Buffalo River Watershed Alliance
By Emily Walkenhorst
Posted: March 15, 2018 at 4:30 a.m.
NWAOnline
Thomas Metthe Credit: Arkansas Democrat-GazetteState Sen. Joyce Elliott gestures Wednesday that she would like to speak against Senate Bill 8, a measure to amend a state law concerning modification and review of permits issued by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality.
The Arkansas House and Senate on Wednesday approved their versions of bills that would ensure limitations on what the public can say and when on existing state animal-farm permits.
Senate Bill 8 and House Bill 1007 passed their respective chambers -- SB8 by 21-7 and HB1007 by 73-6. Four members of the Senate did not vote, while in the House, seven did not vote and 13 voted present. Today is expected to be the last day of a special legislative session dealing with a limited agenda set by Gov. Asa Hutchinson.
The companion bills, which will go to the opposite chambers today for their next vote, stipulate that "liquid animal waste management system" permits, issued by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, can be subject only to public comments about proposed modifications at the time they are proposed. Further, the permit holder would not be subject to review or an appeal from a third party over issues dealing with the location of the farm if those issues were not raised during the review phase of the original permit application.
The bills were spurred by fears in the agriculture community after the Department of Environmental Quality denied a new permit to C&H Hog Farms near the Buffalo National River in Mount Judea. Lawmakers said farmers were concerned that their permits could be challenged now for any reason that may be raised in a public comment period or another review.
Rep. Jeff Wardlaw, R-Hermitage, the sponsor of HB1007, has stated repeatedly that the bill would not affect C&H Hog Farms because C&H is not an existing state permit holder.
Opponents of the farm have questioned whether the language in the bill is specific enough to ensure that is true and have contended that they would want to be able to comment on existing permits if pertinent environmental issues were to emerge.
Sen. Joyce Elliott, D-Little Rock, voted against the bill and asked during discussion on the Senate floor whether the bill's language would prevent a third party from challenging a permit holder once they discovered a problem at the permit holder's facility that perhaps the Department of Environmental Quality refused to pursue.
"I think what Sen. Elliott just outlined is a possible future occurrence," said Sen. David Sanders, R-Little Rock.
Sanders voted against the bill, he said, out of concern for what passing it could mean for future legislation.
"My concern is that while authors of bill and testimony said the bill doesn't really accomplish much, I think it does establish the precedent of rolling back third-party appeal rights, which I don't think is a precedent the Legislature ought to set," Sanders said.
Sanders was the lone dissenting voice vote at an earlier Senate Public Health, Welfare and Labor Committee meeting that advanced the Senate bill, sponsored by Sen. Gary Stubblefield, R-Branch.
Earlier in the day, the House of Representatives passed its version of the bill.
Rep. Kim Hendren, R-Gravette, said he had gotten an email Wednesday morning from someone asking why lawmakers couldn't just add language in the bill that would ensure it would only affect existing or prospective hog farms.
"You don't have to, Rep. Hendren," Wardlaw said.
C&H would not be affected "because C&H Hog Farm does not hold a Regulation 5 permit," he said.
Rep. Rebecca Petty, R-Rogers, said she was getting emails similar to the one Hendren received and asked why the bill was needed now.
Existing farms need reassurance, Wardlaw said.
"They need this clarified," he said.
Both Hendren and Petty voted against the bill.
Before the House vote, the Senate Public Health, Welfare and Labor Committee approved on a voice vote Senate Bill 8.
Sanders, like other lawmakers Tuesday, asked repeatedly why the bill was needed if supporters said it didn't actually change department practices.
Wardlaw repeatedly stated that the bill would ease fears among farmers and put a current practice by the Department of Environmental Quality in more precise words in the Arkansas Code. But it would not change anything, he said.
Stubblefield, speaking to reporters after the meeting, said that without the bill, permit holders could be sued.
Listen to the story here: Arkansas Public Media
Bill To Limit Challenges To Hog Farms Awaits Final Vote
By SARAH WHITES-KODITSCHEK/ ARKANSAS PUBLIC MEDIA
• MAR 15, 2018
A bill is up for vote by the general assembly that would protect hog farmers from lawsuits for certain environmental issues once their waste permits are approved.
The legislation was approved by the Arkansas General Assembly today, and it's meant to reassure hog farmers as well as the banks who lend them money.
The legislation limits the public comment period to the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality’s (ADEQ) permitting process. It would affect almost 200 hog farmers in the state.
Co-sponsor Sen. Gary Stubblefield (R-Branch) says it’s meant to block future challenges once permits are given.
“This bill simply says you cannot come back three, four, five years later, ten years later, and bring up that comment and take that farmer to court because of a comment that was made during that window of opportunity, early on, when it should have been taken care of then," he said.
"And like I said before, these farms will still be under the purview and oversight of ADEQ if anything changes.”
A previous version of the legislation had singled out protections for the Buffalo National River area’s C&H hog farm, which was denied a new permit last year for not completing a study on groundwater flow.
Environmentalists like Gordon Watkins, president of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, are concerned that the legislation could still be employed in support of C&H, which the alliance believes pollutes the venerated river.
He says the alliance is involved in an administrative appeal of the farm’s permit, and the legislation could be used to change the outcome of that process.
“Attorneys are involved, and as you very well know, attorneys will take any opportunity to take advantage of vague language. So we asked for a little more specificity, and it would have been very simple. They could have said that it was not retroactive or that it was prescriptive only."
The bill’s sponsors say it has nothing to do with C&H and will not be used to support its appeal or future operation.
*Editor's note: A previous version of this story said the bill was headed to the governor's desk but it still awaits final legislative approval.
This story is produced by Arkansas Public Media. What's that? APM is a nonprofit journalism project for all of Arkansas and a collaboration among public media in the state. We're funded in part through a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, with the support of partner stations KUAR, KUAF, KASU and KTXK. And, we hope, from you! You can learn more and support Arkansas Public Media's reporting at arkansaspublicmedia.org. Arkansas Public Media is Natural State news with context.
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Arkansas Legislature Relaxing State Animal Waste Agri Permitting
By JACQUELINE FROELICH • MAR 15, 2018
The fate of C&H Hog Farms, a controversial industrial swine breeding facility federally permitted five years ago to operate six miles upstream of the Buffalo National River, was at the center of an extraordinary Arkansas legislative special session this week. The Arkansas General Assembly approved a bill that would protect hog farmers from lawsuits for certain environmental issues once their waste permits are approved. The legislation is meant to reassure hog farmers, as well as the banks that lend them money. It also limits the public comment period for the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality's permitting process. Supporters say the bill is meant to block future challenges once permits are given and will not be used to support C&H Hog Farms' future operations, but opponents, who believe the hog farm pollutes the Buffalo River, say they are not buying it.
Listen here: KOLR 10 TV
Hog Farm Controversy Amid New Bill
By: Chrystal Blair
March 14, 2018
LITTLEROCK, Ark.-- The Arkansas legislature approved a different version of a proposed bill, limiting public comments regarding state animal farm permits.
Some opponents of the controversial C & H Hog Farm in Mount Judea are concerned it provides the farm a loophole to continue operations. The farm lost their permit over concerns the nearby Buffalo River could become contaminated.
It's the wording in the new bill that's causing a stir. Under the bill, public comments about animal farm permits would only be allowed for 30 days after a farmer receives a permit.
The sponsor of the bill, Arkansas State Representative Jeff Wardlaw(R), says the idea is to ease the minds of farmers and lenders who after watching the C & H story, fear that public comments could cost them their permits too.
The initial version of the bill included a clause that Gordon Watkins, President of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, believes was about an ulterior motive.
"The previous version that we saw of this bill was an obvious attempt to craft legislation that would specifically apply to C & H Hog Farm," Watkins said.
That clause was eliminated -- and although Watkins is generally pleased with the new bill, he says the wording in the bill refers to state permits or liquid animal waste management systems -- and that's where he says things can get tricky.
"In Arkansas, there are two types of permits that cover those types of systems -- being 'Regulation Six' permits to discharge and 'Regulation Five', no discharge permits."
C & H operates under a Regulation Six permit.
"We were concerned because it did not specify what kind of permit would be addressed, that this could be interpreted to apply to C & H Hog Farm permit."
Watkins says legislators reassured him this wording was not about C & H.
"The legislators pointed out that 'Regulation 6' is actually a federal permit, that it's an EPA permit - and that's correct. 'Regulation Six' animal permits in Arkansas are EPA permits, but they're being administered by the state."
But Watkins still believes the lines could become blurred.
"So even though the language is federal language it's being administered by the state. So it could be argued, that they are still state permits."
He's also concerned about the 30-day public comment limitation.
"I do have some concerns that the way this bill is worded, it prevents any future challenges of a permit."
In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality said they have no objections to the bill.
C & H has appealed their permit denial. They're expected back in court August 6, on an appeal.
By Mike Masterson
Posted: March 13, 2018 at 4:30 a.m.
As C&H Hog Farms appeals the denial of a new, revised permit in the Buffalo National River watershed, the state approved that swine factory's two lagoons to continue leaking up to 5,000 gallons of untreated waste a day under terms of its expired general permit.
A state-contracted agricultural research team has made a limited stab at trying to measure how much of the toxic stuff could be seeping by digging two catchment trenches below these ponds.
Five thousand gallons represents 10 times the amount of daily leakage recommended by a guidance document known as the "10-State Standard." Because so many leaking gallons are permitted by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (cough), these lagoons in worst case might already have leaked more than 9 million gallons into the karst that underlies and surrounds the factory at Mount Judea. Imagine what 10 years could offer.
Such enormous seepage is permissable as long as the factory operates on its expired general permit. Although C&H was denied the Regulation 5 "No Discharge" permit, the leaking obviously would have continued regardless.
These facts should give every Arkansan who loves this river serious concerns, particularly as I'm told our Legislature this week is set to introduce a controversial bill in special session favorable to C&H while politically diminishing the Department of Environmental Quality's role.
More fact: Scientific study and drilling have shown subsurface fractures and large voids exist around the lagoons and suggest the bottoms of the lagoons lie within feet of "perched groundwater tables." This sustained release of untreated waste does not include the waste drawn from those ponds and sprayed across fields along or near Big Creek, a major Buffalo tributary.
Between the spray fields and permissable lagoon leakage I can't imagine how much waste after five years likely already has collected in the cracks, caves and underground springs below and around this misplaced factory.
It all follows the paths of least resistance to head downhill eventually into the Buffalo six miles away, hydrologists and geologists have predicted. Some call this mess a "creeping catastrophe," since it would take untold years for rainfalls to flush away.
Dr. John Van Brahana, a respected geoscientist and national expert in karst hydrology, said subterranean dye tests his team of volunteers has performed since 2013 around the C&H property (he's not allowed on theirs) found dye moving rapidly, even beneath mountains, and turning up downstream in the Buffalo 12 miles away.
This is science and fact rather than political blather, special-interest spin or rabid "environmentalism."
A board member for the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance explains our state's lenient leakage policy this way: "Arkansas lacks a numerical standard regarding pond manure leakage. So the rules defaulted to what the National Resources Conservation Service and its Agricultural Waste Management Field handbook recommends. That default is a daily maximum of 5,000 gallons per acre. In contrast, the widely used guidance document known as the 10-State Standard, regularly referred to as a guide for establishing leakage restrictions for sewage, provides a recommended safe standard of just 500 gallons each day.
"That Arkansas defaults to an allowance 10 times the leakage of that standard is excessive under any circumstances. To steadily allow as much as 5,000 gallons in a geologically sensitive karst environment such as our country's first national river is nothing less than irresponsible."
I call it beyond reckless, especially when the Department of Environmental Quality never insisted upon one analysis from its staff geologists of this porous location before quickly and quietly issuing the general permit in 2012. A retired geologist from that agency rightly referred to that critical omission as "malfeasance."
C&H's lagoon 1 is listed at 0.4788 acres. Number 2 is 0.7865, for a total of 1.27 pond acres. Five thousand gallons of daily leakage per acre would mean the uppermost limit allowed by default is actually 6,300 gallons.
The alliance board member said an engineer's calculations determined both ponds leak at a rate of 4,847 gallons daily. But who knows for sure?
M.D. Smolen, a proven expert in water quality studies, put it this way in a report dated August 2015: "The ADEQ permit provides minimal protection from storage pond leakage ... through the clay liner," which he said was designed based on only one compaction analysis and no permeability testing of final liner construction.
"The high shrink-swell potential of the liner materials have a tendency to crack when allowed to dry, increasing the potential for leakage during the cycle of filling and emptying the ponds," he continued. "An EPA inspection conducted April 15-17, 2014, found that the upper edge of the clay liner [was] protected by erosion control fabric, but did not indicate any effort to prevent liner cracking."
To my knowledge, other than self-reporting and those dual trenches, the amount of waste seeping from the C&H lagoons remains routinely unchecked. That's beyond unacceptable.
------------v------------
Mike Masterson is a longtime Arkansas journalist. Email him at mmasterson@arkansasonline.com.
Editorial on 03/13/2018
By Emily Walkenhorst and M
Posted: March 14, 2018 at 4:30 a.m.
An Arkansas House committee approved with no dissent Tuesday a bill that would ensure limitations to what the public can comment on regarding state animal-farm permits that have already been issued.
The General Assembly began a special session Tuesday with six committee meetings taking up the issues on Gov. Asa Hutchinson's agenda, such as animal-farm permits, pharmacy benefit managers, college savings plans and jury waivers. Only House committees met and held votes Tuesday. Senate bill sponsors instead made presentations to the full Senate, with no votes taking place. Senate committees are scheduled to consider bills today.
The House Public Health, Welfare and Labor Committee approved on a voice vote with no dissent House Bill 1007, sponsored by Rep. Jeff Wardlaw, R-Hermitage.
HB1007, which now will be considered by the full House, states that animal farms in good standing that apply for permit modifications cannot have anything more than the modifications commented on. The Senate Public Health, Welfare and Labor Committee will consider the Senate version of the bill at 9 a.m. today.
Wardlaw said the bill only puts in writing what the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality already practices. He said it would not affect C&H Hog Farms, to which the department recently denied another permit. The farm is located on a creek that empties into the Buffalo National River.
"It's got a lot of bad rumors out there," Wardlaw said of the bill. "This bill does nothing to help or harm C&H Hog Farms at all."
The bill could not affect the hog farm because the hog farm doesn't have a liquid-animal-waste system permit issued under Regulation 5, which is a state permitting program.
Hog farm opponents told lawmakers they were concerned the bill was not written clearly enough to ensure that C&H could not be affected. The bill did not specify that it would only apply to Regulation 5 permits. C&H had a Regulation 6 permit, which is state-run permitting program that implements federal requirements. The farm still operates under that expired permit while the farmers appeal their permit denial.
"This language says only an 'existing permit,'" said Gordon Watkins, president of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance. "This does not distinguish between Regulation 5 and Regulation 6."
Inserting a phrase that states it only applies to Regulation 5 farms or future farms would address his group's concerns, he said.
When asked by a reporter why he would not include language specifying Regulation 5 in the bill, Wardlaw said, "I don't think you need it."
Other representatives said they thought Regulation 6 would not qualify as a "state permit" but rather a federal one.
The bill applies to liquid-animal-waste system permits, which are typically hog farms. Poultry farms generally employ dry-litter-waste systems and don't require permits. Cattle farms require them only when the cows are confined, which they typically aren't.
Rep. Frederick Love, D-Little Rock, asked several times why the bill was needed.
Wardlaw said the Department of Environmental Quality's denial of C&H's permit application spurred the legislation because it caused distress to "financial institutions" that lend to animal farms. They were concerned that a farm, after receiving a permit, could be shut down because of public comments, and they wouldn't get their money back, he said.
Banks and farmers don't feel like they had the security they once had, said Michael Grappe, director of special projects at the Department of Environmental Quality.
"This bill simply provides them the protection they need so they can continue to do the business of farming in this state," he said.
When asked by a reporter which financial institutions had approached legislators with concern about lending to animal farms, Wardlaw said he would not disclose that.
Shortly after the House committee approved the bill, Sen. Gary Stubblefield, R-Branch, presented the same bill before the full Senate as Senate Bill 8.
"This is not exactly what we were working towards ... but that's what it came down to," he said.
Stubblefield said he wished the bill had been tailored to help C&H but that the final version was good enough because it would still help farmers. In response to a question from Sen. Joyce Elliott, D-Little Rock, about why the bill was needed, he said he didn't "even like the way the bill is written."
At midday Tuesday the governor, who called the Legislature into the special session, spoke to the Political Animals Club in Little Rock. Hutchinson said that Wardlaw's legislation is narrower than draft legislation circulated before the session that had some C&H opponents worried that it would keep C&H open.
"What happened was that a lot of the farmers in the community got concerned that, 'Well, if the C&H hog farm is going to be denied continuation of their permit, then somehow it is going to impact my right to farm,'" Hutchinson said. The bill should ease those farmers' fears, he said.
The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality denied C&H Hog Farms' permit application in January after public comments raised concerns about the farmers not following proper protocol in their waste-application process. The farmers, because of the location of the farm, should have submitted an emergency action plan and a groundwater flow direction study.
C&H, which began operating in May 2013, is located on Big Creek, about 6 miles from where the creek flows in the Buffalo National River. The recreational river was visited by 1.5 million people last year. The farm is allowed to house up to 4,000 piglets and 2,503 sows and is considered a "large" concentrated animal feeding operation under federal standards. It's the only facility of that size in the Buffalo River's watershed, which has caused concern among some Newton County residents, the tourism industry, river visitors and conservationists.
Senate President Pro Tempore Jonathan Dismang, R-Searcy, said he decided to have sponsoring senators first explain their bills on the Senate floor.
"I thought it would be valuable for the members to come in and go ahead and start having the debate on some of these bills, and getting the bills in front of all the members could also allow public consumption of the bills to take place," Dismang said.
On the other side of the Capitol, House Speaker Jeremy Gillam, R-Judsonia, decided to send the bills to House committees for consideration-- which is the usual practice -- because Gillam indicated that representatives "were comfortable going through the committee process," said House spokesman Cecillea Pond-Mayo.
Both Dismang and Gillam said Tuesday they expect the session to end Thursday.
Also on Tuesday, the House Education Committee gave unanimous consent to a bill dealing with how siblings are counted when considering a school district's limit on the annual number of school-choice transfers.
The sponsor of the legislation, state Rep. Mark Lowery, R-Maumelle, said legislation passed in 2015 regarding the caps on school-choice transfers had erroneously counted all siblings as one student in an effort to prevent families from having to send their children to separate schools.
That caused some schools to go way over their limit on transfers, Lowery said. Instead, his bill, House Bill 1009, only considers siblings together as one student if that group of siblings would otherwise set the district over its transfer limit.
No one spoke against or objected to the bill, which now goes to the House for full consideration.
The Republic
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Environmentalists fear a proposed Arkansas law that would prohibit new complaints against animal waste permits previously authorized by the state will gut their their effort to fight a farm that is authorized to house 6,500 pigs near the nation’s first scenic river.
As the Arkansas Legislature opened a special session Tuesday, Rep. Jeff Wardlaw told the House Public Health, Welfare and Labor Committee his bill only addresses concerns among banks and farmers that perpetual challenges to animal waste permits could make some operations bad investments.
Michael Grappe, the director of special projects for the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, said that when a farm seeks modifications to a permit, the entire process shouldn’t reopen.
“The bill before you provides some guarantees” against challenges from environmentalists and other third parties, Grappe told the panel. “You cannot sit there and dream up new things to challenge a permit.”
Throughout an hour-long hearing, Wardlaw and the panel’s chairman said the bill had nothing to do with the C&H Hog Farm, which operates near a tributary of the Buffalo National River.
Some were skeptical.
“I will not address the 800-pound hog in the room,” Gordon Watkins, the president of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, said as he opened his testimony against the bill. His fear, he said, was that the bill could cut off his group’s current effort to close the farm over fears of manure runoff.
“If there is some effort to protect C&H, we will come back to hold them accountable,” he said after the bill passed unanimously on a voice vote.
Congress declared the Buffalo the nation’s first scenic river in 1972. C&H in 2012 won approval for a federal waste permit no longer administered by the state, and the company’s recent bid to replace it with one issued by the state failed in January when regulators said the farm had not studied groundwater flow or developed an emergency plan.
One of the farm’s owners, Jason Henson, told KYTV in Springfield, Mo., in January: “For them to issue you a permit, and then to deny you a permit, to us seems very unfair and unjust.”
C&H continues to operate as it appeals the rejection of its new permit.
Under Wardlaw’s bill, if a permit-holder seeks only to modify a permit, the entire case isn’t reopened.
“We’re not taking away any public comment period on the front end,” Wardlaw told the panel.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who put the issue on the legislators’ agenda when he announced the special session Monday, said he believed the bill had appropriate limits.
“C&H Farm had a federal permit. What happened was a lot of the farmers in the community got concerned that, ‘Well, if C&H Hog Farm is going to be denied continuation of their permit, then somehow it’s going to impact my right to farm,'” Hutchinson said Tuesday. “This legislation … reduces their fear that somehow they’re not going to be able to continue in operation.”
Associated Press writer Andrew DeMillo contributed to this report.
Arkansasonline
Posted: March 10, 2018 at 2:44 a.m.
After reading that Farm Bureau-pushed draft bill in search of legislative supporters that would benefit C&H Hog Farms, I’ve been thinking. And yes, that is in fact responsible for the odor of burning rubber you’ve been smelling the last day or so.
Readers may recall how word had it the Farm Bureau was busy enticing lawmakers to secure two-thirds of the House and Senate who’d support a draft bill to force the matter into a special session vote.
The draft I read was clearly protective and beneficial to the controversial and misplaced factory in the Buffalo River watershed. The proposed law would invalidate the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality’s recent denial of an individual permit to the factory. That action was based largely on insufficient subsurface water flow studies missing from their permit application.
Still, the very concept behind such a draft was enough to make me wonder why each of us can’t have our very own state law that protects our enterprises, even when state regulatory agencies issue unfavorable rulings against us, too.
Our state’s Department of Environmental Quality (cough) denied C&H a revised individual permit after granting a one-size-fits-all general permit in 2012. The agency has allowed the factory to continue operating on that permit while it appeals the denial.
The proposed unnamed draft bill I read was signed by District 4 Rep. DeAnn Vaught, a farmer from Horatio. That version might (or might not) have made it intact to this weekend. But this attempt to change state law, supported with an intensive full-court press by the Arkansas Farm Bureau, basically said that since this facility initially received a general permit, that permit alone would be sufficient to operate forever.
In other words, the factory wouldn’t even need no stinkin’ individual permit! Don’t worry. Be happy!
A nifty lawmaking deal for one family business supported and supplied by a Brazilian meat-packer, which in the past year has found itself under criminal investigation, accused of corruption and bribing some of that country’s top public officials.
The draft bill I saw said the proposed law would apply to all factory farming, but it obviously benefits C&H itself immediately. That fact to me and other adult Arkansans exercising common sense says the very reason for even attempting to create a new law overriding the permit denial is a purely political remedy for a single factory’s plight.
To pretend otherwise would be the very definition of disingenuous.
So, back to my idea. How nice would it be to each have our very own law that protects against bothersome state rules and regulations, especially if we’ve had conflicts with a state agency?
Making us all these new laws won’t be an easy or inexpensive undertaking since I see how things work. First we’ll need a lobbying group with enough money and clout to threaten legislators who don’t comply with losing votes. There may be enough representatives and senators intimidated by the Farm Bureau, for instance, to vote that its logo must be attached to the Great Seal of Arkansas.
Among other enticements, our special-interest group will have to arrange for persuasive political contributions and fine dining at preferred restaurants (along with refreshments to ease the pains from agonizing hours of making all those individual laws).
Such a lobbying group must exist somewhere. We need one that can actually convince two-thirds of the full-grown representatives and senators in our Legislature to defend each of us from, well, the state itself. I know, sounds crazy.
I’m probably fantasizing here. And it’s probably far-fetched to believe we could even afford a “Person Bureau” to champion our own cause. Reality says none of us is a hog factory with experienced Farm Bureau and Pork Producers lobbyists already in place and rootin’ to go.
Perhaps we should open a statewide “Go Fund Us Account” on Facebook to help cover my idea. What do you think, valued readers? What’s good for protecting 6,500 swine in the Buffalo National River watershed from state agency oversight must be good for you and me, right? In the interest of truth, justice and the American way, we all have businesses and lives that need protecting.
And just thinking wishfully, this revolutionary concept in personalizing our laws to assist individuals and their businesses might even initiate a revolutionary new form of lawmaking nationwide.
Under new personalized protection laws, folks could simply invalidate pesky state regulations and requirements by simply showing that, because they once abided by them under a different set of standards, they are free from further constraints and harassment. What a great country we share with the right politicos on our side.
Like I said up top, this is only a wishful thought, amounting to little more than the aroma of a smoldering tire dump. The icy splash of harsh reality assures me, unlike a hog factory misplaced in the Buffalo National River watershed, and although we vote and supply the money for our legislators to spend, you and I will never have our very own special-interest groups.
About the pigs
Speaking of swine, what do you call a band of hog thieves? Hamburglars! What’s the favorite color of 6,500 swine in a hog factory? Ma-hog-any. What do you call pigs engaged in a tug of war? Pulled pork! What did esteemed geoscience professor and hydrologist John Van Brahana and I do when we spoke about the hog factory in Fayetteville to the Osher Lifetime Learning Institute workshop for the third consecutive year? We boared ’em senseless and hammed it up.
Arkansas Times
It creates a loophole to allow a facility to obtain a permit under a less restrictive general permit that must be renewed and then switch to a permanent individual permit that requires higher standards for approval without meeting those required standards. This is not protective of our natural resources and creates an ineffective and convoluted permitting regime. It places all of our waters at risk along with the businesses and families who rely on them. Specifically, this legislation threatens the crown jewel of Arkansas’s tourism industry and livelihoods of all the families who have invested their savings and lives into businesses in the Buffalo River Watershed.
Listen to the broadcast here: KUAR Radio
Proposed Legislation Could Serve As Boon For Controversial Hog Farm, Environmentalists Say
By DANIEL BREEN
A handful of Arkansas environmental advocacy groups are seeking to block legislation from being considered that could allow a controversial hog farm to keep operating.
Newton County-based C&H Hog Farms has come under scrutiny in recent years due to concerns over waste runoff into the Buffalo National River Watershed. The farm sits on Big Creek, a major tributary of the Buffalo.
Rep. DeAnn Vaught (R-Horatio) has drafted a proposed bill that would clarify procedures for transferring a general permit to an individual permit by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality. Gordon Watkins, president of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, says this altering of Arkansas code could allow C&H to continue operating.
“It just so happens that the only facility that qualifies as having a general permit trying to transfer to an individual permit is C&H Hog Farms,” Watkins told reporters at a press conference Wednesday afternoon. “Although C&H is not mentioned specifically in here, it’s obvious to us that that’s who it’s intended to protect.”
Watkins argues his criticism of Rep. Vaught’s bill is not borne out of an anti-agriculture stance; rather, the environmental impact of the farm is greater than its economic impact in the state, as it is under contract to São Paulo-based JBS S.A., the largest meat processing company in the world.
“While supporters claim it’s intended to protect farmers across Arkansas, it really is just a thinly veiled attempt to craft legislation to benefit a single, private swine operation, namely C&H Hog Farms, who are being directed by a giant Brazilian meatpacker,” Watkins said.
Watkins’s group, as well as the Ozark Society and the Arkansas chapter of the Sierra Club, is calling on Gov. Asa Hutchinson not to include Rep. Vaught’s bill in the upcoming special session of the Arkansas General Assembly. The groups also hand-delivered a petition with more than 2,000 signatures to the governor’s office as well as both houses of the state legislature.
The ADEQ rejected the farm’s bid for an operating permit in January, saying the application lacked critical testing information. Critics of the farm say its permit should have been rejected out of concern for the environment.
“We are for responsible agriculture, and we don’t believe that this is an example of responsible agriculture; putting a gigantic hog farm in the middle of the Buffalo River Watershed,” Arkansas Sierra Club Director Glen Hooks said.
Studies from the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture have shown an increase of nitrate levels in Big Creek downstream from the farm compared with upstream levels. Gov. Hutchinson has yet to release a list of bills up for consideration during the special session.
Rep. Vaught did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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