Arkansasonline

My Buffalo hangup

So Mike, why are you so hung up on our state issuing a general permit for that mega-waste-generating hog factory in the Buffalo River watershed at Mount Judea, one reader recently asked. It deserves a response.

As one who enjoys pork chops, pork rinds and barbecued pulled pork, my concerns have nothing to do with pork.

In one way, we Arkansans remain fortunate to even have the Buffalo National River to protect and preserve. Serious plans were being formulated four decades ago to dam this precious stream and turn its watershed into another massive lake when my late uncle, 3rd District Congressman John Paul Hammerschmidt of Harrison, teamed with others in the Arkansas delegation to create legislation that in 1972 preserved the river by placing it under the national park system as America's first national river.

Since a river can neither defend nor argue for itself, I believe I'm but one of many concerned people and groups willing to speak for her.

While I'm back on the Buffalo fiasco, I'm pondering a serious question.

If the Small Business Administration and the USDA's Farm Service Agency under a federal court order spent seven months to complete a supposedly genuine assessment of the potential environmental impact of enormous waste generated by C&H Hog Farms on the Buffalo National River, why are no detailed groundwater-flow studies included in their findings?

I'd certainly expect any professional environmental assessment to include some science showing how water will flow through fractured limestone karst permeating the subsurface into nearby Big Creek, a major tributary of the Buffalo. I'd also expect to see detailed ground-absorption rates in fields where millions of gallons of lagooned waste are being routinely sprayed.

Here's the real rub: A considerable amount of such specific data has already been steadily accumulated over two years thanks to University of Arkansas professor emeritus John Van Brahana and his band of volunteers who've been collecting it since this factory began operating. Did these federal agencies who agreed to underwrite federal loans for the factory not bother contacting Brahana?

Did no one call the professor, send him a text? Facebook message? Smiley face?

Here's a nationally respected geoscientist who, on his own volition and using his resources and skills in this area, has collected many months of data highly relevant to potential environmental impact. Yet he wasn't even consulted over crispy bacon and eggs.

There's not a drop of this kind of critical data in the revised assessment these agencies submitted to please the court.

So why not, fellas? It's not like Brahana and his work have gone unnoticed. He's been making headlines across Arkansas for two years now. And, as you may have noticed, he's referred to your everything's-just-copacetic report as "hogwash."

Say, ya suppose his feelings were hurt by being strangely ignored, or maybe he just wasn't impressed that while you made a passing reference in the assessment to subsurface water flow, you wrote right past it without spilling even a shot glass full of supportive data?

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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at mikemasterson10@hotmail.com.

Editorial on 08/15/2015