure escaped from Sanders Farm property, according to testimony, when the farmers were unable to sell their hogs and their operation grew from about 2,400 hogs to about 3,200 -- more than they could handle.
Pat and Starlinda Sanders, who own the farm, said they couldn't sell their pigs because they had been ill. So they let pigs roam from their property to reduce crowding and began storing some dry-litter manure outside, where rain hit it, turned it back to a liquid and it drained off of the property.
Department officials said the manure washed into Cedar Creek, which eventually drains into the Buffalo National River.
Because some waste was liquid and had washed into nearby waterways, the department argued that the farm was using a liquid manure management system and needed a permit.
A map showing the location of Sanders Farm
"The defendants have been forthright about their actions and admitted they created this situation by releasing the hogs and have taken responsibility for their actions acknowledging the grave danger to the environment if allowed to continue," Inman-Campbell wrote in her ruling. "The court believes the defendants' testimony expressing their remorse for this whole debacle."
The farm must stop releasing its hogs from the barns, use its dry-manure disposal system, empty the contents of the dry-manure stacking barns by March 15, revegetate the area between one barn and County Road 50, replace the wood walls of one stacking barn with cinder blocks and write a nutrient-management plan for the manure by March 15, according to the order.
The farmers have begun to revegetate the land with grass and have contacted people who have agreed to collect the manure from the stacking barns and to draft a nutrient-management plan, Ginnaven said.
In 2012, the Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission voted to remove dry-manure facilities from its Regulation 6 National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permits, which cover concentrated animal feeding operations, which Sanders Farm would be.
Regulation 5, under which many hog farms are permitted, is titled "liquid animal waste management systems."
The regulation removal came at the suggestion of the Department of Environmental Quality, under the administration of director Teresa Marks. In 2003, the department, under the administration of Marcus Devine, pushed the commission to pass emergency rules to require permits for dry-manure operations.
In both requests, the department cited changes at the federal level for their need to alter Arkansas' regulations.
In 2003, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency expanded on the types of farms that needed permits, including medium and large concentrated animal feeding operations.
The EPA later amended its regulations again for National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permits and made no reference to dry-manure hog operations.
The state Environmental Quality Department's concentrated animal feeding operation regulations have always been more strict than those at the federal level, as evidenced by requiring permits for non-discharge liquid-waste hog farms, said Ryan Benefield, deputy director for the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission and a former deputy director for the Environmental Quality Department.
In 2011, after the EPA again changed its regulations, the department decided to remove the dry-manure requirements, which agricultural groups had previously sought.
Benefield said he doesn't know how many dry-manure hog farms are in the state. The commission writes voluntary nutrient management plans for farmers, but he said he's not aware of any that have been written for hog farms that use dry manure.
Because permits aren't required, it's difficult to gauge how many dry-manure hog farms are in Arkansas, said Steve Eddington, an Arkansas Farm Bureau spokesman.
"I am aware that some of the free-range pork producers are utilizing dry manure, but there is no way that I am aware of to pinpoint the number of farms using that practice," Eddington said.
Metro on 02/19/2018
Posted: February 14, 2018 at 4:30 a.m.
m.
Mitchell PE MasilunThe C&H Hog Farms’ operation, shown May 4, sits near a Buffalo River tributary in Newton County.
Two environmental groups can intervene in a hog farm's appeal of its permit denial, an administrative law judge has ordered.
C&H Hog Farms has appealed the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality's denial of its operating permit to the Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission, with a hearing tentatively scheduled for Aug. 6-8.
The commission's administrative law judge, Charles Moulton, ruled Friday that the Ozark Society and the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, both of which oppose the farm's permit application, could intervene in the appeal, but he declined to rule on the extent to which they can participate.
C&H Hog Farms is owned by Jason Henson, Philip Campbell and Richard Campbell and operates near Mount Judea in Newton County. It's in the Buffalo National River watershed, along Big Creek, about 6 miles from where the creek feeds into the Buffalo River. The farm has a permit to house 6,503 hogs at any given time and includes two storage ponds for hog manure and fields where hog manure is spread as fertilizer.
Opponents of the farm argue that the rocky terrain makes operation of a large hog farm an unsuitable use for the land, and that it poses a risk to the river and groundwater by way of surface runoff and porous rock underground.
C&H owners applied for a new permit to replace their expiring one in 2016, but the department denied the application in January of this year, which would effectively shut down the farm. It is allowed to remain open during the appeal process.
The Department of Environmental Quality denied C&H Hog Farms an operating permit in part because the company did not conduct a study on the flow direction of groundwater or develop an emergency action plan, according to the department's responses to public comments on the permit application.
The study and the plan were both recommended by the Agricultural Waste Management Field Handbook, and the department determined they were necessary because of C&H's location in the recreational river's watershed.
C&H asserts in its appeal that the department never asked for the study or plan. Additionally, C&H contends that the department approved the farm's previous permit under nearly identical conditions, meaning that it previously considered the farm in compliance with the handbook under nearly identical conditions.
In a filing Thursday, attorneys for C&H argued that the environmental groups, per regulations, can only make arguments based on the aspects of the permit application that the groups specifically commented on and thus cannot participate in C&H's claims on "procedural issues" in the department's permitting process. The filing asked Moulton to deny the groups' motions to intervene.
C&H has appealed the department's decision based on "procedural issues" and "substantive grounds," the filing reads.
Moulton ruled that the Ozark Society and Buffalo River Watershed Alliance could intervene under Regulation 8.604, which allows "any person who submitted comments during the public comment period" to petition for intervention, according to his order.
But Moulton declined to rule on the extent to which the groups can participate in the appeal because the groups had not had time to respond to C&H's arguments.
Richard Mays, one of the attorneys for the environmental groups, said they have until Monday to file their response to C&H's arguments.
Mays said that because the department didn't deny the permit over "procedural issues," his clients didn't have the opportunity earlier to comment on those issues. Now that C&H is raising those concerns in its appeal, his clients should be allowed to respond.
"They claim they've raised procedural issues," Mays said in an interview Tuesday. "That's a very vague term that doesn't have a fixed meaning."
Mays argued that the department raised substantial issues, not procedural ones.
Messages left for C&H attorney Bill Waddell were not returned Tuesday afternoon.
Metro on 02/14/2018
Posted: February 12, 2018 at 4:30 a.m.
Utilities and a consumer group largely favor the state's proposed changes in the way it will implement a federal rule to reduce haze, but environmental groups oppose it, according to comments submitted to the state.
The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality received 499 comments -- mostly from individuals -- on the more contested portion of the Regional Haze Rule that utilities anticipate would cost them collectively more than $2 billion and that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated would cost less than $500 million.
The state's plan would require lower-cost controls for reducing sulfur dioxide that reduce emissions less. The state argues that the EPA's plan is not cost-effective, although it did not define "cost-effective."
Utilities would have three years to comply.
The positions are a reversal of how the same groups felt about the EPA's proposal to implement the Regional Haze Rule in Arkansas. Utilities and consumer groups largely opposed that plan because of the cost to utilities and the expected trickle down to customer bills. Environmental groups supported the EPA's proposal because of the expected decrease in haze-causing compounds that they said were also detrimental to public health.
Comments from environmental organizations on the state's proposed plan largely concerned whether the department did what commenters believed it was legally required to do under state and federal air laws.
Many individual comments were identical messages sent through an automated system that supported more stringent emissions controls on Entergy Arkansas' two largest coal plants, White Bluff near Redfield and Independence near Newark. The comments expressed concern for visibility, ozone pollution and public health.
The Regional Haze Rule, approved by Congress in 1999, requires states to take measures to improve visibility in national wilderness areas. The wilderness areas targeted by the Arkansas plan are Caney Creek and the Upper Buffalo River in Arkansas and the Hercules-Glades and Mingo areas in Missouri.
Instead of emissions-reducing scrubbers, the state's plan would ask utilities to begin using lower-sulfur coal to fire the White Bluff plant for a cost of $1,150 per ton of sulfur dioxide reduced. A question to Entergy officials about how much that would cost overall went unanswered Friday.
The state plan also removes the Independence plant from having to comply with the plan because it is not technically required to comply under Best Available Retrofit Technology analysis because of the later installation date of its boiler.
The White Bluff and Independence plants, each 1,700 megawatts, are by far the state's largest coal-fired plants and were the largest targets of the haze plans.
The state's plan did not change the federal plan's requirements for natural-gas plants.
In their comments, the National Parks Conservation Association, Earthjustice and the Sierra Club argued that the cost for Entergy to comply with the EPA's plan was comparable to other costs approved in other state and federal implementation plans. In contrast, Entergy argued in its comments against requiring scrubbers because other state and federal implementation plans had determined those costs to be excessive.
A chart made by the environmental groups showed that some plans required higher costs and others required lower costs.
The environmental groups also noted that the department did not define "cost-effective."
Entergy and other utility groups contended that the state did not need to conduct any further reasonable progress analysis for meeting progress goals outlined in the Regional Haze Rule at the Independence plant because Arkansas was already meeting its visibility goals for the first planning period.
The environmental groups posited that the plan did not adequately consider Missouri's visibility improvements and did not supply information on how visibility at Missouri's wilderness areas would be affected.
They also argued that the state, per the Arkansas Air Pollution Control Act, was required to consider the public health effects of sulfur dioxide. Sulfur dioxide can contribute to ground-level ozone, which can cause respiratory problems at high enough levels.
Last month, the EPA approved the state's proposed changes to nitrogen oxide emissions reductions, but utilities said they had already installed the low-nitrogen oxide burners the EPA had required at a cost of several million dollars per burner.
The state's proposal concerns the first Regional Haze planning period, which ends this year. It started in 2008.
The state submitted a plan to comply in 2012, but it was partially rejected by the EPA, and the state never replaced it. The Sierra Club and the National Parks Conservation Association sued in 2014 to force the creation of a plan, which a federal judge ultimately ordered the EPA to issue.
The EPA finalized the plan in the fall of 2016, which was challenged in court, and the EPA has allowed the state to redraft its own plan for the 2008-18 period while the bulk of its plan remains under a stay in federal court.
Metro on 02/12/2018
Posted: February 13, 2018 at 4:30 a.m.
The predictable campaign aimed at frightening the good folks in and around Newton County into believing their farms and ranches are somehow in danger of closing remains in full swing politically. Unjustified fear, rather than scientifically justifiable concerns over serious risk, is an easy tactic.
Two candidates from Marshall vying in today's special election to replace GOP District 83 Rep. David Branscum say they favor C&H Hog Farms being left just where our state's Department of Environmental Quality (cough) in 2012 wrongheadedly allowed it to begin operating six miles upstream from the Buffalo National River.
Donald Ragland and Timmy Reid both say they favor leaving the factory in this precarious location along Big Creek. Their reasoning sounds to me like a joint promotional flier from the Farm Bureau and Pork Producers, who have been aggressively promoting this divisive location for a large animal factory.
Both candidates cite fear of the regulations that all domestic animal factories in sensitive ecological areas who emit liquid waste must follow.
In a news account, Reid, a cattle farmer, sounded as if C&H losing its permit for failing to complete necessary subsurface water flow testing was a precursor to Chicken Little's sky falling: "If we don't get behind this hog farm, we're going to lose everything," he told a reporter. "We've going to lose it all. Our rights are at stake."
Reid and Ragland, a former sheriff, cited other causes of pollution such as kayaking and feral hogs roaming in the watershed creating problems, perhaps equal to a factory spraying millions of gallons of potent raw swine waste--roughly equivalent to a city of 30,000--regularly onto karst-riddled land.
I can't tell if either grown man truly believes that. Count me as a no. Brian Thompson of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance had this to say about misusing fear for calculated political sway: "We strongly encourage these candidates to carefully consider the economic implications of their platforms. We also encourage voters to ask the hard questions regarding their special-interest backers and if those backers are funded from outside of Arkansas. Incidentally, one candidate blames feral hogs for polluting the river. Damaging though they are, feral hogs eat what is in the watershed (acorns mostly) and do not add nutrients such as phosphates or nitrates to the water, unlike a large industrial feedlot. We hope these candidates stick to the facts."
Nor do I believe anyone's right to farm is in any way connected with a right to pollute. And it's a very real risk this factory's location presents, according to facts, because spray-field runoff and subsurface waters invariably flow downstream through karst terrain.
It's no surprise the Farm Bureau and other politicized special interests have amplified their campaign since the Department of Environmental Quality last month denied the factory's application for a revised permit.
I haven't seen the agency taking any undue action or enforcement against any other true farmers or ranchers in the region, nor do I expect that. Have you?
This is rare and specific mayhem created solely by the state. It is based on a factory that should never have been maneuvered into this location to pose a genuine threat to the state's top-rated attraction.
The opposition to this location is not an attack on farms or farmers in any way. To make it seem so is obviously cynical and disingenuous.
It can be painted to even remotely appear that way only because the Department of Environmental Quality originally failed to enforce the specific details and requirements plainly spelled out in the handbook it uses to permit meat factories into such fragile locations.
The most pertinent question I have is who within this agency's water department and administrative hierarchy chose to ignore the rules back in 2012? Who inside the department bypassed effective public notice and bent its own requirements into pretzels to get this factory approved? That is who created the situation and who should be identified by name and held accountable under oath, regardless of if those people remain within the agency, or have since been invited into more lucrative jobs.
You know how bad it was when the director at the time said even she didn't know her own agency had issued the permit until after it had been. The department's local inspection staff based in Jasper said they didn't know about it. The National Park Service didn't know. And even the former governor was kept in the dark, adding later that the approval of this factory where it's located was the biggest regret of his years in office.
Meanwhile, I do agree with candidate Ragland that, because of its shameful role in this gawd-awful mess, the state should make the factory owners financially whole in rightfully closing the factory for the benefit of all in our state and nation who revere the country's first national river.
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Editorial on 02/13/2018
http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2018/feb/13/sky-s-not-falling-20180213/
MIKE MASTERSON: Pandering to fear
By John Moritz
Posted: February 11, 2018 at 3:22 a.m.
A special election for a rural state House district seat has at its center a controversial hog farm operation near the Buffalo River -- and both Republicans in the race say they're for the farm.
The District 83 special primary election, which is being held Tuesday, will determine who replaces state Rep. David Branscum, R-Marshall, who left the position to work for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
No Democrats are running in the special election, so Tuesday's winner will be the next representative for the district.
"The hog farm," said Donald Ragland and Timmy Reid, both of Marshall, when they were asked in separate interviews what was the No. 1 issue they were hearing about from voters.
They were referring to C&H Hog Farms, which has been subject to years of controversy surrounding the number of pigs housed there along a tributary to the Buffalo River, the first ever designated national river. The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality recently rejected the farm's application to renew its operating permit, a decision that is being appealed.
"If we don't get behind this hog farm, we're going to lose everything, we're going to lose it all," said Reid, 53, a cattle farmer making his first run for public office. "Our rights are at stake."
Ragland, a 71-year-old former sheriff, noted that four of the five counties in the district -- Newton, Pope, Searcy, Boone and Carroll -- drain into the Buffalo River, where tourism is a major part of the economy, along with farming.
"There's not even a Walmart in this district, that's how rural it is," Ragland said. "It's not like there's going to be any big plants or anything moving in here."
Ragland and Reid said they don't share conservationists' concerns that a mishap at the hog farm could send hog manure into the watershed.
They said the river is being dirtied by a proliferation of tourists. Ragland said kayaking has drawn more people to the river, while Reid blamed feral hogs for polluting the river.
Overbearing regulations are at the heart of the problem for the hog farm, according to the Republican pair.
Ragland added that the hog farm's owners should be compensated through the state Claims Commission if the farm is forced to shut down. (The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported last year that the farm paid $8,823 in property taxes. The number of people employed there was unavailable.)
When asked about health care in the district, both candidates offered rebukes of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, but they were less critical of Arkansas' "private-option" Medicaid expansion program, which uses state and federal dollars under former President Barack Obama's law to buy private insurance for more than 285,000 low-income Arkansans.
The program is also known as Arkansas Works.
Ragland called Arkansas Works "the best thing we've got right now."
Reid said, "If we work on it and get it right, I'll support it."
Asked what sets the two candidates apart, Ragland said, "I've been a Republican all my life. ... My family, my great-grandparents were Republicans."
Records at the secretary of state's office, however, suggest otherwise. Ragland voted in Democratic primaries three times before 2001, and has voted in Republican primaries a dozen times since.
Clarifying his remarks Friday, Ragland chalked up his voting history in the 1990s to the lack of Republican candidates in then-heavily Democratic Arkansas, especially in local races.
Reid has voted in less than half the total elections Ragland voted in since 1996, according to state voting records, and Reid voted in Republican primaries in 1996 and 2014.
Reid said he'll appeal to Republican voters in the primary by opposing the "tax and spend" policies of Gov. Asa Hutchinson. Reid accused the Republican governor of spending beyond the state's means and was doubtful when told that the governor's proposed budget for next fiscal year is projected to have a $64 million surplus.
"I would have to see some proof of that," Reid told a reporter.
"I don't know if it is or not, you're the one that knows that not me. I haven't looked into that."
Ragland said he agreed with the governor's decision to cut income taxes for low-income Arkansans in 2017, and while he said he was open to further income tax cuts, he was skeptical of other reductions to the state's revenue.
"We don't need to be cutting any more taxes," Ragland said, specifying that he disagreed with then-Gov. Mike Beebe's move to cut the sales tax on groceries. "When we're cutting taxes, we cut somebody that really needs that service" funded by state revenue.
Specifically, Ragland said money could be spent on education, especially vocational training, and improving the district's miles of winding Ozark Mountain roads.
"[U.S.] 65's not great through this area," Ragland said in an interview at Carl's Restaurant along the roadway. "Our rural roads are just gone through a lack of maintenance. The money's just not been there, and there's certainly not been any expansion on any county roads."
If elected, Reid said he would push the Legislature to cut the state's top corporate income tax rate from 6.5 percent down to between 2.5 percent and 3 percent. Asked about the governor's income tax cuts, Reid said, "It's not something I've really looked at." The majority-Republican Legislature has approved income tax cuts for several categories of taxpayers, and the governor has said he would like more.
Reid declined to say whether he would vote for Hutchinson or for Hot Springs gun range owner Jan Morgan in the Republican gubernatorial primary.
"She's OK," Reid said. "I've met her. I know her personally but I've not met the governor. Maybe he needs to make his way up to Northwest Arkansas and meet some people up here."
Ragland said he planned to vote for Hutchinson.
Although campaign yard signs for both candidates dot along U.S. 65 through the town of Marshall, campaign finance reports tell a different story of support.
Ragland has a sizable fundraising lead over Reid, according to the most recent reports.
Reid listed receiving a single donation to his campaign, for $100, according to his most recent report filed last month. The donation came from Jenny Gray, who is listed as a homemaker from Marshall. Reid lent his campaign $6,100 and has spent $5,863.
According to Ragland's disclosure filings, he has raised $11,760, spent $3,428 and lent his campaign $3,500. Ragland's top reported donors were Warren A. Stephens, Bruce Hawkins' lobbying firm DBH Management Consultants and the Arkansas Health Care House Public Affairs Committee. Each gave $1,000.
Two other special primary legislative elections are being held Tuesday -- in Senate District 16 and Senate District 29. The legislative fiscal session starts Monday.
Information for this article was contributed by Emily Walkenhorst of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
SundayMonday on 02/11/2018
Posted: February 6, 2018 at 4:30 a.m.
Meanwhile, back on the front lines in the battle to save our beautiful Buffalo National River from contamination, Jan Morgan, the GOP gubernatorial challenger to fellow Republican Asa Hutchinson, has produced a Facebook video that miscasts thousands of Arkansans interested in protecting our state's valuable river from contamination by millions of gallons of swine waste as "economic elitist environmentalists" from outside.
Morgan further mischaracterizes the many thousands of Buffalo supporters, as well as members of the state's Ozark Society, Buffalo River Watershed Alliance and Arkansas Canoe Club as out-of-state environmental elitists and out-of-state influences.
Yes, you read that correctly, all you elitist out-of-staters. Some shockingly uninformed pronouncements, especially since all the people and organizations I know who support protecting the special river are bona fide Arkansas residents who understand its value.
Meatpacker JBS-USA is the Brazil-headquartered corporation with whom the C&H owners contract. JBS purchased C&H three years ago from the Cargill Inc. of Minnesota, which launched the factory. Would those two be considered out-of-state economic elitist influences?
Morgan's sweeping judgments clearly are from a hip-shooting gubernatorial candidate who seeks to govern us. I found her needless fearmongering unexpected and startling.
One news account of the video characterized Morgan as having "gone to war" against those opposing this misplaced factory. "She has friends in the Arkansas Farm Bureau," the story reads. I'll bet she does, along with other politically active buddies in the pork-producing industry.
In her video, Morgan also quotes factory co-owner Jason Henson saying that after four years of continuously spreading millions of gallons of raw waste across fields beside Big Creek (a major tributary of the Buffalo flowing six miles downstream), it is "absolutely false" to say he is polluting the river.
That may be true to this point. But there already is ample reason for public concern over serious potential risk to the Buffalo River and its watershed.
Non-elitist Arkansas geoscientists who know and understand the fractured limestone underlying this factory and its spray fields warn it's only a matter of time until a serious mishap occurs. Either that, or the watershed's ecosystem becomes overloaded with nutrients from waste and makes its way downstream to the Buffalo. Then it's too late.
I fully expect Big Creek to rightly wind up on the state's list of impaired waterways this year because of low dissolved oxygen from excess nutrients, a serious threat to aquatic life.
Canoers photographed an explosion of algae blanketing large sections of the Buffalo last summer. The bloom, fueled by nutrient contamination, had become so thick it was impossible to paddle through it in many spots. They called it the worst overgrowth they'd ever encountered. We need to know where it's coming from.
Also, (non-elitist) UA geosciences professor emeritus John Van Brahana, with his team of Arkansas volunteers, has spent four years tracking groundwater flow around the factory. They discovered dye surfacing in area wells and springs and even 12 miles away in the Buffalo, traveling much faster and farther than originally expected.
Brahana believes Morgan unfortunately has taken "a very divisive stance and, through misrepresentation and fear, has created a very misleading and inaccurate account of on the ground conditions."
The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality last month denied C&H's request for a revised operating permit based on scientifically justifiable inadequacies in its application. The factory continues to operate on a stay pending its appeal to the Pollution Control and Ecology Commission.
The department should have insisted on realistic requirements before allowing C&H into this watershed, which today has a temporary moratorium on any future such factories.
The bottom line has nothing to do with name-calling or unfounded emotional rhetoric that panders to people's unrealistic fears. It's about statewide concerns over the unnecessary risk to the state's top-voted attraction that in 2016 drew 1.8 million visitors who left $78 million with area merchants and supported some 1,200 jobs.
I don't believe the area's business owners, or those who enjoy the Buffalo, are environmental elitists. They surely don't endorse any nonsense about government takeovers of people's farms. This issue is solely about terrible location.
Decades ago, well before C&H's location was even a bad idea with Cargill, the same agency under the late director Randall Mathis placed a protective moratorium on such animal factories specifically within the Buffalo watershed. It is simply the worst possible place in our state to license such a potentially polluting operation. Yet there are special interests who want to make sure the serious risk to the Buffalo remains entrenched.
We can now add governor-wannabe Jan Morgan to their ranks, although she might want to see what happened to the once magnificent Neuse River in North Carolina after swine factories began operating there.
Editorial on 02/06/2018
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