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Warning: hogs worse than smell; Hammerschmidt pushed to protect Buffalo National River

31 Oct 2013 8:00 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

Warning: hogs worse than smell; Hammerschmidt pushed to protect Buffalo National River
 

Posted: Thursday, October 31, 2013 1:45 am

By DWAIN LAIR dwainl@harrisondaily.com  

Retired Congressman John Paul Hammerschmidt encouraged a group of about 50 people Tuesday night to press on and spread the word that the Buffalo National River is imperiled by a corporate hog farm.
“It is important to continue to raise the general public’s knowledge and is important to get the word out the best you can manage,” he stressed.
The retired congressman, who led the fight in Congress to protect the Buffalo River as a national park, said he wouldn’t be surprised at a remedy coming through litigation or a political remedy to turn back the issue.
The meeting was hosted by Buffalo River Watershed Alliance to address a concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) with 6,500 hogs near Big Creek at Mt. Judea in the Buffalo National River watershed. C&H Hog Farm is owned by cousins Richard Campbell, Phillip Campbell and Jason Henson and was financed by a $3.4 million loan.
The alliance has been upset about the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality granting a permit for the hog operation without holding a public meeting in the area or requiring the legal notice to be published in a local newspaper.
Elva Kelly of Yellville introduced Hammerschmidt, saying she wanted to thank the person responsible for keeping the Buffalo River natural all this years for people to enjoy. She then showed a video presentation on C&H Hog Farm and its feared consequences.
The video said C&H Hog Farm would generate 2 million gallons of hog waste annually, and that waste will be spread over 600 acres in the Buffalo River watershed. Gordon Watkins of Newton County said in the video that residents don’t want more CAFOs, and Mt. Judea resident Jewell Fowler said she fears the operation would contaminate water and make people sick.
Kelly then introduced Rick Dove and Larry Baldwin of the Waterkeeper Alliance. They said they were in Arkansas to share a lot of background information on issues that residents will have to deal with in the future They narrated a power-point presentation on CAFO hog farms in North Carolina, and the farms’ impact on ecosystems, and related tourism and tourism economy.
Dove and Baldwin traced North Carolina’s problem back to 1991 when 1 billion fish rolled up dead in a major kill. They blamed that fish kill and succeeding fish kills that occur almost every year on three factors undefined low oxygen, Pfiesteria and excess nutrient levels. They said researchers have blamed those issues on CAFOs and pollution.
“They just keep dying,” they said of the fish kills. “That’s not normal.”
They said waters are oxygen rich during the day, then plants clogging the water use up the oxygen at night. They said that forces all types of fish and sealife into shallow water in their chase for oxygen.
A warning sign posted to alert people not to get in water or swim because of Pfiesteria. They said the it is toxic to animals and causes ulcers and eats flesh of fish and people who come in contact with it.
Excess nutrients are caused by too much fertilizer that runs off farmlands and fills waterways.
Dove and Baldwin said many pollution concerns deal with excessive amounts of phosphorus in the water, but they warned nitrogen is another major problem. They said it rises into the air, and 100 percent falls back to earth.
The men said they had visited Mt. Judea and could smell the hog farm. They blamed that smell on ammonia, which they said will fall to the earth in the form of nitrogen. They warned that the ammonia smell could reach Jasper, when hog waste is spread on fields.
Analyzing North Carolina’s livestock operations, they said it has 700 million chickens, 40 million turkeys and 10 million hogs. They said it also has the world’s largest pork processing plant, a Smithfield operation that can slaughter 35,000 hogs per day.
Their powerpoint presentation included scenes inside a CAFO hog farm, a condition they compared to a prisoner-of-war camp.
The Buffalo River Water Shed Alliance, the Arkansas Canoe Club, the National Parks Conservation Association and the Ozark Society has filed a federal lawsuit over the permit and the hog farm and names defendants as the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the federal and state Small Business Administration, the federal and state Farm Service Agency and directors of each entity.

Buffalo River Watershed Alliance is a non profit 501(c)(3) organization

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