Buffalo River Watershed Alliance
By Emily Walkenhorst
NWAOnline
Sunday was the 640th day since C&H Hog Farms applied for a new permit for its Mount Judea concentrated animal feeding operation, and it remains unclear when the farmers will learn the outcome of their request.
C&H, which abuts a Buffalo River tributary in Newton County, has been operating on an indefinite extension of its expired permit, which falls under a different regulation and stipulates different numbers of hogs.
The new permit indicates the facility would house up to six boars of about 450 pounds each, 2,672 sows of at least 400 pounds each and 750 piglets of about 14 pounds each. It also estimates two waste-holding ponds would contain up to 2,337,074 gallons of hog manure, similar to what is contained now. Additional waste and wastewater would be applied over certain sites as fertilizer.
The current permit allows for 4,000 piglets and 2,503 sows.
While C&H has altered the number of hogs it intends to keep on-site, officials don't expect a significant difference in the amount of waste the animals will produce.
C&H has become the target of groups that fear its presence is an environmental risk to the Buffalo River. The river attracted 1.8 million tourists in 2016, and C&H's proximity to the river has caused a stir among people concerned manure from the farm -- the largest hog operation ever to operate in the county -- could make its way into the Buffalo and pollute the water.
The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality received more than 1,000 comments in response to the permit application, the first time opponents of the farm have had the opportunity to comment on its continued existence. Opponents have said lax notification rules of C&H's original permit kept people from opposing its construction in the first place.
C&H's operators applied April 7, 2016, for an Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission Regulation 5 National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit for liquid animal waste systems. The current permit is a Regulation 6 permit, which is similar but has different notification and periodic renewal requirements. The department has decided to discontinue issuing the Regulation 6 permit.
The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality then spent months before the Pollution Control and Ecology Commission's administrative law judge litigating a permit approval for a facility to spread manure from C&H. After the permit approval was upheld, and nearly a year after C&H applied, the department gave preliminary approval to the application.
That was almost a year ago, on Feb. 15, 2017.
State Rep. Jeff Wardlaw, D-Hermitage, introduced a bill Feb. 10 that would require the department to issue a preliminary decision within 120 days of receiving a new permit application or permit modification for a liquid animal waste system. After the subsequent public comment period, the department would have 60 days to issue a final decision.
The bill passed 91-8 in the House and 32-3 in the Senate, and became Act 501 of 2017 on March 15.
"It's not business-friendly for them to take that long to decide on a permit," Wardlaw said. "That's the bottom line of why I ran and supported the bill."
He said many constituent permitting experiences inspired him to support the bill. He called the 21 months that have elapsed without a decision on C&H "ridiculous."
Because C&H had already applied for its new permit, the facility is not subject to the new law.
Arkansas Farm Bureau supported and pushed the bill, spokesman Rob Anderson said.
Department of Environmental Quality spokesman Donnally Davis said the C&H permit is still under review. He did not specify what more the department needs to do before it can issue a decision.
On Dec. 29, C&H operators sent information to the department that the department had requested in September.
The department requested geological site investigations conducted at the facility; construction plans for its waste management system; information related to the facility's nutrient management plan, including which water bodies are located nearby; status of the facility's manure storage ponds; and the operation and maintenance plan for the ponds levee.
C&H's response documents are available on the department's website, searchable through the facilities and permit database.
C&H operators had been given 90 days, from Sept. 19 to Dec. 18, to provide the information. On Dec. 6, they asked for a 90-day extension, but the department gave them only 10 days, arguing the original 90 "should have been more than sufficient time" to answer the department's questions.
Farm operators did not return phone and email messages left by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazetteseeking comment.
"It seems peculiar to me that they are allowed to operate indefinitely with an expired permit," said Gordon Watkins, president of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, a group formed in 2013 to oppose C&H Hog Farms.
C&H was permitted in 2012 and began operating in the spring of 2013.
Watkins noted many things seem to be happening at once with C&H Hog Farms.
While the merits of C&H have been debated publicly for going on five years, recently C&H's operators have explored expanding their hog production.
Co-owner Jason Henson and representatives from JBS Live Pork, which supplies the hogs to C&H, held a public meeting in Clarksville in October about a proposed 5,200-sow facility with additional hogs in a flood-prone area of Johnson County. They said it would not replace C&H Hog Farms.
No permit application has been submitted for that facility.
NW News on 01/08/2018
Once an avid camper and canoeist, Ed Brocksmith no longer visits the Illinois River in east Oklahoma.
These days Brocksmith fishes for smallmouth bass and sand bass at Horseshoe Bend, located on the upper portion of Tenkiller Lake where the Illinois River drains into it. Decades ago, the water was so clear he could step 4 or 5 feet into the lake and still see his feet.
"That's no longer the case," said Brocksmith, 76, a secretary/treasurer with the volunteer group Save the Illinois River.
Brocksmith is concerned that phosphorus levels in the Illinois River will continue to contribute to the degradation of the lake and eventually threaten its bass population. He and others worry the lake eventually will become hospitable only to the "wrong" type of fish, like catfish.
"We want to catch those fish and not mudcats," Brocksmith said.
The level of phosphorus in the Illinois River continues to consistently exceed Oklahoma's state standard of 0.037 milligram of phosphorus per liter, reports show, more than a decade after the state sued Northwest Arkansas poultry companies for contributing the element to the river.
Such levels pose a threat to the well-being of the highly popular river, which each year draws about 500,000 visitors -- including some 200,000 floaters -- who spend an estimated $15 million, according to the Grand River Dam Authority, a branch of Oklahoma's state government.
There are indications things are getting better.
The level of phosphorus is far lower than it used to be, from as high as an average of 0.423 milligram of phosphorus per liter in Watts, Okla., in 1980 to 0.065 milligram of phosphorus per liter in the same spot in 2016. Samples taken this fall from other parts of the river show levels ranging from 0.05 milligram of phosphorus per liter to 0.09, according to Brian Haggard, director of the Arkansas Water Resources Center at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.
Experts attribute the drop to farmers applying less poultry litter -- which is rich in phosphorus -- to the ground in Northwest Arkansas and industries reducing the amount of phosphorus in their wastewater. The Illinois is one of several rivers across the country that the U.S. Geological Survey identifies with likely improving phosphorus levels.
The lower environmental footprint comes at a time when Northwest Arkansas' population has more than doubled to more than 500,000 people, according to census estimates.
"We're making progress, but we still have a bit to go," said Nicole Hardiman, executive director of the Illinois River Watershed Partnership, an Arkansas-based nonprofit formed in 2005 that focuses on voluntary means of reducing phosphorus in the river.
IMPROVEMENTS
The amount of poultry litter applied to ground in the Illinois River's Northwest Arkansas watershed has dropped significantly at a time when the amount of litter being generated has increased, according to Arkansas Natural Resources Commission data analyzed by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. In the counties that contain portions of the watershed, the amount of poultry litter applied has dropped 30 percent, from 219,195 tons in 2004 -- the earliest year of data available -- to 154,067 tons in 2016.
Several Arkansas counties in the region are subject to stricter regulation because of the dispute with Oklahoma. In those areas, collectively called the Nutrient Surplus Area, the amount of phosphorus that farmers can apply to land is limited and farmers must create nutrient management plans that detail what is applied. Farmers are not subject to those regulations elsewhere in the state, although the integrating poultry companies with which farmers contract may require a nutrient management plan as a part of their agreement.
The amount of applied poultry litter has decreased by 19 percent statewide and in 36 of the 58 counties that have reported nutrient application during at least a portion of that time period. Two counties -- Lonoke in east-central Arkansas and Jackson in northeast Arkansas -- have reported no application. The amount of applied poultry litter has increased in 20 counties.
Arkansas poultry farmers have been selling more poultry litter to farmers in other states, said Sheri Herron Scott, executive soil scientist for BMPs, a nonprofit that helps coordinate the sales. Since poultry companies started the nonprofit in 2004, more than 1 million tons of litter have been moved out of the watershed, according to Caroline Ahn, a spokesman for Tyson Foods.
"Cooperative efforts between the states of Arkansas and Oklahoma, along with regulatory programs and the efforts of the poultry industry have helped to make substantial improvements," Ahn said in a written response to an interview request.
The amount of phosphorus from the Springdale wastewater utility also has dropped, said Heath Ward, executive director of Springdale Water Utilities. In fiscal 2001-2002, the utility's treated effluent contained on average 8.4 milligrams of phosphorus per liter. In fiscal 2016-2017, it contained 0.24 milligram of phosphorus per liter.
That's the product of cleaner wastewater from industries and millions of dollars spent on improving the utility's treatment processes, Ward said.
The treatment is a five-part process that partially removes nutrients such as phosphorus from the wastewater. Called the Bardenpho process, it involves five tanks -- anaerobic, anoxic, aerobic, anoxic (again) and aerobic (again) -- that mix fluids and ultimately separate out nitrogen.
The Bardenpho process has resulted in a Rogers treatment plant producing one-tenth of the phosphorus produced previously, according to plant manager Todd Beaver. The discharge has less than 0.1 milligram of phosphorus per liter.
Fayetteville's new Nowlin treatment plant also discharges at about that level.
Ward wants to improve the things the region is doing, but he also noted a project in Fayetteville that restored a few hundred feet of stream bank that kept between 8,000 and 10,000 pounds of phosphorus from finding its way into the Illinois.
He and others favor smaller projects that can make a big impact, such as stream bank restoration and stormwater management.
"That's how you eat an elephant, too, is one bit at a time," Ward said. "I'm just hopeful people want to try some new things."
WHAT REMAINS
Ideas abound for how to continue the improvements, such as low-impact development, land conservation, regulatory changes and additional partnerships.
Low-impact development, Hardiman said, would employ ways to prevent dirty stormwater from running directly into storm drains.
Some cities have developed stormwater management plans as a part of Clean Water Act compliance, said Katie Teague, a Washington County extension agent. All will have to adopt them, she said.
Construction permit applicants in Fayetteville are required to manage stormwater in one of six different ways, Teague said. Those include outreach and education, management and prevention of pollution, and control of stormwater runoff.
That has led to pervious pavement at a Whataburger drive-thru on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Stormwater from the drive-thru travels underneath the pavement and into the soil, rather than running off, loaded with fuel and other substances, into a storm drain. Storm drains discharge directly into bodies of water.
Stream bank restoration projects and partnerships to complete them also interest different groups.
When stream banks erode, they drop sediment into the stream. In Northwest Arkansas, that sediment often contains phosphorus from years of poultry litter being applied to the ground. So restoring stream banks can prevent the addition of more phosphorus making its way to the river.
A public-private partnership to restore the banks near Savoy, where several Illinois tributaries meet, would make a big difference, Hardiman said.
He also would like to find ways to encourage people to put their land into conservation easements and to finance the purchase of land to conserve, perhaps through a millage.
Oklahoma already has a program for land conservation, capturing more than 500 acres at the cost of $1 million to landowners for extended contracts, said Ed Fite, vice president of scenic rivers operations for the Grand River Dam Authority. A recent $500,000 grant will buy more land soon, he said.
Decisions are pending on other actions that could affect the river.
The lawsuit against poultry farmers hasn't had a ruling, nearly eight years after the 50-day trial on it ended.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been working with the two states on a total maximum daily load study for several years but has not completed one. It would determine the maximum amount of certain nutrients that can be introduced into a body of water.
The EPA did not make anyone available for an interview for this story.
A joint study committee recommended in December 2016 that the phosphorus limit be reduced further to 0.035 milligram per liter to protect the scenic nature of the river, but Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin have taken no action on the recommendation.
"We are working through the details with Oklahoma to ensure that the findings and recommendations of the independent study are fully implemented," Hutchinson said in a statement issued to the Democrat-Gazette.
Michael McNutt, a spokesman for Fallin, said the Oklahoma Water Resources Board is working on a total maximum daily load study.
Cole Perryman, a spokesman for the board, said it has no plans to change the standard because it is not bound to do so unless the change is outside the range of 0.027 milligram of phosphorus per liter to 0.047 milligram of phosphorus per liter.
For Fite, approval of that standard is one of the three necessary things for improving the river, along with an approved total maximum daily load study and robust partnerships.
Brocksmith has similar desires, but at least he's finally seeing clearer waters near Tenkiller Lake after years of work.
"The last few years the river seems to have improved," he said.
A Section on 01/02/2018
Posted: January 2, 2018 at 4:30 a.m.
While poultry litter has been attributed as a source of pollution in the Illinois River in Northwest Arkansas and Oklahoma, it isn't regulated outside that region in Arkansas.
The raising of fowl is increasing outside Northwest Arkansas, and recent poultry-plant openings in northeast Arkansas have led to concerns about whether the state should be proactive in monitoring poultry litter application elsewhere in the state.
One way to do that is through the use of nutrient management plans. Such plans detail how a farmer will control nutrient sources to protect the soil and state waters, according to the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission. Nutrients are elements such as phosphorus and nitrogren that in excess amounts can harm water bodies and contribute to algal blooms.
Nutrient management plans are required for farmers in portions of 13 Northwest Arkansas counties in the Illinois River watershed, called the Nutrient Surplus Area, according to Miccah Bowen, coordinator of nutrient management planning for the commission.
The plans aren't used to regulate nutrients outside the watershed, but farmers are supposed to adhere to practices outlined within them. Bowen estimated that fewer than half of poultry farmers use such plans.
"We suspect that there will be growth in poultry farms throughout the state," he said. "We are keeping an eye on it so there won't be another water quality issue in the future."
Differences in soil outside Northwest Arkansas could mean the same amount of poultry litter would have a different effect on water and soil quality, said Karl Vandevender, a professor and engineer at the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture Cooperative Extension Service.
Row crops are efficient at absorbing nutrients from poultry litter applied as fertilizer, said Sheri Herron, executive soil scientist for BMPs, a nonprofit started by Northwest Arkansas poultry companies that helps coordinate sales of poultry litter outside the area. In Northwest Arkansas, row crops aren't as common as in the rest of Arkansas because the soil isn't as conducive for their growth.
Vandevender estimated that most poultry farmers will end up having nutrient management plans, based on industry trends of what integrators -- such as Tyson or Simmons Foods -- require of their farmers.
The bird capacity reported by farms to the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission has increased statewide from about 226 million in 2004 to 242 million in 2016, according to commission data. In counties within the Nutrient Surplus Area, the increase has been about 1.8 million, or about 1.9 percent. Elsewhere in Arkansas, the number of birds has climbed by 14.3 million, or about 11.3 percent.
"I'm just worried that we've got enormous amounts of these things moving in the Batesville and Pocahontas areas," said Don Richardson, chairman of the commission's board.
In Independence County, where Batesville is located, bird capacity has jumped 14.1 percent since 2004, from 4.2 million to 4.8 million. In Randolph County, where Pocahontas is located, bird capacity has skyrocketed 573 percent, from 954,500 birds to 6.4 million birds.
Richardson supports requiring nutrient management plans statewide. So does Commissioner Jerry Hunton, who has expressed concern that the area-specific regulation is unfair to Northwest Arkansas farmers.
Commissioners voted in 2015 to remove a portion of the draft state Water Plan that would have asked the commission to "encourage" the Legislature to require such plans statewide. Central Arkansas Water and the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission supported the language, while the Arkansas Farm Bureau and the Arkansas Association of Conservation Districts opposed it.
2 states' river feud clearing up
This is an excerpt from Rex Nelson's column in regard to trends in Arkansas. The excerpt we've reproduced here is in regard to the trend on conservation. Find Rex's unabridged column here: NWAOnline
By Rex Nelson
Posted: December 31, 2017 at 1:46 a.m.
It was a year that saw me return to full-time newspaper work after more than two decades away. That meant more time to travel the state in search of stories. I talked to people in every section of Arkansas, drove down highways I hadn't been on in years, read local newspapers, listened to small-town radio stations, ate in long-forgotten restaurants and eavesdropped on conversations at adjacent tables in an attempt to determine what topics Arkansans were talking about in 2017.
I discerned several trends that, if they continue, will make Arkansas a better place to live. These trends weren't the result of anything politicians at the local, state or federal levels did. They weren't projects that the Arkansas Economic Development Commission announced. They didn't make the front page of this newspaper. They were the result of the hard work of people across the state who were determined to make their communities better.
(One of the four trends):
A renewed emphasis on conservation
Some of the top Arkansas heroes of the 20th century were people who organized efforts to preserve our state's beauty and natural resources; people such as Dr. Neil Compton of Bentonville, the founder of the Ozark Society who led the fight to prevent a dam on the Buffalo River, and Dr. Rex Hancock of Stuttgart, who led the battle to prevent channelization of the Cache River.
Public concern about commercial hog-growing operations in the Buffalo River watershed appears to have ignited a new era of environmental activism in Arkansas, and that's a good thing. Arkansas has become a Republican state politically. Let's hope the new breed of Republican will be in the mode of the late Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller and the late U.S. Rep. John Paul Hammerschmidt when it comes to conservation. We should expect nothing less in a place that bills itself the Natural State.
arkansasonline
A draft of the Buffalo River Watershed Management Plan is complete.
The plan, commissioned by the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission, makes numerous recommendations for reducing the amount of pollutants that end up in streams in the watershed. Recommendations include monitoring water quality, conducting special studies, providing education and outreach for visitors and residents, and implementing management strategies.
A watershed is an area surrounding a body of water that eventually drains into the body of water. Stream bank erosion can cause pollutants from the soil to enter bodies of water.
"In Arkansas, that's a big issue in just about every watershed," said Allen Brown, program coordinator in the nonpoint source pollution management section of the commission.
The draft plan is the latest measure taken toward preserving and cleaning up the Buffalo River after years of concern over C&H Hog Farms, the large concentrated animal-feeding operation located on Big Creek about 6 miles from where it meets the Buffalo.
Opponents of the hog farm have said it poses an environmental risk to the Buffalo River, the country's first national scenic river. It attracted nearly 1.8 million visitors in 2016.
People who live in the area also have identified other concerns, including erosion, gravel in the river, leaking septic tanks and feral hogs.
Funds for the management plan came from a $107,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency. The plan is a part of the state's larger Beautiful Buffalo River Action Committee -- a committee created by Gov. Asa Hutchinson that comprises five state agencies and will include public meetings and stakeholder input.
The Arkansas Natural Resources Commission held four meetings in Marshall and Jasper to take input on the plan, and it relied on stakeholders to provide perspective on what the biggest issues in the watershed were and the sources of those problems.
In other watersheds with management plans, the most common practices communities and landowners follow through with are best management practices for land and water quality monitoring, usually conducted by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, Brown said.
The management practices include stabilizing and restoring stream banks, keeping cattle from grazing too close to water, making plans for managing nutrients on farms, restoration of game bird habitat and controlling invasive and destructive species.
Officials argue in the plan that prescribed grazing on high-quality pasture can reduce illness in cattle and increase their weight.
The number of landowners who already undertake best management practices is unknown. A message left at the Newton County Conservation District was not returned, and two officials at the Buffalo Conservation District in Searcy County did not know and were unaware of the watershed management plan.
Brown said the Buffalo's watershed was in better shape overall than other watersheds the commission has formulated plans for because it hasn't been as developed.
The 622-page document is available on FTN Associates' website at http://bit.ly/2zOb7lo. The environmental consulting firm drafted the plan for the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission.
Stakeholders can comment on the plan through Jan. 15. After that, the commission will consider the comments and send the plan to the EPA, Brown said.
Gordon Watkins, a Newton County farmer and president of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, said he had not read the draft plan and that his organization wasn't prepared to fully comment yet.
But his organization's primary concern was still an issue, he said.
"Our biggest issue is the exclusion of Big Creek from the priority streams," Watkins said.
Samples from the creek taken in 2016 show higher levels of nitrates and dissolved oxygen that should be of concern for the plan, he said.
Middle Big Creek, nearer to C&H, was not included because data did not show it was in as bad of shape as the six priority watersheds, Brown said. Data used to make that determination came from the 1980s through 2015.
Instead, the six smaller priority subwatersheds are for Flatrock, Tomahawk, Calf, Bear, Brush and lower Big creeks.
In those watersheds, officials set target reductions of nitrates by as much as 70 percent and of E. coli by as much as 82 percent. Efforts to manage nitrogen would in turn reduce phosphorus and sediment in the creeks.
Those would be achieved largely through prescribed grazing, stream buffers, pasture planting and management and exclusion of cattle from streams, according to the plan. The cost of any of these projects in a single creek's watershed would likely be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, or more than $1 million in the lower Big Creek watershed, the plan estimated.
The plan must contain nine elements for the EPA to accept it: identification of causes and source; expected pollution reductions from the recommendations; management measures; estimates of technical and financial assistance; education and outreach efforts; a schedule for implementation; a description of attainable milestones; criteria for measuring pollution load reduction; and monitoring measures.
The plan is an outline of priority efforts to reduce or prevent pollution from occurring in the Buffalo River. It is not regulatory, but it can be a catalyst for landowners applying for grants for conservation practices. Additionally, the six smaller priority subwatersheds could be seen more favorably in grant applications over applications for other subwatersheds, officials have said.
The plan also will not address facilities that are issued permits in the area, because those are regulated by other government agencies, Brown said.
Cities, counties and the Legislature could pass legislation that restrict permitted activities, he said, but the commission doesn't have the power to do that.
Stakeholders have included the National Park Service, Army Corps of Engineers, Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service, Natural Resources Conservation Service, Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, Arkansas Department of Health, Arkansas Forestry Commission, Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service, county conservation districts, recreation and environmental interest groups, farmers and ranchers.
The Buffalo River's watershed is 1,342.7 square miles and contains more than 2,000 miles of streams, according to the draft plan. The river is 150 miles long. About 40 percent of it is publicly owned by the National Park Service, the Ozark-St. Francis National Forest and eight Arkansas Game and Fish Commission wildlife management areas.
The watershed is primarily located in Newton and Searcy counties but also stretches into Marion, Baxter, Stone, Van Buren and Pope counties.
By Mike Masterson
Posted: December 30, 2017 at 2:29 a.m
Count me among Arkansans wondering when, after almost four months so far, Circuit Judge John Putman will issue his findings in a case involving the controversial C&H Hog Farms at Mount Judea.
Four weeks is understandable. But four months from a judge known as honorable and expedient seems like a long time.
Attorney Richard H. Mays of Heber Springs argued before Putman on behalf of Carol Bitting and two other Jasper-area women on Sept. 6, 2017. They were disputing the modified “land-application” permit our politicized Department of Environmental Quality (cough) decided to issue the nonoperational Ellis Campbell’s EC Farms on June 29, 2016.
The permit allowed C&H, with some 6,500 swine confined in enormous metal buildings near Big Creek, to begin hauling and spreading some of the tons of raw waste it continuously generates on its own spray fields to some 600 acres several miles away on the former EC Farms swine operation.
The fields C&H has utilized since 2013 along or near Big Creek, a major tributary of the Buffalo National River, have been reported at or nearing capacity for levels of phosphorus and other pollutants allowed by regulations. They needed more space to accommodate all their raw waste.
Conveniently enough, being in the same family with C&H owners (The “C” in C&H), Campbell’s acreage was available to accept the overflow after the Department of Environmental Quality’s 2016 decision allowed EC’s original permit for a confined feeding operation to be altered to allow the application of wastes under provisions of so-called Regulation 5.
Bitting and her fellow plaintiffs immediately disagreed. Soon afterward, Mays came to their aid. “Our main argument was that a separate permit was required for a land-disposal permit rather than a modification of the confined animal feeding permit into a land-disposal permit,” Mays said. Administrative Law Judge Charles Moulton agreed with Mays and Bitting in his January 2017 ruling.
“In his recommended decision (Order 9) made to the Pollution Control and Ecology Commission, Moulton ruled on Jan. 5, 2017, the ‘preponderance of evidence’ showed we were correct about requiring a separate permit,” said Mays. “But at the end of that same decision he determined, rather than going through the process to acquire a new permit, [the department] could simply issue a new permit number and EC Farms should pay the fee required for a new permit.”
So despite the convincing evidence Mays presented, Moulton’s order to simply modify the original permit didn’t require the fullest possible public response necessary for a new permit.
Why does this sounds confusingly hog wild to me?
The commissioners immediately upheld Moulton’s order, which allowed C&H to continue hauling and spreading portions of its waste several miles away to EC Farms. In my Ozark Mountain boy’s interpretation, C&H lost the morning pig wrestlin’ contest but wound up tickled pink by winning Best of Show that afternoon.
Is this a great country or what? Everyone gets a little sumptin-sumptin at the trough of justice — every now and then anyway.
But that’s also when Mays continued his legal efforts to try and stop the tons of additional potential pollutants from being applied on EC Farm’s property.
He appealed the Department of Environmental Quality’s action and Moulton’s and the commission’s decisions to Judge Putman’s Circuit Court in Newton County on Feb. 22, 2017. The case finally was heard before a sizable crowd on Sept. 6.
Mays’ argument was the law was violated under Regulation 5, which says a change in the usage of such property does, in fact, legally require a separate permit (as Moulton also determined). As such, a new permit application would include regulatory requirements, a public notice and public comment on all aspects of a new application.
Lacking those oversights could matter a great deal since C&H’s spray fields drain toward Big Creek and seep into a badly fractured karst limestone subsurface into the national river’s watershed. The EC Farms property drains largely into the nearby Little Buffalo River watershed, which also is riddled with karst beneath the surface.
This is where the matter has wallowed since Putman’s Sept. 6 hearing. Those concerned about further spreading tons of raw waste are waiting for the judge to rule whether a separate department-issued permit is indeed legally necessary in this instance.
While my degree is in journalism (where a laptop and I have practiced for decades in the court of public opinion rather than the legal version), I don’t see this as a particularly complicated issue.
Was Moulton correct when he determined the preponderance of evidence indeed confirmed May’s argument? Politics aside, where does the law, itself, apply?
I suspect this is not the kind of politicized and controversial case involving state agencies that Putman is accustomed to hearing high in the Ozarks.
In that regard, he understandably could find himself in an uncomfortable position. After all, the hog-waste-promoting side of this argument has politically influential special-interest support. The judge also may have made a decision in the final days of 2017, just before this is published. Mays, Bitting, et al., can certainly hope.
Meanwhile, tons of untreated C&H hog waste will continue being spread across EC Farms’ fields while (as many of us believe) invariably seeping into the watersheds of the Little Buffalo, as well as the country’s first national river.
In that regard, one might rightly say the C&H folks, thanks to the state’s official “protectors” of our precious environmental quality, enjoyed an early Christmas gift in the karst-riddled Ozark Mountains and anticipate another no-holds-barred new year.
Mike Masterson is a longtime Arkansas journalist. Email him at mmasterson@arkansasonline.com.
Posted: December 17, 2017 at 4:30 a.m.
The floods were frequent and intense in Yell and Perry counties during the 1920s and 1930s. While historians focus on the effect the Great Flood of 1927 had on the eastern half of the state, west Arkansas dealt with its own problems as water flowed down mountainsides in the Ouachita and Ozark hills and overwhelmed those living in the valleys below.
After Congress passed the Flood Control Act of 1938 in the wake of another natural disaster affecting multiple states (the Great Flood of 1937), the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was authorized to build a dam along the Fourche La Fave River. In addition to controlling flooding along the Fourche La Fave, the dam was expected to reduce flooding along the Arkansas River, into which the Fourche La Fave flows. Testing began in October 1938, and the Department of War announced in 1939 that a dam would be erected in western Perry County and named for the nearby community of Nimrod.
The Corps began receiving construction bids in January 1940. The Russ Mitchell Co. and Brown & Root Inc. were selected that spring to construct the dam, and the federal government started buying up land in the area.
"By October 1941, the dam was largely complete," Guy Lancaster writes for the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture. "Heavy rains the following month completely filled the reservoir, providing an unexpected test of the dam's stability. By February 1942, the final clearing of trees from the dam's reservoir area was being carried out, with the whole project reaching completion in March 1942. The estimated cost of the entire project came to just under $3.8 million. ... The lake is situated along the northern boundary of the Ouachita National Forest with the Nimrod Wildlife Management Area to its west and Highway 7, an Arkansas Scenic Byway, to its east."
Nimrod Lake was the first of the big Corps of Engineers impoundments in Arkansas. During the next three decades, thanks to a powerful congressional delegation that would steer millions of federal dollars to Arkansas for projects, the Corps would stay busy. Just to the northwest of Nimrod Dam, Blue Mountain Lake was created by a dam on the Petit Jean River. Blue Mountain's construction was halted by World War II and completed in June 1947. To the south, the Ouachita River was dammed to create Lake Ouachita, the Caddo River was dammed to create DeGray Lake, the Little Missouri River was dammed to create Lake Greeson, and the Little River was dammed to create Millwood Lake.
Along the White River and its North Fork in northern Arkansas and southern Missouri, dams created Beaver Lake, Table Rock Lake, Bull Shoals Lake and Norfork Lake. Small dams near the Oklahoma border in southwest Arkansas created De Queen Lake, Dierks Lake and Gillham Lake. The McClellan-Kerr Navigation System along the Arkansas River created additional reservoirs, as did navigation projects along the Ouachita River in far south Arkansas. Channelization of numerous streams took place in the Arkansas Delta.
During a two-day excursion on Arkansas 7 from the southern border of the state to its northern border (that trip is detailed in a story on the front page of this section), we saw the work of the Corps as we passed just below Nimrod Dam on the first day, crossed the Arkansas River at Dardanelle on the second day, and ended our trip on the shores of Bull Shoals. We also saw a leading example of a rare defeat for the Corps and its congressional supporters. That example is the Buffalo National River.
At the time it opened, the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System was the largest civil works project ever built by the Corps. Congress passed the Rivers and Harbors Act in July 1946, and that authorized a navigation system along the river from Catoosa, Okla., to where the Arkansas empties into the Mississippi River in southeast Arkansas. The project was designed to provide a minimum 9-foot-deep channel along the final 450 miles of the river.
Kay Goss writes for the Encyclopedia of Arkansas: "Completion of the project was not assured by passage of the 1946 act; only $55 million was authorized for initial improvements, with later funding to be approved on a year-to-year, dam-by-dam basis. Sen. John L. McClellan of Arkansas and Sen. Elmer Thomas of Oklahoma sat on the Senate Appropriations Committee. In 1948, Gov. Robert S. Kerr of Oklahoma ran a successful campaign to become Oklahoma's junior senator, where he joined McClellan in championing waterway transportation."
The first commercial barge, which was carrying steel pipes, arrived at Catoosa on Jan. 3, 1971. The system was dedicated on June 5, 1971, during a ceremony at the Tulsa Port of Catoosa. President Richard Nixon was the keynote speaker.
Our trip ended where Arkansas 7 meets Bull Shoals in Boone County. The Flood Control Act of 1938 had authorized construction of six reservoirs in the White River basin. The Corps built Norfork Dam on the North Fork River in southern Baxter County from 1941-45. Construction of Bull Shoals Dam west of Mountain Home on the White River began in 1947. President Harry S. Truman spoke at the dedication on July 2, 1952.
The Buffalo River, which we crossed between Jasper and Harrison on Arkansas 7, is the place where Arkansans said "enough" when it came to building dams. The Buffalo had been included in the Flood Control Act of 1938 as one of the White River basin streams to be dammed. Two potential sites were selected by the Corps. One was upstream from Gilbert in Searcy County, and the other was near the mouth of the stream. By the 1960s, however, an epic battle had ensued between the anti-dam Ozark Society headed by Neil Compton of Bentonville and the pro-dam Buffalo River Improvement Association headed by James Tudor of Marshall. National media attention was focused on the battle, which even included a Buffalo River canoe trip by Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.
In December 1965, Gov. Orval Faubus, a Madison County native who long had loved the river, announced that he couldn't support a dam on the Buffalo. Faubus was at the height of his political power, and the Corps withdrew its proposal. In 1966, Republican John Paul Hammerschmidt of Harrison defeated Democratic incumbent James Trimble. Hammerschmidt then began efforts to obtain the national river designation from the National Park Service. The Corps had met its match.
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Rex Nelson is a senior editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Editorial on 12/17/2017
Arkansasonline
Letter to Editor
Force agency to work
How many times have I heard that over-regulation is costing too much? Regulations don’t just happen. Usually they are in response to a situation revealing the need for them. When industries were disposing of factory waste by flushing it into the nearest waterway, many American rivers became so polluted that some even caught on fire. Regulations were formulated to prevent this naked abuse of our shared environment because they were necessary.
Now industrial agriculture is the leading abuser of our water resources, according to the EPA. In the Buffalo River watershed they do this in several ways: the over-application of liquid manure on fields in amounts exceeding the soil’s ability to use the nutrients, and by storing millions of gallons of liquid waste in open pits. By law, such pits are permitted to leak as much as 5,000 gallons of waste per day per acre of lagoon. Even a relatively small waste pit leaking 1,000 gallons per day could legally leak 365,000 gallons yearly.
We are assured that spraying liquid waste from an industrial-scale hog operation within the vulnerable watershed is “doing no harm.” A group of soil scientists was hired by the state to do water testing, and despite evidence of bias, their data reveal Big Creek, a major tributary located where much of the waste was sprayed, qualified as impaired in 2016. However, the data were not included when formulating the most recent state list of impaired waterways.
The Buffalo was named one of America’s most endangered rivers in 2017. Will it take killing it to finally force our governor to direct an ill-sited factory farm be removed from this sensitive ecosystem? Or will an entire generation miss out on experiencing what America’s first national river once was? Governor Hutchinson, the writing is on the wall. Force the state Department of Environmental Quality to do its job!
LIN WELLFORD
By Fran Alexander
Posted: December 5, 2017 at 1 a.m.
This upside-down world we're living in leaves us questioning not only what we are told, but distrustful that our facts might actually be fallacies. Up is down, right is left, black is white and right is wrong. Under these conditions, scrutinizing all laws for their true intent, in spite of their titles, is vital.
For example, upon close inspection of Arkansas U.S. Rep. Bruce Westerman's "Resilient Federal Forests Act of 2017," one begins to realize that what he calls "resiliency" in practice will actually translate into "cut, cut, cut." His bill is more about the resiliency of the timber industry's bottom line than it is of biologically balanced forests.
Our national forests were established to be managed for multiple uses like recreation, wildlife habitat, hunting, grasslands and watershed protection. Timber production was not supposed to dominate those other uses. However, decades of forestry wars have centered on environmentalists battling to save wildlife species and their habitats, keeping eroding soil out of creeks and rivers, valuing magnificent scenery, maintaining diversity in ecosystems, protecting endangered plants and animals and having grand trees to walk and camp beneath. These efforts have required citizen participation, which requires endless organizing and fundraising, and at times even filing lawsuits. They've had to sue for legal interpretations of just how you can preserve a tree by cutting it down, or save watersheds by polluting them, or protect wildlife by destroying their food and habitat.
While multiple uses of our forests can exist alongside timber harvesting, they cannot survive if logging is the end-all activity that laws are written to favor. No matter that the Forth District's congressman has shrouded his law under the pretext of fire prevention, by the time you reach the end of its 75 pages you realize resilient healthy forests are not the true end-game goal. Or at least you realize that a master's degree in forestry from Yale does not turn someone into an ecologist any more than George W. Bush's Yale degree in history helped him figure out which country was to blame for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York City. Much of this bill is an insult to other professional foresters.
Both fire suppression and light prescribed burning are forest management tools, but this bill, which has now passed in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and will go to the Senate, does a lot more than deal with the fuel build-up on forest floors. It guts provisions in the National Environmental Policy Act where page after page of "categorical exclusions" essentially rip out regulations that protect threatened species and special and historic places. It shortens time for reviewing management action proposals, and if the goal is to attack a disease or bug infestation or diminish fuel loads, no new impact statements will be required if actions will affect 10,000 acres or less (that's almost 16 square miles). This size can possibly rise to 30,000 acres (almost 47 square miles) of forests no matter where they are located. And there appear to be no rules preventing these huge tracts from being close to each other, which multiplies their impact.
Growing our national forests with human-selected tree species harvested at a convenient age and size is, in reality, commercial tree farming and does not sustain anything similar to a forest ecosystem. Converting mixed woods to single species plantations is what the huge timber companies do now on their vast holdings, but never satisfied, they want these same practices in our public forests.
Additionally this bill shrinks review boards to only a few representatives and keeps them very localized, although the national forests belong to all U.S. citizens with a wide range of forest concerns. It implies that environmental lawsuits are the reason the forests haven't been managed better for fire conditions, while ignoring Forest Service personnel cutbacks, drought, and spreading land developments as major causes. Also, making citizens pay up front for a lawsuit, whether they win it or not, pretty well guarantees decisions will not be challenged even when they result in devastating damage to forests and watersheds. Critics calling environmental challenges "frivolous" have obviously never had to raise money at the grassroots level to pay for them. Those who reap profits off of public resources have little room for casting ulterior motives onto those who oppose their activities.
National forests cover more than 7 percent of Arkansas. Please tell Sens. Tom Cotton and John Boozman to listen to more than one voice about their management.
Commentary on 12/05/2017
Buffalo River talk to spotlight algae
Posted: December 3, 2017 at 3:24 a.m.
The Beautiful Buffalo River Action Committee will hold another meeting this week, according to a news release from the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality.
The committee will hear a presentation from the Arkansas Harmful Algal Bloom Workgroup, a U.S. Geological Survey and Department of Environmental Quality partnership studying algae issues in Arkansas.
The committee also will hear an update on the Buffalo River's watershed plan from the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission. The plan, which would outline voluntary conservation measures that would benefit the river, is in development.
The meeting will be at 2 p.m. Tuesday at the Department of Environmental Quality's headquarters, 5301 Northshore Drive, in North Little Rock.
Metro on 12/03/2017
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