Buffalo River Watershed Alliance
By Mike Masterson
Posted: December 30, 2017 at 2:29 a.m
Count me among Arkansans wondering when, after almost four months so far, Circuit Judge John Putman will issue his findings in a case involving the controversial C&H Hog Farms at Mount Judea.
Four weeks is understandable. But four months from a judge known as honorable and expedient seems like a long time.
Attorney Richard H. Mays of Heber Springs argued before Putman on behalf of Carol Bitting and two other Jasper-area women on Sept. 6, 2017. They were disputing the modified “land-application” permit our politicized Department of Environmental Quality (cough) decided to issue the nonoperational Ellis Campbell’s EC Farms on June 29, 2016.
The permit allowed C&H, with some 6,500 swine confined in enormous metal buildings near Big Creek, to begin hauling and spreading some of the tons of raw waste it continuously generates on its own spray fields to some 600 acres several miles away on the former EC Farms swine operation.
The fields C&H has utilized since 2013 along or near Big Creek, a major tributary of the Buffalo National River, have been reported at or nearing capacity for levels of phosphorus and other pollutants allowed by regulations. They needed more space to accommodate all their raw waste.
Conveniently enough, being in the same family with C&H owners (The “C” in C&H), Campbell’s acreage was available to accept the overflow after the Department of Environmental Quality’s 2016 decision allowed EC’s original permit for a confined feeding operation to be altered to allow the application of wastes under provisions of so-called Regulation 5.
Bitting and her fellow plaintiffs immediately disagreed. Soon afterward, Mays came to their aid. “Our main argument was that a separate permit was required for a land-disposal permit rather than a modification of the confined animal feeding permit into a land-disposal permit,” Mays said. Administrative Law Judge Charles Moulton agreed with Mays and Bitting in his January 2017 ruling.
“In his recommended decision (Order 9) made to the Pollution Control and Ecology Commission, Moulton ruled on Jan. 5, 2017, the ‘preponderance of evidence’ showed we were correct about requiring a separate permit,” said Mays. “But at the end of that same decision he determined, rather than going through the process to acquire a new permit, [the department] could simply issue a new permit number and EC Farms should pay the fee required for a new permit.”
So despite the convincing evidence Mays presented, Moulton’s order to simply modify the original permit didn’t require the fullest possible public response necessary for a new permit.
Why does this sounds confusingly hog wild to me?
The commissioners immediately upheld Moulton’s order, which allowed C&H to continue hauling and spreading portions of its waste several miles away to EC Farms. In my Ozark Mountain boy’s interpretation, C&H lost the morning pig wrestlin’ contest but wound up tickled pink by winning Best of Show that afternoon.
Is this a great country or what? Everyone gets a little sumptin-sumptin at the trough of justice — every now and then anyway.
But that’s also when Mays continued his legal efforts to try and stop the tons of additional potential pollutants from being applied on EC Farm’s property.
He appealed the Department of Environmental Quality’s action and Moulton’s and the commission’s decisions to Judge Putman’s Circuit Court in Newton County on Feb. 22, 2017. The case finally was heard before a sizable crowd on Sept. 6.
Mays’ argument was the law was violated under Regulation 5, which says a change in the usage of such property does, in fact, legally require a separate permit (as Moulton also determined). As such, a new permit application would include regulatory requirements, a public notice and public comment on all aspects of a new application.
Lacking those oversights could matter a great deal since C&H’s spray fields drain toward Big Creek and seep into a badly fractured karst limestone subsurface into the national river’s watershed. The EC Farms property drains largely into the nearby Little Buffalo River watershed, which also is riddled with karst beneath the surface.
This is where the matter has wallowed since Putman’s Sept. 6 hearing. Those concerned about further spreading tons of raw waste are waiting for the judge to rule whether a separate department-issued permit is indeed legally necessary in this instance.
While my degree is in journalism (where a laptop and I have practiced for decades in the court of public opinion rather than the legal version), I don’t see this as a particularly complicated issue.
Was Moulton correct when he determined the preponderance of evidence indeed confirmed May’s argument? Politics aside, where does the law, itself, apply?
I suspect this is not the kind of politicized and controversial case involving state agencies that Putman is accustomed to hearing high in the Ozarks.
In that regard, he understandably could find himself in an uncomfortable position. After all, the hog-waste-promoting side of this argument has politically influential special-interest support. The judge also may have made a decision in the final days of 2017, just before this is published. Mays, Bitting, et al., can certainly hope.
Meanwhile, tons of untreated C&H hog waste will continue being spread across EC Farms’ fields while (as many of us believe) invariably seeping into the watersheds of the Little Buffalo, as well as the country’s first national river.
In that regard, one might rightly say the C&H folks, thanks to the state’s official “protectors” of our precious environmental quality, enjoyed an early Christmas gift in the karst-riddled Ozark Mountains and anticipate another no-holds-barred new year.
Mike Masterson is a longtime Arkansas journalist. Email him at mmasterson@arkansasonline.com.
By Rex Nelson
Posted: December 17, 2017 at 4:30 a.m.
NWAOnline
The floods were frequent and intense in Yell and Perry counties during the 1920s and 1930s. While historians focus on the effect the Great Flood of 1927 had on the eastern half of the state, west Arkansas dealt with its own problems as water flowed down mountainsides in the Ouachita and Ozark hills and overwhelmed those living in the valleys below.
After Congress passed the Flood Control Act of 1938 in the wake of another natural disaster affecting multiple states (the Great Flood of 1937), the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was authorized to build a dam along the Fourche La Fave River. In addition to controlling flooding along the Fourche La Fave, the dam was expected to reduce flooding along the Arkansas River, into which the Fourche La Fave flows. Testing began in October 1938, and the Department of War announced in 1939 that a dam would be erected in western Perry County and named for the nearby community of Nimrod.
The Corps began receiving construction bids in January 1940. The Russ Mitchell Co. and Brown & Root Inc. were selected that spring to construct the dam, and the federal government started buying up land in the area.
"By October 1941, the dam was largely complete," Guy Lancaster writes for the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture. "Heavy rains the following month completely filled the reservoir, providing an unexpected test of the dam's stability. By February 1942, the final clearing of trees from the dam's reservoir area was being carried out, with the whole project reaching completion in March 1942. The estimated cost of the entire project came to just under $3.8 million. ... The lake is situated along the northern boundary of the Ouachita National Forest with the Nimrod Wildlife Management Area to its west and Highway 7, an Arkansas Scenic Byway, to its east."
Nimrod Lake was the first of the big Corps of Engineers impoundments in Arkansas. During the next three decades, thanks to a powerful congressional delegation that would steer millions of federal dollars to Arkansas for projects, the Corps would stay busy. Just to the northwest of Nimrod Dam, Blue Mountain Lake was created by a dam on the Petit Jean River. Blue Mountain's construction was halted by World War II and completed in June 1947. To the south, the Ouachita River was dammed to create Lake Ouachita, the Caddo River was dammed to create DeGray Lake, the Little Missouri River was dammed to create Lake Greeson, and the Little River was dammed to create Millwood Lake.
Along the White River and its North Fork in northern Arkansas and southern Missouri, dams created Beaver Lake, Table Rock Lake, Bull Shoals Lake and Norfork Lake. Small dams near the Oklahoma border in southwest Arkansas created De Queen Lake, Dierks Lake and Gillham Lake. The McClellan-Kerr Navigation System along the Arkansas River created additional reservoirs, as did navigation projects along the Ouachita River in far south Arkansas. Channelization of numerous streams took place in the Arkansas Delta.
During a two-day excursion on Arkansas 7 from the southern border of the state to its northern border (that trip is detailed in a story on the front page of this section), we saw the work of the Corps as we passed just below Nimrod Dam on the first day, crossed the Arkansas River at Dardanelle on the second day, and ended our trip on the shores of Bull Shoals. We also saw a leading example of a rare defeat for the Corps and its congressional supporters. That example is the Buffalo National River.
At the time it opened, the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System was the largest civil works project ever built by the Corps. Congress passed the Rivers and Harbors Act in July 1946, and that authorized a navigation system along the river from Catoosa, Okla., to where the Arkansas empties into the Mississippi River in southeast Arkansas. The project was designed to provide a minimum 9-foot-deep channel along the final 450 miles of the river.
Kay Goss writes for the Encyclopedia of Arkansas: "Completion of the project was not assured by passage of the 1946 act; only $55 million was authorized for initial improvements, with later funding to be approved on a year-to-year, dam-by-dam basis. Sen. John L. McClellan of Arkansas and Sen. Elmer Thomas of Oklahoma sat on the Senate Appropriations Committee. In 1948, Gov. Robert S. Kerr of Oklahoma ran a successful campaign to become Oklahoma's junior senator, where he joined McClellan in championing waterway transportation."
The first commercial barge, which was carrying steel pipes, arrived at Catoosa on Jan. 3, 1971. The system was dedicated on June 5, 1971, during a ceremony at the Tulsa Port of Catoosa. President Richard Nixon was the keynote speaker.
Our trip ended where Arkansas 7 meets Bull Shoals in Boone County. The Flood Control Act of 1938 had authorized construction of six reservoirs in the White River basin. The Corps built Norfork Dam on the North Fork River in southern Baxter County from 1941-45. Construction of Bull Shoals Dam west of Mountain Home on the White River began in 1947. President Harry S. Truman spoke at the dedication on July 2, 1952.
The Buffalo River, which we crossed between Jasper and Harrison on Arkansas 7, is the place where Arkansans said "enough" when it came to building dams. The Buffalo had been included in the Flood Control Act of 1938 as one of the White River basin streams to be dammed. Two potential sites were selected by the Corps. One was upstream from Gilbert in Searcy County, and the other was near the mouth of the stream. By the 1960s, however, an epic battle had ensued between the anti-dam Ozark Society headed by Neil Compton of Bentonville and the pro-dam Buffalo River Improvement Association headed by James Tudor of Marshall. National media attention was focused on the battle, which even included a Buffalo River canoe trip by Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.
In December 1965, Gov. Orval Faubus, a Madison County native who long had loved the river, announced that he couldn't support a dam on the Buffalo. Faubus was at the height of his political power, and the Corps withdrew its proposal. In 1966, Republican John Paul Hammerschmidt of Harrison defeated Democratic incumbent James Trimble. Hammerschmidt then began efforts to obtain the national river designation from the National Park Service. The Corps had met its match.
------------v------------
Rex Nelson is a senior editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Editorial on 12/17/2017
Arkansasonline
Letter to Editor
Force agency to work
How many times have I heard that over-regulation is costing too much? Regulations don’t just happen. Usually they are in response to a situation revealing the need for them. When industries were disposing of factory waste by flushing it into the nearest waterway, many American rivers became so polluted that some even caught on fire. Regulations were formulated to prevent this naked abuse of our shared environment because they were necessary.
Now industrial agriculture is the leading abuser of our water resources, according to the EPA. In the Buffalo River watershed they do this in several ways: the over-application of liquid manure on fields in amounts exceeding the soil’s ability to use the nutrients, and by storing millions of gallons of liquid waste in open pits. By law, such pits are permitted to leak as much as 5,000 gallons of waste per day per acre of lagoon. Even a relatively small waste pit leaking 1,000 gallons per day could legally leak 365,000 gallons yearly.
We are assured that spraying liquid waste from an industrial-scale hog operation within the vulnerable watershed is “doing no harm.” A group of soil scientists was hired by the state to do water testing, and despite evidence of bias, their data reveal Big Creek, a major tributary located where much of the waste was sprayed, qualified as impaired in 2016. However, the data were not included when formulating the most recent state list of impaired waterways.
The Buffalo was named one of America’s most endangered rivers in 2017. Will it take killing it to finally force our governor to direct an ill-sited factory farm be removed from this sensitive ecosystem? Or will an entire generation miss out on experiencing what America’s first national river once was? Governor Hutchinson, the writing is on the wall. Force the state Department of Environmental Quality to do its job!
LIN WELLFORD
By Fran Alexander
Posted: December 5, 2017 at 1 a.m.
This upside-down world we're living in leaves us questioning not only what we are told, but distrustful that our facts might actually be fallacies. Up is down, right is left, black is white and right is wrong. Under these conditions, scrutinizing all laws for their true intent, in spite of their titles, is vital.
For example, upon close inspection of Arkansas U.S. Rep. Bruce Westerman's "Resilient Federal Forests Act of 2017," one begins to realize that what he calls "resiliency" in practice will actually translate into "cut, cut, cut." His bill is more about the resiliency of the timber industry's bottom line than it is of biologically balanced forests.
Our national forests were established to be managed for multiple uses like recreation, wildlife habitat, hunting, grasslands and watershed protection. Timber production was not supposed to dominate those other uses. However, decades of forestry wars have centered on environmentalists battling to save wildlife species and their habitats, keeping eroding soil out of creeks and rivers, valuing magnificent scenery, maintaining diversity in ecosystems, protecting endangered plants and animals and having grand trees to walk and camp beneath. These efforts have required citizen participation, which requires endless organizing and fundraising, and at times even filing lawsuits. They've had to sue for legal interpretations of just how you can preserve a tree by cutting it down, or save watersheds by polluting them, or protect wildlife by destroying their food and habitat.
While multiple uses of our forests can exist alongside timber harvesting, they cannot survive if logging is the end-all activity that laws are written to favor. No matter that the Forth District's congressman has shrouded his law under the pretext of fire prevention, by the time you reach the end of its 75 pages you realize resilient healthy forests are not the true end-game goal. Or at least you realize that a master's degree in forestry from Yale does not turn someone into an ecologist any more than George W. Bush's Yale degree in history helped him figure out which country was to blame for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York City. Much of this bill is an insult to other professional foresters.
Both fire suppression and light prescribed burning are forest management tools, but this bill, which has now passed in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and will go to the Senate, does a lot more than deal with the fuel build-up on forest floors. It guts provisions in the National Environmental Policy Act where page after page of "categorical exclusions" essentially rip out regulations that protect threatened species and special and historic places. It shortens time for reviewing management action proposals, and if the goal is to attack a disease or bug infestation or diminish fuel loads, no new impact statements will be required if actions will affect 10,000 acres or less (that's almost 16 square miles). This size can possibly rise to 30,000 acres (almost 47 square miles) of forests no matter where they are located. And there appear to be no rules preventing these huge tracts from being close to each other, which multiplies their impact.
Growing our national forests with human-selected tree species harvested at a convenient age and size is, in reality, commercial tree farming and does not sustain anything similar to a forest ecosystem. Converting mixed woods to single species plantations is what the huge timber companies do now on their vast holdings, but never satisfied, they want these same practices in our public forests.
Additionally this bill shrinks review boards to only a few representatives and keeps them very localized, although the national forests belong to all U.S. citizens with a wide range of forest concerns. It implies that environmental lawsuits are the reason the forests haven't been managed better for fire conditions, while ignoring Forest Service personnel cutbacks, drought, and spreading land developments as major causes. Also, making citizens pay up front for a lawsuit, whether they win it or not, pretty well guarantees decisions will not be challenged even when they result in devastating damage to forests and watersheds. Critics calling environmental challenges "frivolous" have obviously never had to raise money at the grassroots level to pay for them. Those who reap profits off of public resources have little room for casting ulterior motives onto those who oppose their activities.
National forests cover more than 7 percent of Arkansas. Please tell Sens. Tom Cotton and John Boozman to listen to more than one voice about their management.
Commentary on 12/05/2017
Buffalo River talk to spotlight algae
By Emily Walkenhorst
Posted: December 3, 2017 at 3:24 a.m.
The Beautiful Buffalo River Action Committee will hold another meeting this week, according to a news release from the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality.
The committee will hear a presentation from the Arkansas Harmful Algal Bloom Workgroup, a U.S. Geological Survey and Department of Environmental Quality partnership studying algae issues in Arkansas.
The committee also will hear an update on the Buffalo River's watershed plan from the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission. The plan, which would outline voluntary conservation measures that would benefit the river, is in development.
The meeting will be at 2 p.m. Tuesday at the Department of Environmental Quality's headquarters, 5301 Northshore Drive, in North Little Rock.
Metro on 12/03/2017
Just when I thought our state's politicized environmental protection agency made the biggest debacle of its checkered history by allowing C&H Hog Farms into our karst-laden Buffalo National River watershed, I learn the leaking Sanders Farm began operating in the watershed during 2015 without a permit or required nutrient management plan.
The massive Sanders operation (with an unknown number of sick hogs) near Western Grove apparently has been seeping raw hog waste from its barn area toward nearby Cedar Creek, which flows into Davis Creek and on into our Buffalo.
There are practically no regulations even on an operation this large because it's supposed to use a safe "dry litter" method of waste disposal; the state doesn't require a permit to allow dry litterers into the watershed.
What could have gone terribly wrong with this scenario did. It was revealed in July following a neighbor's complaint of waste leakage at Sanders, which triggered a month-long agency investigation followed by three additional months for the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality to respond. Yes, four months.
A news account the other day by ace environmental reporter Emily Walkenhorst says testing confirmed the environment around Sanders' 2,400 hogs (that rose to 3,200 last summer) has definitely been impacted by rain-soaked waste piles leaking into the soil.
And now a judge has given the owners less than 60 days to get their mess cleaned up and revegetate their property, if that's even possible.
I'm still aghast it took a citizen's complaint and a month for Environmental Quality to discover the Sanders factory was leaking this nasty stuff. Finally, this agency with a purported mission of protecting the environment for all Arkansans took the owners to court with plans to shut the polluting factory down and force the sale of their swine.
The news story said the factory had let some pigs roam freely, and stored piles of dry manure outside the necessary protection of barns (hence, the term dry), allowing rainfall to drain through it and into lower areas.
The department's investigation reported finding dark brown stormwater runoff crossing an adjacent county road and nearing Cedar Creek. Through its resulting analyses, the agency determined the runoff included hog manure.
The Sanders factory began operating in 2015 (three years after the agency permitted the controversial C&H Hog Farms at Mount Judea along the Buffalo tributary called Big Creek).
Unlike C&H, the dry litter disposal method required no permit despite its enormity and potential for pollution.
Problems with the Sanders operation became worse last summer when a number of hogs became ill and some roamed the property rather than being confined. Being swine, they kept reproducing. But the Sanderses couldn't sell them because of the sickness, Walkenhorst reported.
I wonder whether this illness was reported to any agency. If so, why didn't anyone take action at the time? Equally important, why didn't the people of Arkansas ever hear about this factory being allowed into the Buffalo watershed two years ago?
"We were just totally overwhelmed," Patrick Sanders said after the hearing to determine what's to become of their factory. "We did make mistakes." I appreciate his honesty.
The court action filed by department attorney Tracey Rothermel led to a 10-day injunction against the factory by Circuit Judge Gordon Webb of Harrison.
The case was reassigned to Circuit Judge Gail Inman-Campbell, who allowed the Sanderses to keep their swine but allowed the factory 60 days to clean up the mess before revisiting the matter in her courtroom.
Rothermel contended the runoff from this dry litter factory in effect became liquid animal waste, adding that the factory had broken environmental laws concerning adequate site maintenance and by not acquiring a liquid-waste disposal permit. She argued unsuccessfully for the judge to order sale of the swine.
New medium and large confined animal operations using liquid waste disposal are banned in the Buffalo River's watershed by moratorium until 2020, pending five years of research on C&H Hog Farms' effect on the river. Thus far, the C&H study has discovered "limited impact" to the environment.
Sanders Farm, which has contained as many swine as a large CAFO, for some bureaucratic justification is considered a medium-sized concentrated animal feeding operation.
Call this malodorous maelstrom (sorry) whatever twists your tail. What I see are at least 2,400 swine, some having been ill, in an "overwhelmed" and badly misplaced leaking meat factory with no containment lagoons continually generating tons of raw waste into this sacred watershed and a circuit judge who, until January, has allowed this admittedly mistake-prone venture to continue and keep the swine. I wonder why?
Meanwhile, these owners apparently will root around for two months minus a liquid-waste disposal permit trying to clean up the documented impact of its contaminating mess in a wholly unsuitable location.
Editorial on 11/28/2017
Posted: November 27, 2017 at 1 a.m.
Researchers in the University of Arkansas System say the stream next to C&H Hog Farms in Newton County has phosphorous and nitrogen levels akin to other similar streams in northern Arkansas.
In a research letter published this fall in Agricultural & Environmental Letters, researchers working on the Big Creek Research and Extension Team examining C&H's environmental impact wrote their finding suggests "limited impact" of C&H on Big Creek. But longer-term research is needed, they wrote.
The Big Creek Research and Extension Team continues to study Big Creek near C&H using state money. It is formed out of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. The team has been conducting the study since 2013.
In the meantime, any new medium or large hog farms are banned in the Buffalo River's watershed until at least 2020, pending the outcome of the research.
Critics of the Big Creek Research and Extension Team have argued the sampling has not been robust enough to measure C&H's impact and that the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture deals with the agricultural community too often to be unbiased.
The six-page letter, published online Oct. 26, details sampling of phosphorous and nitrogen from the Buffalo River, Upper Illinois and Upper White River watersheds. The sampling shows that concentrations in Big Creek upstream and downstream of C&H are "typical of streams draining similar land uses," the letter states.
"However, this does not preclude the possibility that nutrient concentrations at Big Creek may increase over time, especially if human development and activity in the drainage areas increase," the letter reads later.
Researchers noted that sampling results in three years of study -- from May 2014 through April 2017 -- did not appear to show that nitrogen and phosphorus had increased in three years in Big Creek. But they said data collection over 10 years would be needed to "reliably quantify water-quality trends and characterize sources," based on previous research.
NW News on 11/27/2017
'Limited impact' seen near hog farm
The Big Creek Research and Extension Team continues to study Big Creek near C&H using state funds. It is formed out of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. The team has been conducting the study since 2013.
$400,000 awarded for watershed tests
The Arkansas Water Resources Center has received $400,000 to collect water samples in the Poteau River's watershed, according to an announcement from the center.
The funds come from the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission's 319 program for nonpoint source pollution programs, which is funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Nonpoint sources are sources of pollution that are not directly discharging into a water body.
The funds will be used to collect hundreds of samples from at least 13 sites in western Arkansas. The samples will be used to measure how much nutrients and sediments move within the 1,889-square-mile watershed. The research could help identify areas that need special attention for water quality improvements, according to the announcement.
Metro on 11/26/2017
Concerns about the Buffalo River and available data figured prominently in comments submitted to the state's environmental agency about its amended plan to assess water bodies.
The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality is reworking the guidelines it uses to determine if a body of water is impaired. Impaired water bodies are reported to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Public comments regarding the department's draft for its methodology were accepted through Nov. 13. Department officials will respond to the comments when they finalize the methodology.
The department received 17 comments from 16 people and groups. Many asked the department to clarify portions of the document, to define phrases, and to provide rationale and formulas for certain portions. Many also expressed concern that the department's methodology would ignore data that respondents thought should be considered, or not account for issues that have occurred on the Buffalo River and its watershed.
Before the comment period, the department held six public meetings with 23 stakeholders -- including conservation, government and industry groups -- to discuss the assessment methodology and what stakeholders wanted to be included as part of it.
The department issued its draft in the fall. It includes many changes for clarity and consistency with regulations, and rules on data that will be considered. It also includes for the first time a method for analyzing continuous data, which come from frequent sampling. Previously, the methodology contained only protocol for analyzing more occasional sampling.
The National Park Service and the Arkansas Department of Health noted in their comments that the "data assembly" portion of the methodology appears to omit existing data that they consider potentially valuable.
The Health Department takes samples monthly, but the proposed changes would require that it sample more, the agency said.
"The Department of Health's bacteriological data is a consistent data source that significantly contributes to understand water quality in Arkansas and, for that reason, should be included in the assessment of impairment," Lyle Godfrey, the Health Department's technical support chief, wrote in the agency's comments.
The Department of Environmental Quality indicated that a data set of monthly samples could still be used if combined with another data set to create eight samples within a five-month period.
In comments, the National Park Service also expressed a concern that, under the methodology, algal blooms on the Buffalo River over the past two summers should mean that the river is designated as impaired.
The Buffalo River Watershed Alliance said the current and proposed methodology doesn't consider algal blooms, specifically. That's because the nutrients -- phosphorus and nitrogen -- that cause algae are not reported at a numeric level.
The alliance recommended that the state develop numeric standards for nutrients statewide. The standards currently exist only for a portion of Beaver Lake.
Several other Arkansas residents expressed concern for the Buffalo River, but many failed to specifically address the assessment methodology and the department considered them to be "out of scope."
People also expressed concern about whether the department's methodology is in accordance with water anti-degradation requirements and its own anti-degradation policy.
Anti-degradation, required under the Clean Water Act, is intended to prevent waters of higher ecological value from degrading any further than they currently are. Arkansas has an anti-degradation policy but is one of only two states with no formal implementation plan for it.
The National Park Service expressed concern that tributaries to waterways like the Buffalo River are not held to high enough standards because the state lacks an anti-degradation plan, that the department should support the protection of the existing conditions of a water body and that the department should err on the side of caution with certain sensitive water bodies until it develops and implements an anti-degradation plan.
The National Park Service also noted that certain phrases in the methodology on how a final determination will be made suggest that the department will inject subjectivity into its analysis.
The EPA raised several questions about how data would be considered and argued against the state department's proposal to combine data sets taken during certain seasons, saying it was "diluting the data set."
The EPA, and others who commented, argued that waters that appeared to be impaired but needed more data to confirm it should be listed as impaired and not among the waters that already have alternative pollution controls in place, as the department proposes.
Some comments expressed a desire for the department to use the conclusions of a scientist who did research in the 1980s for Arkansas to inform the methodology.
A few responses, including from the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, noted that the department's assessment methodology draft still includes changes for the maximum amount a water body can exceed the standards to still be considered in attainment of water quality standards.
The department has asked to change the threshold for exceeding minerals levels from 10 percent of the time to 25 percent of the time, while the EPA has not approved the change.
Clean up act by January, hog farm told
Manure runoff a concern at Buffalo watershed site
HARRISON -- A 2,400-hog farm in the Buffalo River watershed must clean up the manure on its property within the next 60 days, a Boone County circuit judge has ordered.
Sanders Farm, in Newton County, must empty a barn of dry pig manure, revegetate land and keep the hogs on its property, Judge Gail Inman-Campbell said.
A neighbor complained to the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality about manure running off from Sanders Farm in July, and, after taking a month to investigate the complaint and three months to send the farm a letter on its findings, the department took Sanders Farm to court Nov. 7 to shut it down.
At the time of the complaint and investigation, Sanders Farm had been letting pigs roam freely and had placed piles of dry manure outside protected barns, exposing them to rainfall that could run off onto nearby lands, including Cedar Creek, which drains into Davis Creek, which drains into the Buffalo River. Department officials in August saw dark brown stormwater runoff crossing the county road and nearing Cedar Creek. They determined that the runoff contained manure.
The department, arguing that the operation effectively contained liquid animal waste, said the farm was violating environmental laws with the maintenance of the site and by not having a permit to operate. New medium and large confined animal operations that use liquid waste disposal are banned in the Buffalo River's watershed until 2020, pending research on C&H Hog Farms' effect on the river. Sanders Farm is a medium-sized confined animal operation.
On Nov. 7, shortly after the department filed its complaint, Judge Gordon Webb granted temporary injunctive relief against Sanders Farm for 10 days, a period that ended Thursday.
On Thursday, Inman-Campbell, who was reassigned the case, heard testimony from the department and Patrick and Starlinda Sanders about their farm just outside Western Grove.
The Sanderses started the farm in August 2015, intending to run a dry litter operation, which does not require a permit from the department, they testified. They did not obtain a nutrient management plan for the project, however, which was required.
But the Sanderses ran into trouble earlier this year when their pigs began to get sick, they testified. The pigs kept reproducing, but the Sanderses couldn't sell them because of their illnesses.
The Sanderses eventually had about 3,200 pigs on their land when a neighbor complained to the department.
Since then, the Sanderses have been able to reduce the number of pigs to about 2,400, Patrick Sanders testified.
"We did make mistakes," he said after the hearing. "We were just totally overwhelmed."
Tracey Rothermel, an attorney for the department, asked Inman-Campbell to order the Sanderses to clean up their property and sell all of their hogs as a part of an injunction against the couple.
The Sanderses had agreed to clean up their property but protested selling all of their pigs because of the damage it would cause to their livelihoods.
Rothermel argued that an injunction was needed because no monetary penalties could reduce the environmental harm already caused by Sanders Farm.
"What damages can you pay to the environment?" she asked.
Inman-Campbell said she was not ready to ask the Sanderses to sell their pigs but ordered the other remediations of the property within 60 days. She will hold a follow-up hearing Jan. 12 to determine compliance.
Metro on 11/20/2017
Buffalo River Watershed Alliance is a non profit 501(c)(3) organization
Copyright @ 2019
Contact Us