BUFFALO NATIONAL RIVER, Ark.   A lot of spectacular things can happen on the Buffalo River or one of the gravel bars that lie in the shadows of its magnificent bluffs undefined great blue herons rising heavily from the riverbank, otters playfully splashing near shore, black bears ambling to the water’s edge.

What one doesn’t expect on America’s first national river is a massive algae bloom or fish kill.
That’s among the fears haunting devotees of the river if nothing is done about a huge hog farm that has been in operation for about a year at the edge of the little town of Mount Judea, nestled 260 miles west of Memphis in an area of lush green valleys, state highways that wind like copperheads and patches of pasture carved out of heavily forested hillsides.
C&H Hog Farm sits near Big Creek, a major tributary that empties into the Buffalo near the Carver launch site just six miles downstream.

Producing swine for the agricultural products giant Cargill Inc., C&H is at the center of a controversy reminiscent of the epic battle of the 1960s that was won by conservationists, saving the Buffalo from being dammed like many other Ozarks streams and giving a 135-mile stretch national park status.

The farm’s permit allows it to feed up to 6,500 pigs undefined 2,500 sows and 4,000 piglets undefined producing up to 2 million gallons of waste per year undefined material that is stored in clay-lined lagoons and sprayed on neighboring fields as fertilizer.
In terms of waste production, that’s equivalent to a city of 30,000 people on 630 acres of land, according to University of Arkansas professor emeritus and hydrogeologist Van Brahana.
One of the issues raised by farm opponents undefined a coalition of the National Parks Conservation Association, the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, Ozark Society and Arkansas Canoe Club undefined is that it lies 841 feet from the border of Mount Judea’s K-12 school property, separated from it by one of several fields that are being fertilized. The juxtaposition raises concerns about how ammonia released by animal waste will affect students’ health.
Opponents of the farm also worry about the environmental vulnerability of the area’s karst topography, a honeycomb-like, limestone structure with waterways that can run along the surface, disappear and then rise again, eventually making their way into major streams.
The Buffalo attracts more than a million visitors and pumps an estimated $40 million a year into the local economy. It could be devastated, critics of the farm say, by excessive nutrients and pathogens associated with animal waste, including E. coli.

Working with a group of 12 volunteers on a $6,000 budget provided by private groups and concerned citizens, Brahana has been testing water quality in and around Big Creek for almost a year.

Meeting with reporters at the riverside town of Gilbert last week, during a tour organized by the National Parks Conservation Association, Brahana said samples had been taken from 40 sites to measure bacteria, phosphorus and other elements that would have an impact on the growth of algae and public health.

“Those data showed that the surface of the area is not badly contaminated, but it’s near the limit of how much it can sustainably accommodate,” he said.
Brahana said nontoxic dye dropped into a shallow, hand-dug well directly across a road from C&H and into a field surrounded on three sides by fields where hog manure is being sprayed was spreading quickly.

Andrew Sharpley, a professor in the University of Arkansas Department of Crop, Soil, and Environmental Sciences, maintains a neutral stance as the head of a water-quality study financed by state government undefined $350,000 has been allocated so far undefined but concedes that “karst tends to be leaky, so there are risks for nutrient movement fairly quickly.”
However, “I think everybody on both sides of the fence would agree that we’re not going to find out if there is an impact of this farm on the creek within a year of operation,” he said, suggesting that at least five years are needed “to get a realistic assessment of what’s going to happen long term.”

“If there is an issue, we want to address that in the field and not measure it downstream of the farm,” Sharpley said. “We want to be proactive in the way we do it. Hopefully we’ll be supported so that we can do this for a long time.”

River advocates also are alarmed by what they describe as inadequate public notice preceding the farm’s establishment under new state regulations permitting the operation of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) such as C&H.
The process began in 2011 when Arkansas adopted a general statewide permit for CAFOs that required applicants to obtain a permit to operate by filing a notice of intent with the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality and developing a “nutrient management plan,” or a plan for how to handle waste.

The general statewide permit proposal was well advertised, but all that was required for a specific project such as C&H was a 30-day notification on the ADEQ website, which appeared in June 2012.

The notification went unnoticed by potential stakeholders, including officials of the National Park Service, which administers the area officially designated as the Buffalo National River. No public comment was submitted. C&H was granted coverage under the general permit two months later.

ADEQ has responded to criticism of the process by pointing out that the agency as well as the applicant followed all applicable rules. Changing those rules is among the goals of the farm’s opponents.

In late April, they persuaded the Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission to issue a 180-day moratorium in the watershed on the issuance of permits for medium- and large-scale swine feeding operations.

The commission has scheduled a public meeting on proposed changes in the permit issuance regulations for 6 p.m. June 17 at the Durand Conference Center in Harrison. It will accept public comment on proposed amendments until July 1.

Meanwhile, considerable support for the farm has developed, particularly in the agricultural community. Many residents of Mount Judea are staunch supporters.
“I can see it from my kitchen window, and I’m all for it undefined 100 percent,” said Charles Pridmore, who argues that when effluent is spread on the fields “the ground’s going to soak it right up.”

Charles Campbell, whose 247-acre farm benefits from hog manure sprayed on his pastures, “never had a problem with it, at all,” he said. “I’d say it’s good for the community.”
“People has always raised hogs and cattle all up and down the creek,” Campbell said. “The hogs would wallow in it. Do it all in the creek. The cattle the same way. Some of it goes on still with small operations. I don’t think it hurts (the environment) at all. Not one iota.”
“I think when most people actually see where the farm is it makes sense,” said Karl Buth, serving customers at the Eagle Rock Café in Mount Judea. “The farm sits up on a hill, and the Buffalo River is 10 miles away.”

Locals who are not pleased with the development include Jewell Fowler, 88, whose home is on Big Creek, less than a mile downstream from the farm.

She was visiting nearby Sexton Cemetery just before Memorial Day to decorate some family graves when members of her group were overcome by a disgusting odor.

Daughter Pam Fowler, a retired special education teacher and former Mount Judea resident who lives in nearby Jasper, wrote a brief narrative about the incident, describing a “horrendous and overwhelming stench of hog manure and, I guess, burning hogs undefined distinct singed hair smell and a nightmarish sound of shrieking hogs. A horror film couldn’t have had more unnerving sounds. I had to tie a scarf over my face to breathe as we worked quickly to escape back into our car.”

C&H owners Jason Henson and his cousins, Philip and Richard Campbell (no relation to Charles), have been unavailable for comment.

In a YouTube video produced by the Arkansas Farm Bureau, Henson, the company president, defended himself and his partners as “environmentalists at heart.”
“That’s our heritage. That’s where I learned to swim, in Big Creek,” he said. “To say that I would do anything to contaminate it is ludicrous.”
“Jason has not had a good experience with the media trying to tell his story,” said Farm Bureau environmental specialist Evan Teague. “ He’s a good guy, but this has not been a good experience for him, media wise.”

The Campbell brothers operated C&C Hog Farm for about 15 years “with no controversy, no violations, no issues from the environmental community,” Teague said.
Not only is C&H designed with features that will protect the environment, he said, but there also have been other smaller hog farms in the Buffalo watershed.
“When this one started there were five or six ,” he said. “In the early 2000s and 1990, there may have been a dozen. These were all 300- to 500-sow units. This one is larger, but even with the addition of this farm itself, the actual number of hogs in the watershed is less than it was 15 or 20 years ago.

“I think our viewpoint on this is that over the last 15 to 25 years agriculture, including hog farms, has coexisted with recreation in the Buffalo River watershed. It wasn’t until this single farm (was built) that the environmental community became concerned or engaged This is being made into something it’s not.”

In numerous conversations with Cargill officials, Teague said, “Not once have I heard anyone from Cargill saying, ‘We’re expecting a significant ramp-up in production.’ It’s always been, ‘We’re just expecting to maintain the numbers we have.’ ”

Much of the current activity by hog farm opponents seems to be aimed at increasing the pressure on Cargill to step in and alter its position.

Company spokesman Mike Martin said Cargill is keeping in touch with stakeholders to assess the situation.“Nobody at Cargill wants to see anything adversely impact the Buffalo or any other waterway,” he said.

Within the last 10 years, Cargill has actually reduced the number of pigs it buys from farms in the area, including the one operated by the Campbell brothers, Martin said.
“We just don’t believe that the current configuration of the C&H Hog Farm poses the kind of risk that some people believe it does,” he added. “It is a difficult situation. We certainly understand all sides of it, and we’ll see where this goes going forward, but at this point in time no decisions have been made to make any changes.”

C&H alone presents a clear and present danger to one of the Ozarks’ most precious commodities, however, said Robert Cross, a University of Arkansas chemical engineering professor emeritus who serves as president of The Ozark Society.

The organization is among the plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the legality of a federally backed loan to the farm operators, charging that the Farm Service Agency’s required environmental assessment was faulty.

But even if the plaintiffs in that lawsuit are successful, some fear that the owners may come up with the funds, perhaps from Cargill, to keep the farm going.

In the scenario that may be most feared by river advocates, violations of the federal Clean Water Act are discovered undefined but too late to prevent them from spoiling a precious environmental treasure.

“It’s not a matter of when” the river will become contaminated, “but how quickly it will happen,” said Bob Allen, a retired Arkansas Tech University chemistry professor who serves as president of the Arkansas Canoe Club. “The phosphorus and nitrogen will build up, and there goes the fish. There’s a place for that farm, but it’s not here.”

Contact freelance writer Michael Kelley, a former reporter and editorial writer for The Commercial Appeal, at mdk62083@yahoo.com.