Eureka Springs Independent

Five-year ban approved no hog factories on the Buffalo River Work to close existing facility continues 

Becky Gillette
Wednesday, September 09, 2015

Supporters celebrated a significant victory last week when the Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission approved a five-year ban on permits for new factory hogs farms in the Buffalo River watershed. The moratorium came about as a result of concerns about the existing C&H Hog Farm located near Mount Judea, which local residents protested was approved quietly with inadequate reviews about the wisdom of allowing 6,500 hogs to be raised in an area where the leaky karst topography could allow waste to contaminate surface and underground water supplies.

The ban includes a compromise whereby the University of Arkansas’s Big Creek Research and Extension Team (BCRET) will continue to monitor and assess the current hog facility’s impacts and report its findings to the governor, legislators and the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ).

According to the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance (BRWA), the hog factory produces millions of pounds of waste per year certain to produce both water and air pollution. Many in the community depend on wells for household water, and there are concerns that wells will become polluted.

In late December 2014, the BRWA and other partners won a U.S. District Court decision that found federal agencies arbitrarily and capriciously guaranteed loans to the C&H factory farm near the Buffalo National River by failing to take a hard look at environmental impacts and failing to follow proper procedures to protect threatened and endangered species potentially affected by the facility. As a result, a new Environmental Assessment was conducted. But the BRWA alliance believes the draft EA is substantially flawed.

“It fails to engage in the alternatives analysis required under the National Environmental Policy Act, ignores key facts and science, and only cursorily reviews information it does gather in assessing the impacts of an unprecedented 6,500-swine concentrated animal feeding operation operating on karst terrain in the watershed of the iconic Buffalo National River,” Dane Schumacher, member of the BRWA board, said. “A glaring error that pervades the draft EA’s assessment is its unfounded conclusion that ‘there are no karst features within the C&H Hog Farms parcel.’ According to experts in hydrogeology, C&H is undoubtedly located on karst. This fact is of central importance to an accurate assessment of C&H’s impacts because karst is characterized by rapid underground drainage and groundwater flow to surface waters.  The EA’s willful blindness to the geologic context of the C&H facility and the significance of this context for impacts on water resources is the antithesis of the hard look required under NEPA.”

Schumacher said Electrical Resitivity Tomography tests done by Oklahoma State University in December 2014 reveal karst features beneath two spray fields being studied. The OSU report states:

Bedrock at each site contained potential pathways for groundwater flow. One difference between the sites that may be useful for application evaluation is the possibility of hog manure electrical signatures present on Field 12.

There appears to be a large sinkhole feature caused by dissolution or collapse of underlying rock or soil, within the weathered bedrock in one area that stretches nearly 200 ft. long and 75 ft. deep.

At a draft EA hearing in late August in Jasper, geologist/hydrogeologist Tom Aley presented oral and written testimony on behalf of the BRWA. Aley said that the EA conducted for the Farm Services Agency and Small Business Administration, which provided taxpayer funded loan guarantees for the hog facility, “shows a gross lack of understanding of the intimate and integral interactions of surface water and groundwater in karst areas of the Ozarks. The EA fails to recognize that this entire hog farm operation and the associated manure disposal fields (with the exception of portions of Field 17) are located on top of a well-developed karst aquifer within the Boone Formation and possibly other deeper geologic units.”

Aley said the manure storage ponds pose a significant risk of creating off-site water quality problems due to leakage into groundwater supplies. He said they are also at risk of catastrophic sinkhole collapses that could introduce large amounts of manure into the underlying karst groundwater system.

Another point is that the EA described the BCRET study as an “in depth case study of the C&H Hog Farms.” The BCRET team was established in late 2013 as a response to citizen concern about the adverse environmental impacts of the farm.

“Despite a platoon of PhDs and a squad of lesser degreed people, there is very little information about the BCRET ‘in depth’ study that has been incorporated into the EA,” Aley said. “The apparent explanation for this is that the study is long-term academic research. It is not a gathering and assessment of information useful for determining health and environmental impacts expected to result from this hog operation or for protecting the River and springs that feed it.  It is certainly not what people concerned with the Buffalo National River had expected from the appointment of this august body.”

Aley, who has donated his time to study the impacts of the hog factory, urged the FSA and SBA to cancel the federal guarantees for these loans.

“You FSA and SBA agency folks have made a major blunder in providing federal guarantees for loans for the C&HG Hog Farm,” Alley said. “With the information in my assessment, and with other important information you will gain from others, you will have more than sufficient information to properly assess the prudence of providing federal guarantees for these loans. There is no credible reason to drag this on by moving forward into an Environmental Impact Statement. Such a move will only further discredit the competency and integrity of your agencies and continue to damage water resources and the Buffalo National River. I urge you to use information from this public hearing and cancel the federal guarantees for these loans.”

ADEQ has submitted clarifications with respect to the EA performed related to the existing permit requirements and the applicable regulations,” said Katherine Benenati, public outreach and assistance division chief, ADEQ. “We are continuing to monitor the C&H farm,” she said.