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  • 02 Sep 2016 12:28 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Arkansas Times


    Hog farm resisting testing for potential Buffalo River pollution

    Posted By Max Brantley on Fri, Sep 2, 2016 at 3:46 PM


    The Buffalo River Watershed Alliance this week reached a settlement with the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality on testing for pollution from the C and H Hog farm at Mount Judea in the Buffalo River watershed.

    But the farm is resisting the testing and that's prompted a state enforcement action.

    The alliance asked yesterday for dismissal of the lawsuit it filed seeking an injunction.  The Alliance reported last week that it had been having difficulties getting responses from ADEQ, but reported the agency had finally gotten in contact Aug. 25.

    The Alliance had objected to having only the Big Creek Research and Extension Team observe drilling research. The team, including University of Arkansas representatives, has come to be viewed as more sympathetic to agricultural interests. The Watershed Alliance wanted to have its own expert on hand to watch drilling for samples to see if hog waste has leaked into the ground water. The state is paying for testing.

    With the settlement, neither the Big Creek Research Team nor the Watershed Alliance would be allowed to observe the testing. Instead, an independent consultant  would monitor the test. The consultant, from Indiana, was hired by the drilling contractor.

    Richard Mays, the Heber Springs lawyer who filed the suit, said the Alliance had checked the consultant and was satisfied with the choice. He said this was a better outcome.

    But, a few minutes later, Mays wrote me to say things have "gotten interesting."

    Right now, however, the hog farm owner, Jason Henson, is refusing to allow ADEQ to go onto the site to conduct the investigation. ADEQ has issued a Notice of Technical Deficiency in C&H's permit application, which requires C&H to allow ADEQ and its contractors on site, or alternatively orders C&H to do the investigation under the supervision of ADEQ. ... That is the big news.

    There may be any number of reasons why C&H doesn't want ADEQ to do the investigation. One may be that they know or strongly suspect that there is a release [of pollution] and are hoping to avoid the investigation. Henson has a sympathetic supporter in some of the BCRET team members, and he may be hoping to get them admitted to the site to help in affecting the results. 

    Here's the ADEQ notice of a deficiency on the farm's permit.
    Here's the Watershed Alliance release, issued before news of the farm's reistance.C and H has been uncommunicative on press inquiries. We asked again. 

    The Alliance commented later:

    "Regardless of the outcome of this study and how it is conducted, even the fact that it is needed points to the all too obvious conclusion that such an operation has no place in the sensitive karst terrain of the Buffalo River watershed."

    Follow this link to see comments on this article.


  • 02 Sep 2016 8:24 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)


    Buffalo River/ADEQ lawsuit settled

    LOG CABIN DEMOCRAT


    Posted:
     September 2, 2016 - 10:45pm

    The Buffalo River Watershed Alliance Inc. announced Friday it has settled a lawsuit, filed by it in U.S. District Court in Little Rock on Aug. 24, against the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality over the presence of observers at drilling that is planned by ADEQ at the C&H Hog Farm in Newton County to investigate whether there is an ongoing release of hog wastes under the farm’s waste management facilities.

    Evidence of a possible fracture and release was discovered during studies on the hog farm conducted in March 2015 by the Big Creek Research and Extension Team (BCRET), a group of scientists appointed by the University of Arkansas Department of Agriculture, and funded by the State of Arkansas. However, that evidence was not revealed by BCRET to ADEQ.

    It was only after the Alliance obtained that evidence through a Freedom of Information Act request, and reported it to ADEQ in April 2016 that the public became aware of it.

    BCRET has maintained that no additional studies are necessary to prove or disprove the existence of a release.

    In July, ADEQ decided to drill into the subsurface at the hog farm to determine whether hog wastes are present.

    ADEQ had initially planned to allow observers from BCRET during the investigation of the site, but not from the Alliance. The Alliance claimed that members of BCRET had a conflict of interest in the results of the drilling because BCRET had known about the evidence of a release for over a year and not reported it to ADEQ.

    The Alliance filed the suit in U.S. District Court against ADEQ and the Hog Farm, claiming that it has a recognizable environmental and economic interest in the investigation as an equal stakeholder in the investigation with ADEQ, BCRET and the Hog Farm, and as such, it was entitled to have an observer present during the investigation.

    After negotiations with ADEQ and Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s office, the parties have agreed that neither BCRET nor the Alliance will have observers present during the drilling. Instead, an independent observer who is a geologist experienced in karst geology such as in the area of the hog farm will be present to monitor the activities and report the activities on the site to all of the parties.

    In addition, samples will be taken of soil and water present beneath the hog farm during and after the drilling process, and those samples will be divided between several laboratories to obtain analysis of chemicals that may indicate the presence of hog wastes. Those analyses will be compared to determine consistency of results.

    “The Buffalo River Watershed Alliance filed this suit because we felt that we were not being given the same opportunities to participate in the investigation and the same access to information as the other organizations who are considered stakeholders in the investigation,” Alliance President Gordon Watkins said.

    Based upon verbal assurances from ADEQ legal counselor and the governor to Richard Mays, attorney for BRWA, that BCRET will not have a representative on site during the investigation, and the provisions of the revised Work Plan for the investigation which limits observers to the impartial observer hired by ADEQ’s contractor, the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance has agreed to withdraw its suit.

    “We are pleased that ADEQ plans to move forward with its investigation with regard to groundwater contamination beneath C & H’s waste storage ponds for permit ARG5900001.Our goal has been achieved, and there was no point in continuing the suit,” Watkins said. “There are other aspects of the investigation that we are not happy about, such as the number of borings that will be drilled during the investigation. A greater amount of information, and, therefore, greater confidence in the results would be obtained if at least three borings were done. However, we have no control over that.

    “On the whole, we feel that this settlement on the information that will be available is fair and reasonable, and hopefully will protect the interest of the public in obtaining transparency of the investigation process and results. We thank the Governor’s office for intervening in the interest of equality of treatment and transparency.”

    The Alliance said it wants to make clear that the issue in the lawsuit was but a small part of the investigation into whether there is a release of hog wastes from the C&H facility, and the settlement was without prejudice to the Alliance’s right to file subsequent suits should the need arise.

    “We will continue to fight to rid the Buffalo River watershed of the threat of potentially devastating pollution that is presented by the presence of the hog farm,” Watkins said.

  • 25 Aug 2016 2:13 PM | Anonymous member

    Arkansas hog farm's foes sue to get their scientist on site for pollution research

    By Emily Walkenhorst

    Posted: August 25, 2016 at 5:45 a.m.


    Link

    Opponents of a large hog farm near the Buffalo National River have filed a federal lawsuit against the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality and the hog farm, asking a judge to allow a scientist consulting for the opponents to be present during research at the farm.

    The research, which is to be conducted on C&H Hog Farms' private land in Mount Judea, was requested by opponents of the hog farm -- including the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, which filed the lawsuit -- earlier this year after they learned of research done in 2015 that showed what they said was an unexpectedly high amount of moisture beneath one of C&H's manure ponds.

    C&H owners agreed to allow the Department of Environmental Quality to conduct the research, which consists of extracting samples from the ground through drilling to assess the integrity of the liners under the hog manure ponds.

    The department hired Harbor Environmental of Little Rock to do the drilling, consulted with the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance about what it would like to see done during the project, and allowed up to two members of the state-hired Big Creek Research and Extension Team to be present during the drilling. The department rejected a request from the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance to have present its consultant, Bert Fischer, a University of Tulsa geology professor.

    In the lawsuit filed Wednesday, the alliance alleges that the Department of Environmental Quality, by allowing other stakeholders to be present at the drilling but not the representative for the alliance, has violated the rights of the alliance and its members to "due process and equal protection of the laws under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution" that the alliance is entitled to as a stakeholder in the Buffalo River.

    The drilling might be done only once, alliance attorney Richard Mays said in an interview Wednesday.

    "So we want to make sure that it's done the right way," he said.

    The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge James Moody Jr. of Little Rock.

    Mays said he decided to sue when he didn't hear from the department after his Aug. 4 letter and an email sent Tuesday.

    Department spokesman Kelly Robinson said Mays' letter was considered a "comment" on the project that the department would respond to later. She said department officials, including Director Becky Keogh and Caleb Osborne, associate director of water quality, were traveling Tuesday from meeting with natural resources officials in Missouri on an unrelated project.

    "Director Keogh has taken into consideration Mr. Mays' request to go on site at C&H Hog Farms in the Mt. Judea area as well as any requests," Robinson said in an emailed statement. "All requests to go onto the site will be considered.

    "The activity will begin as soon as a driller becomes available. ADEQ anticipates this as soon as possible, with the understanding that there are many variables that will impact our time frame."

    Those variables could include rainy weather and scheduling conflicts, Robinson said.

    The drilling was originally scheduled to start Aug. 8 but has been postponed indefinitely.

    The Department of Environmental Quality signed a contract with Harbor Environmental for $75,000 to do the drilling and lab work.

    C&H Hog Farms first opened in May 2013 after having its permit approved by the department in late 2012. It has been under fire from environmental groups and others for more than three years for what they say is the risk it poses to the Buffalo River.

    The facility sits on Big Creek about 6 miles from where it converges with the Buffalo River. It is the only large hog farm in the river's watershed and is permitted to house up to 6,000 piglets and 2,503 sows.

    Research conducted by the Big Creek Research and Extension Team, which operates out of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, has not found the facility to be polluting into the river. Research will continue for at least another two years on the site.

    The Buffalo River, the first national river, had 1.46 million visitors last year, the third-highest total since it became a national river in 1972 and the highest since a record visitors count of 1.55 million was set in 2009. That year, visitors spent an estimated $62.2 million at local businesses, directly supporting 750 jobs and secondarily supporting 219 others.



  • 25 Aug 2016 7:33 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    arkansasonline


    Arkansas hog farm's foes sue to get their scientist on site for pollution research



    Opponents of a large hog farm near the Buffalo National River have filed a federal lawsuit against the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality and the hog farm, asking a judge to allow a scientist consulting for the opponents to be present during research at the farm.

    The research, which is to be conducted on C&H Hog Farms' private land in Mount Judea, was requested by opponents of the hog farm -- including the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, which filed the lawsuit -- earlier this year after they learned of research done in 2015 that showed what they said was an unexpectedly high amount of moisture beneath one of C&H's manure ponds.

    C&H owners agreed to allow the Department of Environmental Quality to conduct the research, which consists of extracting samples from the ground through drilling to assess the integrity of the liners under the hog manure ponds.

    The department hired Harbor Environmental of Little Rock to do the drilling, consulted with the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance about what it would like to see done during the project, and allowed up to two members of the state-hired Big Creek Research and Extension Team to be present during the drilling. The department rejected a request from the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance to have present its consultant, Bert Fischer, a University of Tulsa geology professor.

    In the lawsuit filed Wednesday, the alliance alleges that the Department of Environmental Quality, by allowing other stakeholders to be present at the drilling but not the representative for the alliance, has violated the rights of the alliance and its members to "due process and equal protection of the laws under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution" that the alliance is entitled to as a stakeholder in the Buffalo River.

    The drilling might be done only once, alliance attorney Richard Mays said in an interview Wednesday.

    "So we want to make sure that it's done the right way," he said.

    The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge James Moody Jr. of Little Rock.

    Mays said he decided to sue when he didn't hear from the department after his Aug. 4 letter and an email sent Tuesday.

    Department spokesman Kelly Robinson said Mays' letter was considered a "comment" on the project that the department would respond to later. She said department officials, including Director Becky Keogh and Caleb Osborne, associate director of water quality, were traveling Tuesday from meeting with natural resources officials in Missouri on an unrelated project.

    "Director Keogh has taken into consideration Mr. Mays' request to go on site at C&H Hog Farms in the Mt. Judea area as well as any requests," Robinson said in an emailed statement. "All requests to go onto the site will be considered.

    "The activity will begin as soon as a driller becomes available. ADEQ anticipates this as soon as possible, with the understanding that there are many variables that will impact our time frame."

    Those variables could include rainy weather and scheduling conflicts, Robinson said.

    The drilling was originally scheduled to start Aug. 8 but has been postponed indefinitely.

    The Department of Environmental Quality signed a contract with Harbor Environmental for $75,000 to do the drilling and lab work.

    C&H Hog Farms first opened in May 2013 after having its permit approved by the department in late 2012. It has been under fire from environmental groups and others for more than three years for what they say is the risk it poses to the Buffalo River.

    The facility sits on Big Creek about 6 miles from where it converges with the Buffalo River. It is the only large hog farm in the river's watershed and is permitted to house up to 6,000 piglets and 2,503 sows.

    Research conducted by the Big Creek Research and Extension Team, which operates out of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, has not found the facility to be polluting into the river. Research will continue for at least another two years on the site.

    The Buffalo River, the first national river, had 1.46 million visitors last year, the third-highest total since it became a national river in 1972 and the highest since a record visitors count of 1.55 million was set in 2009. That year, visitors spent an estimated $62.2 million at local businesses, directly supporting 750 jobs and secondarily supporting 219 others.

    Metro on 08/25/2016


  • 24 Aug 2016 2:24 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Three grandmothers join forces to appeal ADEQ permit

    August 24, 2016

    Eureka Springs Independent


    Three Northwest Arkansas women have banded together to appeal a recent decision that would allow EC Farms to spray hog waste from C&H Hog Farms, Inc., onto additional pastures within the Buffalo River watershed.

    All three had independently attended a public comment hearing in Jasper last March to object to allowing the transfer of a modified permit that would expose more tributaries, springs and groundwater to potential pollutants in a sensitive ecosystem already showing signs of stress. The comments they made at that time give them standing to appeal the decision. Fifty-three comments were recorded, either online or at the hearing, against allowing even more widespread spraying of untreated swine sewage.

    Now the three women, all grandmothers, have hired an attorney to guide them through the process.

    “None of us has done anything like this before, but we met up afterwards and discovered that we share a common determination to fight for the Buffalo. Someone had to take a stand for the river and it seemed to each of us that it was our turn,” Carol Bitting explained.

    Bitting lives on the Little Buffalo River, a tributary to the Buffalo National River in Newton County. For years she has volunteered her services as a biological technician for the Buffalo National Park, conducting field surveys and documenting karst features within the park. She’s also a member of the Arkansas Caves Association, cataloging and measuring numerous caves in the county. Her spare time is spent hiking, biking, paddling the river and enjoying the outdoors with her grandkids.

    Dr. Nancy Haller also has a long history of public service. She is a medical doctor who formerly served as Public Health Officer for the Newton County Health Department. In the 1990s she spearheaded the effort to establish the county as an eco-tourism destination, and wrote numerous grant proposals that have helped improve the quality of life for residents of Jasper. Her concern for the Buffalo River stems from her understanding of the pathogens, bacteria, viruses and other substances known to leach into waterways and threaten human heath in areas where confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) dispose of waste by spreading it on the ground. “It already happened once, when too much chicken litter ruined the wells around Mount Judea. That’s when they had to pipe in water from the lake,” Haller points out. “This permit would allow in excess of 6.5 million gallons of untreated waste to be sprayed on fields and pastures south of Mount Judea. That’s crazy!”

    Lin Wellford of Carroll County is an active member of one of the state’s first watershed partnership groups and has been involved in preserving and protecting Ozark waterways for more than a decade. An avid kayaker who frequently floats the Buffalo, she worries that spraying waste on additional fields within the river’s watershed will skew results of the Big Creek Research and Extension Team’s taxpayer-funded monitoring efforts on a major tributary to the Buffalo River. The new fields drain into different tributaries that are not currently being monitored.

    “People had already started to question whether BCRET’s mission was compromised by the fact that the director of the team is so closely associated with the U of A School of Agriculture,” Wellford said. “Originally the study was supposed to focus on water monitoring to protect the Buffalo National River, but once it began, the title was quickly changed to ‘Proving the Sustainability of C&H Hog Farm.’”

    According to the EPA, non-point source pollution associated with agriculture, mostly stemming from the rapid evolution of indoor feedlots known as CAFOs, is now the leading cause of impaired waterways within the US.

    These grandmothers agree that agriculture is important to the state and they support the rights of independent farmers to make a living on their land. But they also think that the corporate takeover of farming is turning farms into factories and transforming farmers into contracted operators who have little say in decision-making. “We keep hearing how industrial-scale agricultural is the only way to feed a hungry world, but CAFOs have been shown to be hugely damaging to the environment. How long can we feed the world if we wreck our land and water resources in the process?” Wellford asked.

    “And if it turns out that we can’t protect a river that has been set aside as a national park, is any waterway in this country safe?” Dr. Haller added.

    The hearing has been set for Dec. 4-5 at the Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology building in North Little Rock

  • 23 Aug 2016 9:31 AM | Anonymous member

    Link


    Buffalo a harbor for birds; 96,341 acres get sanctuary label

    By Bill Bowden

    Posted: August 23, 2016 at 5:45 a.m.


    The Buffalo National River is officially an Important Bird Area.

    The announcement came Monday from the Arkansas Audubon Society.

    The national park is home -- for at least part of the year -- to about 200 species of birds, including bald eagles, Northern bobwhites, cerulean warblers, Swainson's warblers and Louisiana waterthrushes.

    A global initiative of BirdLife International, implemented by Audubon and its partners in the United States, the Important Bird Areas Program is an effort to identify and conserve areas that are vital to birds and other biodiversity, according to Audubon Arkansas' website, ar.audubon.org.

    "Important Bird Areas are sites that provide essential habitat for breeding, wintering or migrating bird species," said Dan Scheiman, bird conservation director for Audubon Arkansas. "Protecting these places gives us the greatest bang for our conservation buck."

    On Aug. 11, Audubon Arkansas' board unanimously voted to accept the recommendation of the IBA Technical Committee to recognize the site, Scheiman said. It was announced in a news release Monday.

    The Buffalo National River became Arkansas' 33rd Important Bird Area and the third-largest in the state.

    The Buffalo National River Important Bird Area designation includes 96,341 acres. That's larger than the park itself. It includes 140 acres of adjacent private property owned by Jack and Pam Stewart, who live near Jasper in Newton County.

    Jack Stewart, a regional director for the National Audubon Society, said three sides of his property border the park. He's been surveying the birds on his property for several years and has been working for the past two years on the Important Bird Area designation.

    "There's a lot of data that goes into establishing an IBA," Stewart said. "It's not just a token thing. It's got to have science behind it. So we will continue the surveys. If and when we sell the property, we would be very careful who we sell it to."

    The state's largest Important Bird Area is the Shugart/Felsenthal Red-cockaded Woodpecker IBA in southeast Arkansas at 1,296,000 acres. The next largest is the Ozark National Forest at 1,056,752 acres.

    Kevin Cheri, superintendent of the Buffalo National River, said the designation focuses attention on the role of national parks as laboratories for species diversity, which are barometers of environmental health and change.

    The Buffalo National River connects lands owned by the Nature Conservancy, Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and U.S. Forest Service, according to a news release from the national park.

    "Taken as a whole, this public land provides the best opportunity to manage and protect a wide range of bird species, including many that are declining," said Joe Neal, field trip chair of the Northwestern Arkansas Audubon Society and co-author of Arkansas Birds.

    While many of Arkansas' Important Bird Areas are located on public lands, some aren't.

    "The IBA program is not a regulatory initiative and places no restriction on land use or activities," according to Audubon Arkansas' website. "Audubon staff work with managers of IBAs to support bird and habitat monitoring, habitat management and education and advocacy efforts focused on birds. Audubon recognizes that IBAs are priority sites for long-term protection."

    The Buffalo National River -- which runs through Newton, Searcy and Marion counties before merging with the White River in Baxter County -- became the first national river in the United States on March 1, 1972. It is one of the few remaining free-flowing rivers in the lower 48 states.

    Metro on 08/23/2016

  • 13 Aug 2016 6:56 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    It can't happen here?

    By Mike Masterson

    Posted: August 13, 2016 at 3:22 a.m.


    The nightmare scenario many fear when it comes to hog waste polluting our Buffalo River watershed (the country's first national river) has been playing out in Illinois, where the Chicago Tribune reports swine factory waste polluted 67 miles of that state's waterways between 2005 and 2014.

    Those who say a similar scenario can't happen from C&H Hog Farms, misplaced in Arkansas' sacred, karst-permeated watershed, clearly aren't paying attention.

    In Illinois, David Jackson and Gary Marx last week reported that the once-clear Beaver Creek in Iroquois County has become a foul-smelling contaminated stream filled with dead fish.

    "It looked like ink, the water. It had fish all over the place, dead. It wasn't fit for nothing," 75-year-old retired farmer Leland Ponton told the Tribune.

    The story said government officials blamed the deadly discharge on a swine-waste spill from Hopkins Ridge Farms. Like our state's hog factory with some 6,500 swine that was quickly and quietly allowed into the Buffalo watershed by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (cough) in 2012, Hopkins Ridge Farms is a similar factory, raising more than 8,000 pigs.

    "The July 2012 spill polluted more than 20 miles of Beaver Creek, wiping out 148,283 fish and 17,563 freshwater mussels, according to reports from state biologists. Four years later, the creek's aquatic life has only begun to recover," the story read.

    Reporters said authorities had yet to collect penalties and cleanup costs from the confinement's agribusiness-executive owners, who deny responsibility.

    "As hog confinements like Hopkins Ridge spring up across Illinois, producing massive amounts of manure," the story continued, "a new pollution threat has emerged: spills that blacken creeks and destroy fish, damaging the quality of life in rural communities."

    In Arkansas, C&H is beside the rural hamlet of Mount Judea with spray fields along Big Creek, a major tributary of the Buffalo.

    The Tribune report noted: "The lagoons that hold pig manure until farms can use it as fertilizer sometimes crumble or overflow. Leaks gush from hoses and pipes that carry waste to the fields. And in some instances, state investigators found polluting was simply 'willful' as confinement operators dumped thousands of gallons of manure they couldn't use or sell as fertilizer."

    In examining reports from Illinois and federal agencies, the Tribune found pollution incidents from hog confinements killed some 492,000 fish between 2005 through 2014, and said no other industry came close to causing the same amount of damage.

    "Fish kills are an imperfect measure of the damage caused by businesses, as some Illinois waterways already are so contaminated that little if any aquatic life remains," the story said, "and some pollution sources degrade rivers without sending multiple fish to their deaths on a single day. Still, the fish kills do provide a gauge of the environmental impact of the modern pig-raising facilities that helped make Illinois the fourth-largest pork producer in the U.S."

    While we rely upon our Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission and the Department of Environmental Quality to properly approve hog-factory permits and protect places as precious as our national river's watershed, Illinois' livestock factories are permitted by its Department of Agriculture, whose mission is to promote and regulate livestock agriculture, the story said.

    Such large animal factories with multimillion-dollar annual revenue often pay only a few thousand dollars in fines after causing massive fish kills. Many go to court to challenge authorities. Since 2005, the Tribune reported, the Illinois attorney general filed or resolved at least 26 pollution lawsuits against such businesses. Some operators polluted repeatedly and multistate pork suppliers only rarely are held accountable, reporters also found.

    Hopkins Ridge isn't the only hog factory accused of causing serious pollution, the Tribune reported. In 2009, the story said, "some 200,000 gallons of swine waste drained from a breach below the surface of one of the [4,500-hog R3E LLC] facility's massive earthen holding ponds. State biologists counted 110,436 dead fish along 19 miles of Spring Creek." That same facility in 2003 pumped manure onto fields through leaky pipes, killing all aquatic life along a one-mile stretch of Spring Creek.

    This cautionary tale is told as Arkansans, who seek to protect their treasured Buffalo, wait to see how well our Department of Environmental Quality carries out its plan with a private contractor to drill for truths deep beneath one lagoon at C&H.

    I know many people expect an honest, thorough testing from Director Becky Keogh's department to determine just what is the wet stuff pooling 120 feet underground that one Oklahoma geologist believes is likely hog waste.

    Folks also expect this testing to be conducted as transparently as Keogh and her department publicly promised and I want to believe Gov. Asa Hutchinson would demand.

    ------------v------------

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

    Editorial on 08/13/2016

  • 10 Aug 2016 9:38 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Mitchell-Williams Law

    C & H Hog Farms, Inc.: National Park Service Request for Arkansas Pollution Control & Ecology Commission Review of Permit Modification

    By: Walter Wright

    Download PDF

    The United States Department of Interior National Park Service (“Park Service”) filed a July 29th appeal before the Arkansas Pollution Control & Ecology Commission (“Commission”) of a permit modification related to C & H Hog Farms, Inc. (“C & H”).

    C & H operates a concentrated animal feeding operation in the Buffalo River Watershed pursuant to a National Pollution Discharge Elimination System General Permit.

    The Park Service Appeal addresses a permit modification request.   The appeal, in letter form, is authored by Kevin G. Cheri.  Mr. Cheri is Park Service Superintendent of the Buffalo National River.

    Mr. Cheri initially states in the appeal that:

    We continue to be concerned that approval of this modification would serve to exacerbate the potential damage to the Buffalo River, the Little Buffalo River, and Big Creek.

    He references previously filed Park Service comments regarding a possible permit modification for EC Farms and states in part:

    . . .We feel that permitting EC Farms to spread manure generated by the C & H Hog Farms is premature and has failed to adequately take into account several significant factors.  This is a highly controversial subject potentially affecting both area residents and more than one million visitors to Buffalo National River.  Many of these local residents own or are employed by businesses that rely on visitation to support their livelihoods.

    The National Park Service states what it characterizes as continuing concern that the “permit itself” should be reviewed “given that the areas underlain with karst terrain and the potential for significant affects to the watershed remain”.  Also referenced are “due consideration” of real and potential impacts  citing discoveries/interpretations of hydrogeological data suggesting waste conductivity in the underlying karst system beneath many of the proposed spreading fields.  The Park Service contends that such action constitutes modification in the operation of C & H with the potential to introduce more waste into an “already stressed ecosystem”.

    The letter concludes by requesting a hearing by the Commission on the merits of the permit modification.

    A copy of the appeal letter can be downloaded here.

  • 09 Aug 2016 8:22 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    The Pork Network


    Illinois Pork Industry handed A Scathing Review

  • 08 Aug 2016 8:18 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Chicago Tribune


    Illinois contract pig farmer: Work is low-paying, physically punishing

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