Arkansas Times

Bill targeting hog farm moratoriums near Buffalo River fails in committee Tuesday, sponsors will amend and try again

by Phillip Powell

March 11, 2025 

Sen. Blake Johnson (R-Corning) pulled his bill to prohibit farming moratoriums in state watersheds without legislative approval from consideration after a dramatic hearing in a Senate committee on Tuesday revealed bipartisan opposition to the measure.

The bill in question, Senate Bill 290, has stalled in committee for weeks, even while it has continued to attract  heavy public interest from farm groups and environmentalists. The Arkansas Farm Bureau and Arkansas Cattlemen’s Association showed up in full force to support the bill, while environmental groups and outdoor recreation advocates urged legislators to shoot it down through 40 minutes of public testimony during Tuesday’s Senate Agriculture, Forestry and Economic Development hearing

If SB290 becomes law, it would effectively neuter the ability of state agencies to place moratoriums on commercial farming operations near watersheds, such as the Buffalo National River or Lake Maumelle. Agencies, like the Division of Environmental Quality, would have to make a case to legislative committees as to why a moratorium is warranted. 

Johnson pulled the bill for further amendments after it was clear it did not have enough support from both Republican and Democrat committee members to pass. 

Environmental groups have been advocating for a permanent moratorium on industrial hog farming, known as CAFOs, in the Buffalo National River watershed for years, but opponents, like the Arkansas Farm Bureau, viewed efforts by state agencies to place a permanent moratorium on the Buffalo watershed as “violating the right to farm.”

“We wholeheartedly support this bill, this is about protecting farmers and ranchers across our entire state,” Magen Allen, a farmer and member of the Arkansas Farm Bureau Board of Directors, said. “The authority to approve or deny moratoriums should rest with the Legislature, which is closer to the people and not the administrative branch of government. Senate Bill 290 is about whether a state agency or commission should be able to impose a permanent moratorium anywhere in the state. And this bill does not prevent moratoriums from being proposed.”

If the proposed legislation doesn’t pass, some farmers who testified said they were concerned that state agencies would enforce moratoriums that could negatively affect their businesses.

Johnson’s bill would only allow a moratorium to go into effect if it first cleared the agriculture committees in the state Legislature. Afterward, the state agency would be able go through the proper rule-making process to put the moratorium on a particular body of water into effect. Existing moratoriums, like the one in effect on the Buffalo River, would have to be reviewed by the legislature to stay in place. The temporary moratorium on the Buffalo River, which has been in place for about a decade, is also specific to CAFOs.

As Allen and others noted, CAFOs still need to receive regulatory approval to set up operations in general in Arkansas. Though a moratorium, like the one on the Buffalo River, was intended to prevent permit applications for new CAFOs in that specific area.

“There is no place more iconic in our state, and more deserving of our protection, than the Buffalo River,” Ozark Society President Brian Thompson said. “If we can’t protect it, then I don’t think we can protect anything.”

The conflict over whether the Buffalo River’s temporary moratorium against CAFOs should become permanent blew up in the state Legislature last year after the state Department of Agriculture and state Department of Energy and Environment moved to  enshrine the farming moratorium into their rules governing CAFO permitting. But after that effort stalled, and state lawmakers  went back into legislative session in January, Johnson introduced a bill to strip state agencies of their power to impose a farming moratorium on a watershed. 

In a sudden twist, Johnson said Tuesday that the [Arkansas] Farm Bureau authored the controversial bill.

Toward the end of the hearing, Sen. Jimmy Hickey (R-Texarkana), Sen. Jonathan Dismang (R-Searcy), and Sen. Ben Gilmore (R-Crossett) seemed to be leaning against Johnson’s bill. All three of the legislators had concerns about giving the state Legislature’s agriculture committees the power to review moratorium proposals by state agencies, when another committee in the state Legislature already exists to approve or reject rules.

Dismang said in his questioning of Buffalo Watershed Alliance President Gordon Watkins that the bill would effectively give four people on the Senate agriculture committee the power to stall a moratorium proposal indefinitely.

Dismang made the point after Watkins said that the bill introduced bureaucratic redundancies, as the Legislature already has the power to review and approve all proposed rules by state agencies. Watkins also said that, as a farmer, he didn’t understand the concern from the Arkansas Farm Bureau that state agencies might begin placing permit moratoriums in watersheds around the state.

The permitting moratoriums have only applied to the Buffalo River and Lake Maumelle in various forms over the last several years, he said.

If the three Republicans joined with the two Democrats on the eight-member committee on a vote, the bill would have failed.

After Hickey expressed his opposition, saying that he wouldn’t support the bill unless it was amended, Johnson asked to remove the bill from consideration and the hearing was called to an end.

Last week, the Arkansas Times reported that Johnson was in conflict with Gov. Sarah Sanders on the bill, and that their negotiations were stalling its potential advancement in the state Legislature. Sanders has made growing the outdoor recreation and tourism sectors an economic development priority, and the Buffalo River brings over a million visitors annually, according to the National Park Service.

CAFOs, or concentrated animal feeding operations, have long been a subject of controversy, especially around the Buffalo River. The operations concentrate hundreds of livestock together for feeding, and can produce a substantial waste footprint that can pollute nearby waterways with excess nitrogen, phosphorus, fertilizer and chemicals. The C&H hog farm permitted in the watershed stirred widespread controversy from local residents until former Gov. Asa Hutchinson made moves to shut it down and buy the farm out.