Arkansasonline 

 

Panel's OK enacts ban on Buffalo hog farms
By Emily Walkenhorst

New medium or large hog farms are now banned for the next five years in the Buffalo National River's watershed, under an Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission vote approving the ban Friday.
No commissioners opposed the ban, which was a compromise from a proposal for a permanent ban that most commissioners initially allowed to proceed last year.
"It's a victory. It's not the final victory," said Alan Nye, president of the Ozark Society, which, along with the Arkansas Public Policy Panel, petitioned the commission for the permanent ban.
After running into problems getting legislative committees to agree to review the rule, the groups agreed to work with Gov. Asa Hutchinson's office on a compromise.
The ban is now only for five years and requires the state Department of Environmental Quality director to initiate a rule-making process to either delete the ban or make it permanent five years after it goes into effect, based on a review of research on C&H Hog Farms' impact on the watershed. Initiating a rule-making process would require it go through the commission, public comments, the state Legislature and Hutchinson's office, should he remain governor.
The ban will go into effect 10 days after the commission secretary files it with the Arkansas secretary of state's office. It does not affect the only existing medium or large hog facility in the watershed, C&H Hog Farms in Mount Judea, although that facility was the inspiration for the moratorium.
C&H Hog Farms received a permit from the Department of Environmental Quality in late 2012 through a new, expedited permitting process.
Afterward, environmental groups and people near the C&H site on Big Creek, about 6 miles from where it meets the Buffalo River, began contesting the permit and asking that it be withdrawn. They argued that runoff from hog feces applied as manure on the rough karst terrain would pose a risk to the water surrounding the facility, as would any failure of its lagoons holding hog feces.
The Buffalo National River -- the country's first national river -- is a popular tourist spot, with more than 1.3 million visitors in 2014, who spent about $56.5 million at area businesses, according to National Park Service data.
Small hog farms have existed in the watershed for years, but C&H is the first large-scale hog facility in the watershed. C&H Hog Farms is permitted to hold up to 2,500 sows and 4,000 piglets at a time.
Department officials have maintained that the facility met the requirements it needed to receive a permit.
The facility opened in May 2013 and has been since then the subject of a study by the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture on its impact on the river.
That study will conclude about one year before the end of the five-year ban, and officials plan to consult that study before determining how to proceed.
Environmental groups believe that the study is flawed and look instead to another study being done by a former University of Arkansas at Fayetteville professor, Van Brahana. So far, that study has traced the flow of water in the area around the facility, showing potential impact for runoff from the facility.
As recently as this month, however, the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance -- a group created in response to C&H's permit approval and dedicated to shutting the facility down -- used the UA study to file a complaint against C&H.
On Aug. 12, the Watershed Alliance argued that elevated E. coli levels in the area were evidence that C&H had been violating its no-discharge permit.
Last week, in a letter signed by Department of Environmental Quality Director Becky Keogh, the department dismissed the complaint, saying that the levels of E. coli were not too high for the facility's permit and that data did not show "persistent contamination" of the groundwater.
On Friday, Pollution Control and Ecology Commissioner Chris Gardner, a Jonesboro attorney, asked whether the ban handicapped the director of the Department of Environmental Quality from choosing a path other than ending the ban or making it permanent.
"That seems like two extremes," Gardner said. "What discretion is left to the director to do something different?"
Sam Ledbetter, a McMath Woods attorney representing the Ozark Society and Arkansas Public Policy Panel, said,"If director comes to commission, says, 'We looked at it, 100 [hog farms] would be too many but five would be OK,' I don't see this as limiting the director's discretion to do something."
"Ultimately, the director just brings a rule to you guys, and you decide," he continued.
There were few comments Friday about the ban, and no one spoke against it.
The Arkansas Farm Bureau and the Arkansas Pork Producer's Association have previously argued that a moratorium was unnecessary because Cargill --the producer and supplier of 90 percent of the state's pork -- had self-imposed a ban on future hog facilities in the Buffalo River watershed. Brazil-based JBS recently agreed to purchase the company's pork division.
The groups added that negative publicity would discourage anyone from applying to start a facility there.
The Department of Environmental Quality has not received any requests for new hog facility permits since C&H started operations in the watershed.
Metro on 08/29/2015

Arkansasonline

Legislative Council signs off on watershed hog-farm ban

By Michael R. Wickline 

This article was published today at 3:36 a.m.

A proposed five-year ban on new medium and large hog farms in the Buffalo National River watershed cleared the Arkansas Legislative Council on Friday, after an unsuccessful bid by state Rep. Nate Bell, I-Mena, to prevent it.

The Legislative Council voted 21-20 to reject Bell's motion for the council to disapprove the proposed rule, which Bell called "a feel-good regulation that is not based in science."

The proposed rule, created in response to a large-scale hog farm built in the watershed, cleared the council two days after its Administrative Rules and Regulations Committee rejected a similar motion by Bell.

Under Amendment 92 to the Arkansas Constitution and Act 1258 of 2015, the Legislative Council has authority to block proposed state rules by most agencies.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson praised the Legislative Council's Friday action to sign off on the moratorium.

"As with any regulation, it's important to strike a balance between the rights of individual property owners and the overall health and interest of the public," the Republican governor said Friday in a written statement.

"The Buffalo is a national treasure that we as Arkansans have been entrusted to protect, and I believe that we should do everything within reason to do so," Hutchinson said.

"This temporary moratorium will allow for a thorough and conclusive study to be completed, at which time we can make a decision based on science regarding the future of these types of operations within the Buffalo River Watershed," he said.

The proposed rule will now be considered by the Pollution Control and Ecology Commission during its meeting next Friday, said Becky Keogh, director of the state Department of Environmental Quality.

The commission initially started the rule-making process after the Ozark Society and the Arkansas Public Policy Panel proposed permanently banning new medium and large hog farms in the watershed.

The proposed five-year ban reflects a compromise among environmental representatives, the governor's office and some state lawmakers.

It requires that, in five years, the Department of Environmental Quality's director initiate a new rule-making process to lift the ban or make it permanent.

That would allow the director, the commission and legislators to review the continuing study by the University of Arkansas System's Agriculture Division on the environmental effect of C&H Hog Farms in Mount Judea in the Buffalo River watershed. C&H Hog Farms, located near the western bank of Big Creek, is permitted to house about 2,500 sows and up to 4,000 piglets.

The proposed rule would have no effect on C&H Hog Farms. Environmental groups have worried about the farm's potential to pollute the river with millions of gallons of hog feces kept in lagoons or spread out as fertilizer on the rough karst terrain in the area.

The ban on new medium and large hog farms would mean no new facility could have more than 750 swine at the 55-pound level nor more than 3,000 swine below the 55-pound level.

Since C&H Hog Farms began operating, the Department of Environmental Quality has not received any applications for new medium or large hog harms in the Buffalo River watershed. The agency has been unable to issue such applications since April 2014 because of temporary bans imposed by the Pollution Control and Ecology Commission.

Bell said the proposed rule "deprives the property owner of a specific use of their property without any opportunity for scientific review.

"It is arbitrary and emotional without a basis in fact," he told fellow lawmakers. "Folks, if we set a precedent of governing on the basis of emotion, it is a dangerous precedent.

"I understand how important the Buffalo River is to all of us in Arkansas. It is a national treasure," Bell said.

The Buffalo National River -- the first to be designated a national river -- is a popular tourist spot with more than 1.3 million visitors in 2014 who spent about $56.6 million at area businesses, according to the National Park Service.

But Bell told lawmakers that "we also have a responsibility as the elected representatives of the people to uphold the Arkansas Constitution.

"We have a responsibility as elected representatives of the people to stand and to fight for government on the basis of fact, on the basis of science, and not because we feel like it," he said.

The proposed rule divided Hutchinson's two nephews in the Senate.

Senate Republican leader Jim Hendren, R-Sulphur Springs, said that "once you start saying we can deprive a little bit of property rights without compensation, where does it end?

"I think that the rule needs to be modified to put into a place a very clear stipulation that the state is prepared to compensate whatever is fair and just for what we desire, which is to protect this treasure," said Hendren, who is a nephew of the governor.

But Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Jeremy Hutchinson, R-Little Rock, said he wouldn't consider the proposed rule "a taking [of private property rights] because it does not deprive the landowner of its use.

"It may limit it to one particular type of farm," he said.

"But there is still agriculture allowed. There is still use of the land, economic and otherwise," he said.

State Rep. Kelly Linck, R-Flippin, said UA officials have advised lawmakers that "it's going to take five years to come back ... with scientific evidence of what's happening and what's not happening.

"We're not taking away any rights of anyone that is trying to do anything," he said.

"There [are] no permits being applied for, so it is not like someone is saying, 'I want to do this with my land,' and we are saying, 'You can't do it,'" Linck said.

"If it is safe, great. If it is not safe, then we've done our job of protecting the river," he said.

The Legislature's agriculture and public health committees were hesitant to review a proposed permanent ban in 2014. The latest proposal has successfully cleared the public health committees, the Administrative Rules and Regulations Committee and the Legislative Council.

Metro on 08/22/2015

Arkansasnews.com

Lawmakers OK hog farm moratorium, prison funds

A 

By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau
jlyon@arkansasnews.com

LITTLE ROCK — After some debate, the Arkansas Legislative Council on Friday approved a proposed five-year moratorium on new hog farms in the Buffalo National River watershed.

The panel also approved a proposal by Gov. Asa Hutchinson to use $7.4 million from the state’s reserve funds to open 200 new prison beds in Pine Bluff.

The moratorium on hog farms is contained in a rule proposed by the Arkansas Public Policy Panel and the Ozark Society and represents a compromise among environmentalists, the governor’s office and legislators.

The rule would bar the issuance of permits for new medium and large hog farms in the Buffalo National River watershed for the next five years to give the University of Arkansas time to complete a study on what impact, if any, C&H Hog Farms in Mount Judea has had on the watershed.

To date, no new permits have been requested in the watershed. The rule would have no effect on C&H.

The rule still needs approval from the state Pollution Control and Ecology Commission. The commission previously approved a similar measure as a 180-day emergency rule and extended it twice.

Rep. Nate Bell, I-Mena, moved Thursday to reject the proposed rule, which he said was not supported by scientific evidence.

“The Arkansas Constitution expressly provides that no private property shall be taken without compensation. Landowners in this watershed are specifically deprived of the full use of their property without opportunity for scientific review by this regulation,” he said.

Bell acknowledged that the rule was agreed to in a compromise.

“But you know what? Governments throughout history have done bad things because everybody agreed to it,” he said.

Several legislators voiced agreement with Bell, including Sen. Jim Hendren, R-Gravette, who said the rule should be rewritten to state that landowners would be compensated for the “taking” of their property.

Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson, R-Benton, Hendren’s cousin, disagreed, saying he would not consider the rule a taking of property.

Rep. Bob Ballinger, R-Hindsville, said limiting a landowner’s use of property could be considered “a regulatory taking.” He asked Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality Director Becky Keogh if scientific evidence is usually collected in cases where the agency limits landowners’ use of their property.

“I think that’s what they’re trying to do here,” she said.

Rep. Kelley Linck, R-Flippin, defended the proposed rule, saying, “We’re not taking away any rights of anyone that’s trying to do anything. … There’s no applications. All we’re saying is, let’s hold off on applications until the U of A finishes a five-year study.”

Bell’s motion received 20 “yes” votes and 21 “no” votes.

 

- See more at: http://arkansasnews.com/news/arkansas/lawmakers-ok-hog-farm-moratorium-prison-funds#sthash.gUtnB66W.dpuf

Arkansasonline

Squealin' over hog factory

 

By Mike Masterson

 

Gordon Watkins of Parthenon likely isn't a happy camper after poring over environmental watchdog data gathered by the University of Arkansas.

As president of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, he's filed a formal complaint with Becky Keogh, the director of our state's Department of Environmental Quality (cough) in which he alleges the hog factory operating in the middle of the Buffalo National River watershed has violated its operating permit by improperly storing and handling millions of gallons of swine waste.

His written complaint dated August 12 asks the agency for an independent investigation and that it require the factory to correct its methods and come into compliance with everything its general permit insists be followed.

In his complaint, Watkins, long an advocate for protecting and preserving the majesty of the country's first national river, refers to the Big Creek Research and Extension Team headed by the University of Arkansas at a cost to taxpayers of some $750,000 over five years. Big Creek is a major tributary of the Buffalo flowing just six miles downstream. Some of the fields where large volumes of raw waste are regularly sprayed are along or near Big Creek.

The complaint contends reports this research team have issued thus far show several "red flags" and causes for public concern where preserving water quality in the Buffalo is concerned. Specifically, the bacterial and nitrate levels have risen most noticeably in the factory's on-site, 300-foot-deep house well over the past year. They're elevated in some instances to the point where Watkins says the Arkansas Department of Health would declare them unsafe for human consumption. Yet, his complaint continues, humans and livestock continue to drink from this well.

"Presumably the water is treated to make it safe for use by humans, but the presence of E. coli and total coliforms in the well water, particularly at these steadily increasing levels, is an indication of persistent contamination and a significant danger to human health," his complaint reads. "The most obvious source is leakage from the waste lagoons. Where else could these levels originate?"

The levels Watkins refers to in the research reports reveal that, beginning in the early summer of 2014, E. coli levels measured in samples from the house well were less than 1.0. "However, over the past year these levels have steadily risen and, as shown in the latest April 1-June 30, 2015, report ... all house well samples are now positive for E. coli, with levels ranging from 1.0 (a single sample) to 248.1. Total coliform levels are similarly high."

The revised environmental assessment resubmitted under a court order also describes four other wells in the area that, in light of what's been found in the house well, sure seem to this layman like they also need testing.

He emphasized that the research team's report doesn't draw any conclusions, or express concern over the notable increases in microbes. Nor does it place them in context. The story is told only in data extracted from a page.

Watkins' complaint expresses similar concerns about what the research team reported at the adjacent stream and culvert testing sites that suggest "pond leakage is occurring." In the most recent report, both interceptor trenches dug below the factory show consistently high coliform levels. Trench 2 on the north side shows only one E. coli sample of less than 1, while all other samples of this trench range from 5.2 to 105.4, indicative of pond leakage.

I asked Fayetteville geoscientist and UA professor emeritus Dr. John Van Brahana, who with his group of volunteers has been studying water quality and subsurface water flow around the hog factory and Big Creek for over two years, if he felt Watkins' complaint jibed with his analyses thus far.

"Yes, the findings that the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance have pointed out are indeed troubling, and our [Karst Hydrogeology of the Buffalo National River] data also are consistent with the hog waste moving off-site and beneath the spreading fields into the subsurface water, and from there into tributaries that drain to the Buffalo," Brahana said.

"There are other potential sources of sustained and considerable contamination in this valley. But this hog factory is far and away the largest single possible source of the contaminants mentioned. So yes, this falls exactly into line with what we are finding."

Sounds to me like the Department of Environmental Quality and the EPA might consider getting serious about answering Watkins' complaint and pinning down the source of this documented rise in microbial contamination as soon as possible, even if the research team chose not to address it specifically in meaningful context in its latest report. After all, the state permit allows the factory to leak up to 5,000 gallons of waste a day per acre from these lagoons. Who's even checking for that?

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

Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at mikemasterson10@hotmail.com.

Editorial on 08/22/2015

Bloomberg News

The EPA Doesn't Know How to Deal With 300 Million Tons of Animal Poop

The EPA delays promised rules to control the waste

 Mark Drajem

  

August 20, 2015 — 10:00 AM CDT

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Rene Miller grew up on a seven-acre slip of Duplin County, N.C., where her mother, Daisy, raised corn, chickens, and hogs. Now, what was a neighbor’s tobacco farm across the narrow two-lane road is a field where a giant sprinkler sprays waste from an industrial hog-raising operation onto whatever happens to be planted there—corn, hay, soybeans. The force of the liquefied manure is so strong it splatters the street sign Miller installed to mark Daisy Miller Lane. “I can’t go out in my yard to watch the cars go by. I can’t put my clothes out on the line,” she says. “It stinks.”

Duplin County has the nation’s highest concentration of industrial hog farms, with about 2 million pigs and 60,000 people. Environmental groups estimate the state’s 8 million hogs produce about 14 billion gallons of waste a year. Nationally, according to the most recent report by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, feedlots for cattle, dairy cows, hogs, and poultry produce 300 million tons of manure a year.

There are about 2 million pigs in Duplin County (none as cute as this one).

Photographer: Pam Francis/Getty Images

The problem is how to dispose of it. In the swine facilities, hogs in groups of more than 20 are put into stalls with slats in the floor. Their feces and urine go through the openings and out pipes into open-air lagoons that can hold 180 days worth of waste. The industry says the holdings allow bacteria to break down the waste and gobble up pathogens. In its ideal state, the wastewater becomes free fertilizer for adjoining crop fields. “The application of waste is something that’s become more and more popular because it’s recycling,” says Kraig Westerbeek, who oversees environmental compliance at Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest hog producer and pork processor, which has contract farms and packing operations in North Carolina.

Yet nutrient-rich runoff from spray fields like the one across from Miller’s farm also nurtures algae blooms that choke rivers by depleting them of oxygen. North Carolina has seen blooms in the Cape Fear River and fish kills in the Neuse River since hog feedlots moved in 30 years ago. The farms “are inarguably the biggest source of nutrients to the coastal region,” says Larry Cahoon, a University of North Carolina at Wilmington professor who studies water quality in the Cape Fear River. “Are the creeks and streams showing the effects of nutrient loading? Yes.”

In 2010, after being sued by the Waterkeeper Alliance and other environmental groups, the EPA pledged to reconsider a rule issued during the George W. Bush administration exempting feedlots from having to disclose hazardous emissions to the agency and the public. Five years later, the EPA hasn’t done anything about it. On July 13 agency lawyers went back to court and said the regulations wouldn’t be changed after all.

The Obama administration had early on signaled a different approach. Lisa Jackson, Obama’s first EPA chief, pledged to crack down on water violations and make public more information about problems. (Jackson now oversees environmental initiatives at Apple.) The president’s first appointee to oversee the agency’s water quality office had been Nancy Stoner, an environmental attorney who’d sued the EPA to win tighter regulations on animal feedlots. Stoner left the EPA in 2014 to become director of water programs for the Pisces Foundation. She declined to comment.

The EPA says it’s focusing on taking action against livestock producers that break the rules. “We are committed to civil and criminal enforcement for the cases that have the highest impact on protecting public health and the environment,” Liz Purchia, an EPA spokeswoman, said in an e-mail. “At the same time, we’re providing states with guidance and resources to help them.”

Former EPA officials say the agency faces a hostile Congress urging it to go easy on the animal farms. Budget cuts have also constrained its ability to act. The EPA is also preoccupied with implementing carbon emissions rules, a top White House priority before Obama leaves office. Agency data show that its inspections and fines of feedlots, known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), dropped to a seven-year low last year, with 26 enforcement actions compared with 71 in 2008. A study of animal air pollution has dragged on for decade. While the study continues, thousands of CAFOs continue under a safe-harbor accord guaranteeing they won’t face any fines from the EPA for air pollution.

In June, the U.S. Geological Survey published a study on nutrient and pollution levels in streams near hog operations, comparing them with those far from feedlots. “Land applications of waste manure at swine CAFOs influenced ion and nutrient chemistry in many of the North Carolina Coastal Plain streams that were studied,” the researchers concluded. In other words: CAFOs polluted the water. The North Carolina Pork Council disputes those findings and commissioned its own analysis of the USGS data, concluding that soil type, not the number of hogs, determined the amount of nutrients reaching streams.

For farmers, keeping up with the constant flood of waste is an issue. The Waterkeeper Alliance has documented hog farmers spraying on fallow and frozen fields and even on cattle as they grazed. Spraying also occurs on rainy days, despite regulations that are supposed to limit spraying during wet periods, when more effluent washes into waterways. “What they can put on the fields depends on average rainfall,” says Rick Dove, a longtime Waterkeeper activist who’s been tussling with hog farmers for decades along the Neuse River, which runs through the heart of North Carolina hog country before emptying into the Pamlico Sound.

The expansion of North Carolina’s poultry industry is adding to environmental hazards. While the total number of hog lagoons has been capped since the late 1990s, chicken production has grown by more than 42 percent to 795 million birds last year from 559 million in 1992. From a small airplane above Duplin County, it’s easy to spot the long, metal-roofed buildings for chickens. Poultry doesn’t produce as much liquid waste, but its litter is also spread on fields and can release nitrogen into groundwater or waterways.

Residents say they don’t think anything will change without the federal government’s involvement. “EPA needs to do what it should do, because we’re living with this on our land,” says Elsie Herring, who lives in Wallace, N.C., next to a field where the liquefied manure is sprayed. Former regulators say it’s much harder to deal with agricultural runoff than factories. “The idea of treating a farm like a DuPont chemical plant is not good government or good business,” says Sally Shaver, a former EPA official who consults with the hog industry on environmental issues. “I don’t think there would be problems if these things didn’t stink.”

Arkansasonline

5-year hog-farm ban passes legislative test

 

It goes to commission for final say

By Emily Walkenhorst 

This article was published today at 4:05 a.m. Updated today at 4:05 a.m.

 

A proposed five-year ban on new medium and large hog farms in the Buffalo National River watershed cleared its second-to-last hurdle Wednesday morning when it passed through the Arkansas Legislature's Rules and Regulations Committee with only one representative objecting.

A final decision on the ban could come Aug. 28 when the Pollution Control and Ecology Commission -- the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality's appellate body -- meets.

The commission originally got the rule-making process underway after the Ozark Society and the Arkansas Public Policy Panel submitted a proposal seeking a permanent ban on new medium and large hog farms in the watershed.

"I don't have any reason to believe the commission won't support this at this point," said Sam Ledbetter, an attorney with the McMath Woods firm representing the Ozark Society and the Arkansas Public Policy Panel.

Flanked by former U.S. Reps. Vic Snyder and Ed Bethune of Arkansas, Ledbetter testified in favor of the ban Wednesday.

The five-year ban -- a compromise among environmental representatives, Gov. Asa Hutchinson's office and some state legislators -- requires that, in five years, the Department of Environmental Quality's director initiate a new rule-making process to delete the ban or make it permanent. That step would allow the director, the commission and legislators to review the continuing study by the University of Arkansas System's Agriculture Division on the environmental impact of C&H Hog Farms in Mount Judea in the Buffalo River watershed.

C&H Hog Farms is a large hog facility on Big Creek, six miles from where it meets the Buffalo River. The facility, now 2 years old, has been criticized by environmental groups for its potential to pollute the river with millions of gallons of hog feces kept in lagoons or spread out as fertilizer on the rough karst terrain in the area.

The Buffalo National River -- the county's first national river -- is a popular tourist spot, with more than 1.3 million visitors in 2014 who spent about $56.6 million at area business, according to National Park Service data.

The proposed ban would have no impact on C&H Hog Farms.

Banning medium and large hog farms means no new facility could have more than 750 swine at the 55-pound level nor more than 3,000 swine coming in below the 55-pound level.

Since C&H began operating, the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality has not received any applications for new medium or large hog farms in the watershed. The agency has been unable to issue such applications since April 2014 because of temporary bans imposed by the Pollution Control and Ecology Commission.

An Arkansas Pork Producers Association official has said no one is interested in a new hog farm in the area because of the uproar about C&H.

Cargill, the supplier or operator of more than 90 percent of pork-production facilities in the state, has self-imposed a ban on new medium or large hog farms in the watershed. Brazil-based JBS recently agreed to purchase the company's pork division.

Rep. Nate Bell, a Mena independent, opposed the rule making.

Bell argued that restricting how landowners can use their property constitutes an "uncompensated taking" in violation of the Arkansas Constitution. Property owners have the right to review and decide what they want to do with their own land, which they couldn't do if they wanted to start medium or large hog farms under the rule, Bell said.

Rep. Jeremy Hutchinson, R-Little Rock, said he's sympathetic regarding property rights, but noted that the Legislature already sets rules that tell people what they can and cannot do with their land, such as prohibiting liquor stores from being within a certain distance of churches. The rule heard Wednesday was no different, he said, arguing that those landowners have "many other uses available to them."

Bell made a motion to oppose the rule, the first such motion that a member of the Rules and Regulations Committee has made since voters passed a state constitutional amendment that required the committee to approve or disapprove new rules proposed by most state agencies.

Previously, state agencies sent rules to be reviewed by committees in a nonbinding fashion.

Committee Chairman Rep. Andy Davis, R-Little Rock, called for a vote on considering Bell's motion. Only Bell voted in favor of it after a short pause.

Snyder and Bethune testified in favor of the rule making.

Bethune and former Rep. John Paul Hammerschmidt, who died earlier this year, had written a letter to state legislators last year urging them to review the permanent ban, which would have sent it back to the Pollution Control and Ecology Commission for final approval.

On Wednesday, Bethune, a Republican who represented Arkansas in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1979 until 1985, asked that legislators consider the value of the Buffalo River and efforts to preserve nature in the state.

"I'm probably the oldest person in this room today -- if not, I'm damn close -- and I remember when we had to struggle as kids to tell what was so good about Arkansas," Bethune said, mentioning the diamonds near Murfreesboro and an alligator farm among the short list of things he used to tell people about.

"And now we have so much to be proud of," he said. "Most noteworthy in that, I think, is the Buffalo National River."

Snyder, who served as a Democrat from Arkansas in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1997 until 2011, said Wednesday that a review would symbolize the committee's wish to "protect this river."

Other legislators said the five-year ban before them Wednesday was a welcome compromise for everyone concerned.

Rep. Kelley Linck, R-Flippin, lamented the approval of C&H Hog Farms but said he thought the compromise would satisfy the concerns of the Legislature's agriculture committees and tourism interests.

"I think this is a good rule," he said, noting that he hoped officials would have a greater consensus at the conclusion of the UA System's Agriculture Division study on the hog farm's environmental impact.

"I think that whatever we do should be science-based and not just a blanket rule," said Sen. Bruce Maloch, D-Magnolia, said as a reflection of his favor for agriculture-related business.

Wednesday was the fourth time that proponents of the ban had gone before a legislative committee but the first before the Rules and Regulations Committee, which had to approve the rule making after the Legislature's Public Health, Welfare and Labor committees reviewed it in July.

The public health and agriculture committees were hesitant to review the rule in 2014, when it was a permanent ban, with some legislators concerned that the ban would put the state on a "slippery slope" of anti-agricultural rules.

But the compromise plan has successfully passed through the public health committees and now Rules and Regulations Committee this year.

"I think this is a good path forward," Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality Director Becky Keogh said after meeting, noting the opportunity to consider the study in five years.

Metro on 08/20/2015

North Carolina Health News

Clock Ticking as EPA Prepares Response Over Hog Pollution

Environmentalists want to clean up North Carolina’s hog farms. To do so, they’re calling on the federal government, which could withhold state funds.

By Gabe Rivin

The EPA’s 180 days are almost up.

By Aug. 19, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency must address allegations over North Carolina’s hog industry, which environmentalists say is harming the health of racial minorities.

The EPA’s actions could have wide-reaching effects on the industry and public health near hog farms. But despite its deadline, the agency doesn’t appear ready to make a decision, according to an environmental group that lodged the formal allegations.

The possibility of a missed deadline comes as the EPA faces national scrutiny over its handling of civil rights cases. A recent investigation by the Center for Public Integrity and NBC News found that the EPA’s Office of Civil Rights, the office handling North Carolina’s hog case, has repeatedly lagged in its action – sometimes more than a decade at a time – and has rejected almost all public claims.

In North Carolina, environmentalists – including the N.C. Environmental Justice Network and the Waterkeeper Alliance – believe they have a strong case against the hog industry. In their legal complaint, filed last September, the groups alleged that hog farms are allowed to operate with substandard technology, which puts the health of nearby minorities at risk.

Many of the state’s large, concentrated hog farms treat animal feces in open-air lagoons and dispose of that waste by spraying it onto nearby fields. These practices have raised concerns among health researchers.

In published studies, researchers have found increases in potentially harmful air pollutants, such as hydrogen sulfide and ammonia, near hog farms. Additionally, residents near hog farms have complained of headaches and intense malodors, and researchers have associated the farms’ air pollution with increases in asthmatic symptoms among nearby school children.

“For so long, people have been talking about the problem in terms of environmental justice,” said Marianne Engelman Lado, a lawyer with the group Earthjustice, which is representing the environmental groups. “That eastern North Carolina is disproportionately low income, that it’s disproportionately people of color, that the facilities are disproportionally near people of color.”In addition to these concerns, researchers, including Steve Wing, an epidemiologist at UNC-Chapel Hill, say hog farms disproportionately affect racial minorities. Racial minorities live in large numbers in the eastern part of the state, the region where North Carolina’s hog farms are densely clustered.

Disagreements about science

In 2007, North Carolina’s legislators permanently banned new lagoons and spray systems. But the law left an exception: Older farms could continue to use the systems. So the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources has continued to permit older farms that use the systems for hog feces and urine.

The state’s pork industry denies that farmers willingly threaten the health of nearby residents.

“More than 80 percent of North Carolina’s hog farms are owned and operated by individual farm families, almost all of whom live in close proximity to their swine or in communities where their swine operations are located,” Ann Edmondson, a spokeswoman for the North Carolina Pork Council, said in an emailed statement. “It strains credibility to believe our hog farmers are risking the health of their own families, along with their neighbors’ health, in order to make a living.”

Edmondson also questioned the validity of scientific studies, which she said failed to establish a direct link between hog farms and health problems.

But Engelman Lado of Earthjustice said that the science is clear.

“We know that the density of hog facilities in eastern North Carolina is polluting people’s waters, it’s affecting the air, it has a relationship with asthma and other health problems for people who live in proximity to the facilities,” she said.

Complaining to the EPA

In their complaint to the EPA, the groups say that DENR has effectively ignored residents’ complaints for years by continuing to permit farms that use lagoon and spray systems.

It’s possible the EPA may not find that DENR intentionally discriminated against minorities. But it may not matter, because if the EPA finds that DENR’s actions had the effect of discrimination, the EPA could rule that DENR is in violation of federal law, according to a guide from the Department of Justice.That’s why the environmentalists turned to the EPA. Under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, state agencies that receive federal funds, such as DENR, cannot act in a racially discriminatory way.

Jennifer Colaizzi, a spokeswoman for the EPA, declined to comment on this question, citing the pending investigation.

Colaizzi did say that the EPA first seeks voluntary changes from those it finds to have violated the law. It has other means to enforce the law too, she said.

“If voluntary compliance cannot be achieved, pursuant to the regulation, [the Office of Civil Rights] may use any means authorized by law to achieve compliance or enforce the laws, including initiating proceeding to terminate federal financial assistance from EPA or referring the matter to the Department of Justice for judicial enforcement,” she said in an email.

For DENR, a loss of funding could be significant. In its 2013-14 budget, DENR received $111.2 million from the EPA, roughly 16 percent of its full $701.2 million budget.

Of course, such an action will require that the EPA finish its investigation. Engelman Lado said that based on her conversations with the Office of Civil Rights, she does not believe it will meet its deadline this week.

Colaizzi did not respond to recent requests for comments about the status of the investigation. And, just as it has delayed its action for communities across the U.S., the Office of Civil Rights has offered several delayed responses to questions from North Carolina Health News, sometimes missing deadlines by weeks.

Still, Engelman Lado expressed optimism about the work ahead.

“I believe EPA would like to do a better job,” she said, adding that her case is receiving attention at the agency.

But if the EPA’s civil rights office does stall, Engelman Lado’s group will not sit still.

“We wouldn’t let it languish for 20 years,” she said. “We can go to court.”

Sides agree on lawyer fees in hog farm case

by The Associated Press

09:02 AM, Monday, August 17 2015 | 1712 views | 0  | 0  |  | 

LITTLE ROCK — Two federal agencies have agreed with attorneys for environmental groups on a proposed settlement for attorney fees in a lawsuit over a hog farm near the Buffalo National River.

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported Saturday that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency and the U.S. Small Business Administration have agreed to pay $250,000 to attorneys with Earthjustice, Earthrise Law Center and Little Rock-based Carney Bates Pulliam.

The proposal now goes to a federal judge for approval.

Those attorneys filed a lawsuit in 2013 on behalf of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, Ozark Society, national parks Conservation Association and Arkansas Canoe Club, alleging the two federal agencies improperly conducted an environmental assessment on C&H Hog Farms at Mount Judea.

The original 2012 study had allowed for the Farm Service Agency and the SBA to back loans needed for the C&H facility to open — called loan guarantees.

A federal judge agreed with the environmental groups and ordered a new study, which was released Thursday and comes to the same conclusion as the tossed-out 2012 assessment, determining no likely significant effect from the farm on the Buffalo River watershed area.

The attorneys for the environmental groups originally applied for $370,510 in fees in May.

The proposed settlement now goes to U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. for approval.

 

Arkansasonline

My Buffalo hangup

So Mike, why are you so hung up on our state issuing a general permit for that mega-waste-generating hog factory in the Buffalo River watershed at Mount Judea, one reader recently asked. It deserves a response.

As one who enjoys pork chops, pork rinds and barbecued pulled pork, my concerns have nothing to do with pork.

In one way, we Arkansans remain fortunate to even have the Buffalo National River to protect and preserve. Serious plans were being formulated four decades ago to dam this precious stream and turn its watershed into another massive lake when my late uncle, 3rd District Congressman John Paul Hammerschmidt of Harrison, teamed with others in the Arkansas delegation to create legislation that in 1972 preserved the river by placing it under the national park system as America's first national river.

Since a river can neither defend nor argue for itself, I believe I'm but one of many concerned people and groups willing to speak for her.

While I'm back on the Buffalo fiasco, I'm pondering a serious question.

If the Small Business Administration and the USDA's Farm Service Agency under a federal court order spent seven months to complete a supposedly genuine assessment of the potential environmental impact of enormous waste generated by C&H Hog Farms on the Buffalo National River, why are no detailed groundwater-flow studies included in their findings?

I'd certainly expect any professional environmental assessment to include some science showing how water will flow through fractured limestone karst permeating the subsurface into nearby Big Creek, a major tributary of the Buffalo. I'd also expect to see detailed ground-absorption rates in fields where millions of gallons of lagooned waste are being routinely sprayed.

Here's the real rub: A considerable amount of such specific data has already been steadily accumulated over two years thanks to University of Arkansas professor emeritus John Van Brahana and his band of volunteers who've been collecting it since this factory began operating. Did these federal agencies who agreed to underwrite federal loans for the factory not bother contacting Brahana?

Did no one call the professor, send him a text? Facebook message? Smiley face?

Here's a nationally respected geoscientist who, on his own volition and using his resources and skills in this area, has collected many months of data highly relevant to potential environmental impact. Yet he wasn't even consulted over crispy bacon and eggs.

There's not a drop of this kind of critical data in the revised assessment these agencies submitted to please the court.

So why not, fellas? It's not like Brahana and his work have gone unnoticed. He's been making headlines across Arkansas for two years now. And, as you may have noticed, he's referred to your everything's-just-copacetic report as "hogwash."

Say, ya suppose his feelings were hurt by being strangely ignored, or maybe he just wasn't impressed that while you made a passing reference in the assessment to subsurface water flow, you wrote right past it without spilling even a shot glass full of supportive data?

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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at mikemasterson10@hotmail.com.

Editorial on 08/15/2015