Hogs, karst and the Buffalo


By Mike Masterson


Arkansas geoscientist John Van Brahana plans on taking to the pulpit tonight in Fayetteville. His sermon (of sorts) about being stewards who supposedly protect God’s Country begins promptly at 7.

He’ll be disclosing and discussing the early results of water-quality testing that he and his team have been conducting in the Buffalo National River watershed around the C&H hog factory.

That’s the Cargill Inc.-supplied and supported facility our state so wrongheadedly (and quietly) permitted last year that allowed 6,500 hogs and piglets in the state’s most environmentally sensitive region.

The respected professor emeritus who for months has supervised these studies without financial (or moral) support from the state or any environmental agency has thus far unearthed a lot more concerns than surprises.

This evening’s public meeting at Fayetteville’s First United Presbyterian Church should prove enlightening.

“This basin has the hydrogeology we had feared,” Brahana told me the other day. The cracked limestone karst formations are well-developed with caves, springs, streams and a close relationship with surface and groundwater throughout most of the surface drainage, Brahana said.

“This means any hog waste not contained in the [two] clay-lined pits will be transported down gradient to Big Creek and the Buffalo National River,” he said. Those pits are projected to contain as much as two million gallons of hog waste. That waste will be removed and spread on application fields around Mount Judea, some very near Big Creek.

Brahana, who retired from the University of Arkansas this May, began his career in 1962 as an undergraduate lab assistant with the Illinois Geological Survey. He arrived at UA in 1990 when he worked equally for the U.S. Geological Survey and the university. He soon was hired by the university as a full professor with tenure. I believe no one understands the nature and problems associated with karst formations better than Brahana.

Tonight I expect him to describe the large subterranean voids and wide openings that he and his team of volunteers have discovered in the Big Creek basin. He also will detail the overall quality of the groundwater they’ve discovered thus far. My understanding is that the enormous range of microbes they’ve found flowing from the many springs shows there’s very little, if any, filtration of contaminants.

I know they’ve discovered the water quality from previous and current human activities, such as septic systems, fertilizing fields with cattle and poultry waste, have had an impact on the overall water quality across thebasin. The results of this create “legacy occurrences” downstream, thereby altering algae growth. They have found similar results in cave streams.

Brahana’s team has yet to complete dye tracings in the underground springs and streams to specifically define the “point-to-point pathways” the waters regularly follow. However, because the science is consistent, he already understands he’s dealing with a “fairly shallow, fast-flow groundwater system that can be easily contaminated.”

None of the wells and springs Brahana’s tested thus far show indications that hog waste has reached the Mount Judea area’s domestic water supplies. “Local landowners and farmers have been remarkably helpful and polite,” Brahana has said. “They obviously have concerns and fears.”

During tonight’s videotaped presentation, Brahana also will answer questions. He hopes to broaden the discussion to educating the audience on how concentrated animal feeding operations have seriously contaminated water in other states.

This man of science (whose test results are being voluntarily analyzed by labs in Fayetteville and Arkadelphia) and those working alongside him clearly walk the walk of deeper convictions, preferring unvarnished truth to insincere, namby-pamby political correctness.

Here’s what Brahana told me about CAFO reality: “CAFOS elsewhere have a long history of obfuscation, ignoring rules and claiming they are not ‘free to farm,’ although they themselves have wrecked the environments and economies of small family farms across a swath of America from North Carolina to Iowa. As much as the factory meat producers, the Farm Bureau, their politicians and their special-interest groups try to make this into an ‘us versus them’ scenario, at its heart is the unabashed play for money and power-to establish meaningless rules, create toothless agencies and delay, distract and intimidate so they are free to do what they want.”

Brahana continued: “The politics of this run very, very deep, and though the local landowners and farmers are cautious, they are quickly finding out that something doesn’t smell right. They have shared much with me. Now I’m sharing it with you to help educate those who don’t know.”

His closing crescendo was equally blunt: “Only open dialogue, honesty, education, and calling out any liars will stop this garbage, for those are the ones who would take advantage of family farmers who do grow our food and the citizens of Arkansas who love the Buffalo National River.”

With that kind of straight-from-the-heart language, I suspect Professor Brahana will draw the same standing ovation tonight that I’m affording this scientist while typing this final line.

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Mike Masterson’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him atmikemasterson10@hotmail.com.