Close, don’t monitor
By Mike Masterson
This article was published today at 5:11 a.m.
Not everyone is hog-wild about Gov. Mike Beebe’s announced plan to seek $250,000 from the Legislature to cover the costs of water-quality monitoring around the controversial C&H hog factory our state inexplicably permitted in the Buffalo National River watershed.
For many across Arkansas and the country, nothing the state does short of shutting down this factory approved to house 6,500 of Cargill Inc.’s swine is acceptable. There should be no need to monitor any mega-waste-generating corporate enterprise that risks contaminating the country’s first national river. Thousands continue to wonder how the agency responsible for preserving and regulating our environmental “quality” could ever have allowed such a potential polluter to quietly set up in such an environmentally sensitive area.
In speaking for a coalition of groups opposed to the hog factory’s location, Robert Cross, president of the Ozark Society, said the council is expected to vote Sept. 5 on Beebe’s request.
“The details of the proposed study are not yet public, and the Ozark Society, Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, National Parks Conservation Association and Arkansas Canoe Club will withhold judgment until more information is available,” said Cross. “The bottom line, however, is the state should be preventing contamination from reaching the Buffalo River, not monitoring the problem.”
Cross said in a news release by the coalition that while water-quality monitoring, if done well, beats not doing so, the groups question why the governor won’t step up and lead with more decisive action and at least review the facility’s ill-conceived permit.
To be beneficial, any soil and water testing must be thorough, based on sound science, and coupled with a plan for swift action to address violations, said Cross. But by the time contamination from hog waste is detected, it’s also likely too late to undo the potential damage.
The group also doesn’t understand why John Van Brahana of the University of Arkansas Geosciences Department, a man widely regarded as the scientist with the greatest knowledge of Newton County karst hydrogeology, hasn’t been consulted on the governor’s monitoring proposal.
In early June, Brahana made his own proposal to Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality Director Teresa Marks for baseline testing followed by water-quality monitoring in the region. When that proposal was ignored by the agency, Brahana embarked on the study on his own time, using some of his own money and with support from other organizations.
“That work is ongoing and he is currently testing wells for anyone in the Mount Judea area free of charge,” said Cross. “The state should have considered Brahana’s previous offer, and moving forward should coordinate with him for the governor’s proposal to utilize the valuable information Brahana is uncovering.”
These folks make a valid point. Why was Brahana in effect shunned by the agency that wrongheadedly issued this permit in the worst possible location in Arkansas? Surely this Arkansas resource, with his extensive background and national credentials for studies in exactly this kind of environmentally sensitive region, is as good and likely better than the state agency can provide. There is some concern out here that having the state monitor itself, and its own bad decision to locate this factory where it is, smells political and arranged.
“Most importantly,” says Cross, “the ADEQ should have fulfilled its duty to prevent contamination of the Buffalo River in the first place, before the 6,500-pig factory became a reality.”
Instead, this misguided pig plan was flown under the radar and away from public scrutiny, for whatever its reasons. Mount Judea residents weren’t consulted, nor was the Arkansas Department of Health or the National Park Service. Even the Department of Environmental Quality’s own staff members in Newton County were kept out of the permitting loop, and this factory is operating smack dab in their backyard.
“The permit process clearly didn’t assess the economic impact on tourism or the environmental impact on local residents,” Cross said. “Government agencies seem to be going out of their way to protect an industrial swine facility that will produce a handful of jobs, rather than protecting and preserving our first national river that belongs to all of us while supporting $38 million in local spending and 500 local jobs.”
He said there are additional serious concerns over the effects of potentially harmful air pollution on more than 250 children attending the Mount Judea school just across Big Creek and the flood-prone fields where the two million gallons of hog manure produced annually will regularly be sprayed. “We look forward to seeing the governor’s proposal,” said Cross. “But sadly, any monitoring after the fact only demonstrates why this hog farm never should have been approved in the first place. Arriving at this point, the big question we ask is: Why is the federal government guaranteeing $3 million in taxpayer-subsidized loans and the state paying $250,000 to place a Cargill industrial pig factory in the Buffalo River watershed? This is getting to be one expensive factory farm, which can only get costlier for the people of Arkansas.” -