His imaginary team
Red flags galore
Posted: December 13, 2015 at 2:10 a.m.
Gordon Watkins, the persistent and knowledgeable president of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, says he sees red flags surrounding the controversial hog factory at Mount Judea.
Most of Arkansas and many across America know by now it's the place our state's Department of Environmental Quality (cough) permitted to become ensconced in the treasured Buffalo National River watershed back in 2012.
Watkins and his group are among several societies and associations actively opposing this factory housing up to 6,500 swine (and its millions of gallons of raw waste being openly spread on fields).
He bases his concerns over potential environmental damage to the river that studies already are reflecting. Among them are data being collected over five years by the University of Arkansas Agricultural Division's so-called Big Creek Research and Extension Team.
This state-funded team investigating the state's role was the result of former Gov. Mike Beebe's order to accurately and objectively determine the transport and fate of swine waste in such a misplaced location.
In short, they are to determine how much raw waste and resulting pathogens might be draining into Big Creek, a major tributary of the Buffalo six miles downstream, and flowing through the fractured karst subsurface that permeates the region.
By objectively I mean free from influences of groups who financially and politically support big agriculture. You know, a thorough, honest assessment that lets the chips fall where they do regardless of juicy campaign contributions and/or arm twisting to gain specific favorable results.
Not that this sort of unsavory practice that perverts truth and integrity ever occurs in Arkansas, of course.
Significant to Watkins from the findings thus far are the high nitrate-N levels discovered at the team's downstream sampling station, and high E. coli levels in the monitoring trenches and stream immediately below the factory's waste ponds. "Most concerning to me is the level reported in the house well which supplies drinking water for the swine and for the employees."
He said the Arkansas Department of Health considers any detectable amount of E. coli to be unsafe to drink. Records show the team took 23 well samples between March and August. In only two samples was E. coli at the threshold considered safe. Yes, I wrote two. All other samples were well above safe levels, some very high. "To be clear, [the Department of Health] does not have jurisdiction over private wells and so does not have the authority to enforce safe drinking water standards at C&H. If this was a public water supply, it would be shut down until the contamination source was eliminated."
In our discussion, I got the distinct impression there are several things Watkins would insist upon were he supervising the research and testing, or had a team of his very own.
For instance, rather than continually minimizing obvious red flags by attributing the contamination his imaginary team discovers to possible sources other than C&H, he'd find out with pinpoint certainty. His common-sense meter and a regard for the obvious would be moving him to action.
He said his team of experts and scientists would do far better than speculate by hopefully borrowing sophisticated source-tracking technologies from the University of Arkansas designed just for that purpose.
His imaginary team (I'll call it Gordon's Apolitical Research Team, or GART) could indeed determine with this borrowed technology (perhaps they could rent it if necessary) whether leaky waste ponds or waste runoff from the fields were the contaminant sources.
He'd also have personnel with expertise in the "application of stable isotopes and other geochemical indicators in determining the movement and behavior of contaminates in groundwater systems." He'd also have the university's specialized equipment.
"I'm no scientist but my understanding of stable isotopes is that they can provide a 'fingerprint' of a contaminant such as swine waste from waste containment ponds, for example," Watkins said. His team would then have a fingerprint to compare with the same contaminates discovered in the wells, stream, trenches, and Big Creek (also groundwater). For instance, "If a match was determined, it would be known the swine waste was the source."
Gordon said his team might even go so far as to perhaps borrow another source-tracking method also available from UA resources. This is a DNA analysis of E. coli.
The one thing Gordon's team would not do, he says, is obfuscate and misattribute the problem when a likely source lies squarely beneath their noses. His group would not be "scientifically weak or negligent in carrying out the work the governor had demanded of them. That specifically includes monitoring the fate and transport of nutrients and bacteria" at C&H.
If his imaginary team could, they'd get to the bottom of it by using the tools made for that very job, he said. You know, valued readers, somehow I believe the man would do just that.
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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at mikemasterson10@hotmail.com.
Editorial on 12/13/2015