arkansasonline

MIKE MASTERSON: Will it hit target?
A single hole
By Mike Masterson

The way-too-long-awaited drilling beneath raw waste lagoons at C&H Hog Farms in Newton County is finally to begin tomorrow and continue for a few days.
Earlier disputes appear to be settled as our state is prepared to shell out $75,000 to complete this job an Oklahoma State professor reportedly offered more than a year ago to arrange for very little, if anything.
The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (cough) has contracted with Harbor Environmental and Safety in Little Rock to see this investigation is performed with complete credibility, something the agency lost in this controversy ever since it quickly and quietly permitted this factory with 6,500 swine into our state's pristine Buffalo National River watershed three years ago.
I understand the agency's work plan, is basically to sink a single bore hole into a area where electronic imaging identified a suspicious plume of possible waste leakage beneath one corner of the lower lagoon.
Oklahoma State geology professor Todd Halihan discovered the suspicious area and possible fracture in the karst subsurface during the spring of 2015 while working under contract for the Big Creek Research and Extension Team from the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture.
But whatever reason, the Big Creek folks, being compensated $300,000 annually in state funds, did not mention the alarming discovery to the Department of Environmental Quality, the state Pollution Control and Ecology Commission, or apparently anyone else outside the team. Its existence wasn't made public until earlier this year at a commission meeting when members of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance disclosed materials it had collected using the Freedom of Information Act.
The rest unfolded from there with disagreements over the number of observers from the Big Creek team and observers allowed from the Alliance. In the end, observers from both sides were denied in favor of a single geologically qualified independent observer named Tai Hubbard.
But that by no means has resolved conflicts in other areas of this expensive drilling investigation. For instance, on Sept. 6, Alliance attorney Richard Mays wrote to Environmental Quality Director Becky Keogh, expressing the group's concern over sinking only one exploratory hole.
Mays wrote: "On July 12, 2016, I wrote to you on behalf of my clients, requesting, among other things, that the agency seriously consider the drilling of more than one hole during the investigation at the C&H hog farm. We continue to believe that, due to the karst geology in that area and the difficulty in pinpointing the precise location of the possible release of hog wastes based on [Halihan's] images, it is very likely that a single boring will not intersect contamination being released from the facility. As a result, it could be erroneously claimed that there is no release. That would be a tragic mistake.
"Most of the cost of drilling," Mays continued, "is in mobilizing the equipment to the site. The drilling of at least one, if not two, more holes while the equipment is there would not add greatly to the expense, but would give a greater level of confidence to whatever results are obtained. In all likelihood, there will be no additional drilling done unless the results of this investigation clearly show a release, and it would be best to resolve the question insofar as possible while this drilling event is taking place. We strongly urge the department to reconsider its decision on the number of holes to be drilled."
Yet again, this agency ignored sage advice, perhaps with politics again trumping sound reasoning, and I understand will drill but the single hole.
Mays added yet another element to this controversy when he also referred Keogh to the panel of experts who examined the Big Creek team's monitoring program in 2014.
That panel was comprised of experts in hog factory operations from the USDA, Ball State University and North Carolina State University. Their findings went to Dr. Mark Cochran at the UA Division of Agriculture. They specified "three major potential threats to water quality associated with C&H Farms": possible leakage from the raw waste lagoons, contamination of surface and subsurface waters due to land application of this waste, and potential long-term buildup of soil phosphorus.
All three of these warnings, now two years past, sound like Arkansas common sense to this Ozarks boy.
Finally today, I strongly recommend every reader who gives a minnow about preserving the purity of our country's first National River to take two minutes and visit the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance website. Click on "photos" and take a stunning and reflective look at what our precious river looked like last week when Carol Bitting and Lin Welford took separate float trips expecting to enjoy familiar gravel bottoms through crystalline waters.
Google the phosphorus mentioned above and river contamination. Draw your own conclusions, then ask, if you were a tourist, would you enjoy this float as it exists today?
------------v------------
Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at mmasterson@arkansasonline.com.
Editorial on 09/20/2016

[JBS is the multinational corporation which purchased Cargill's swine division in 2015. C&H is now under contact with JBS]

arkansasonline

1 more probe puts heat on JBS

Arkansasonline

Environment Notebook

by Emily Walkenhorst

Manure-leak tests to begin at hog farm

Drilling to test for hog manure leakage is set to begin this week at C&H Hog Farms near Mount Judea in Newton County, according to an Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality news release.

Little Rock-based Harbor Environmental contracted with Cascade Drilling of Memphis to conduct the drilling, which is expected to start Wednesday and last three or four days, according to the department

The department hired Harbor Environmental as the contractor for the project for $75,000. The company designed the plan and hired Cascade Drilling as a subcontractor.

The research, which is to be conducted on C&H Hog Farms' private land, was requested by opponents of the hog farm -- including the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, which filed a lawsuit -- earlier this year after they learned of research done in 2015 that showed what they said was an unexpectedly high amount of moisture beneath one of the farm's manure ponds.

Big Creek Research and Extension Team researchers disagreed on whether drilling was necessary, arguing that any leak would have been detected at other spots the team is already monitoring. The team works out of the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture and was formed by state officials after an outcry in early 2013 over the state issuing a permit to C&H in late 2012.

Only Harbor Environmental's appointed independent observer, Tai Hubbard of Hydrogeology Inc., will oversee the research after a legal dispute over who would be allowed to attend the drilling project.

The Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, which opposes C&H's permit, sued the Environmental Quality Department in August, seeking to either allow their own hydrogeology expert to oversee drilling or to disallow the two members of the Big Creek Research and Extension Team the department had permitted to oversee it. The department settled with the group earlier this month, only allowing Hubbard, who was already allowed to oversee the drilling, to monitor the project.

C&H sits on Big Creek about 6 miles from where it converges with the Buffalo River. It is the only federally classified large hog farm in the river's watershed and is permitted to house up to 6,000 piglets and 2,503 sows.

The Buffalo River, the first national river, had 1.46 million visitors last year, the third-highest total since it became a national river in 1972 and the highest since a record count of 1.55 million was set in 2009.

Fayetteville Free Weekly

Issues Surrounding Buffalo River Watershed Continue

By Nick Brothers | September 15, 2016

The issues surrounding the Buffalo National River and a nearby 6,500 hog farm near Mt. Judea, Ark. that was built in a fragile watershed environment keep coming.

Following evidence found by the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance (BRWA) in April 2016, the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) has agreed to perform investigative drilling around the C&H ponds to determine if, as suggested by electrical imaging studies, the farm’s nearby hog manure ponds are leaking, and to what extent.

Initially, the Big Creek Research and Extension Team (BCRET) from the University of Arkansas’s agriculture division— which is being annually paid $300,000 in tax funds for five years to aggressively monitor the hog factory’s discharges — found evidence of a large, wet plume 120 feet below one corner of a manure lagoon. This wasn’t known until the BRWA filed a Freedom of Information Act and revealed the findings.

Many perceive BCRET to be interested in finding how the factory can co-exist in what’s believed to be a karst environment — a porous land formation where ground and surface water rapidly flow together — rather than determine if the factory is in violation or a danger to the watershed, said Gordon Watkins, president of the BRWA.

“The drilling is the latest spike in concerns in where the farm is,” Watkins said. “The drilling doesn’t resolve the issue of how it shouldn’t be there in the first place.”

After an on-and-off again situation with the ADEQ and the owners of C&H Hog Farms, it’s been settled that the drilling will commence Sept. 19. However, the BRWA finds it unsatisfactory that there will only be one drill hole being made to test for leaking, where to effectively check would require at least two more. They were also denied an observer by the ADEQ, but agreed to an independent observer chosen by the drilling contractor.

The hog farm will soon be in the process of applying for a Regulation 5 permit, which is a state-regulated permit that would allow the farm to operate in perpetuity. It currently operates under a Regulation 6 permit that expires on Oct. 31, which is a federally administered permit established by the EPA and needs to be re-applied for every three years. The EPA could overrule the ADEQ in this situation, whereas the EPA has no authority over a Regulation 5 permit. Once the ADEQ comes to a draft decision on the permit application, it will enter a 30 day public comment period.

“We’ll have the opportunity to critique every aspect of that application,” Watkins said. “The nutrient management plan, the fact it’s sitting on karst, its proximity to the Buffalo National River — all of the issues we’d think argue against a facility like this to be permitted in that location. We’re prepared to pursue that as far as we need to to have the permit denied and have the facility close and make sure this wrongheaded decision is made right.”

Additionally, three women — grandmas, as a matter of fact — in Newton County are appealing independently against ADEQ’s decision to allow Ellis Campbell farms to receive upwards of 6.5 million gallons of manure from C&H to be spread for fertilizer in their fields. The three are concerned the waste could potentially spread the issue of watershed contamination 10 miles up river, said Lin Wellford, one of the three women appealing ADEQ.

“We want our grandkids to have safe beautiful places to recreate,” she said. “I don’t think we’re getting told the truth. The pork council can say whatever they want, the farm bureau can say what they want and the ADEQ can say what they want, but the Buffalo is telling a different story. Who are we going to believe?”

A few events by the BRWA are planned to spread awareness about the Buffalo River situation, as well as a fundraiser to help the grandmas and their upcoming legal fees, which will be Oct. 9, 5 p.m. at Caribe on Highway 62 in Eureka Springs. Several concerts by Fayetteville’s Still on the Hill are planned throughout Newton County and Northwest Arkansas.

“If we want to protect the water of the Buffalo River, we have to stay vigilant,” said Ginny Masullo, a boardmember of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance. “We have an opportunity to prevent rather than clean up.”

C&H Hog Farm, Buffalo River, Karst Controversy

If this is the first you’ve heard of the controversy, here’s a refresher to the events surrounding the Buffalo River watershed.

C&H hog facility, five miles from the edge of the Buffalo River and nearby to the Mt. Judea school, was approved by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality in 2011 to house 6,503 pigs in 2,500 pens. An animal facility of that size is called a Confined Animal Feeding Operation or CAFO. The facility was built in 2013, and many residents nearby were unaware it was being built until it was nearly complete. Laws have since been improved to provide better notice to nearby residents of such facilities.

The manure beneath the pig pens is transferred to a waste lagoon that’s rated to hold about 2 million gallons of raw sewage annually, or about the amount of waste a city of 30,000 people creates. From there, trucks pump the waste into holding tanks and drive out to 600 acres of pasture to spray the waste out into the fields as a fertilizing method, called a Nutrient Management Plan (NMP) as allowed by state permit. However, half of the field lies nearby in the floodplain of Big Creek, which is a river that empties into the Buffalo River. Airborne waste emissions polluting the air nearby Mt. Judea inhabitants breathe in are also a concern, but restrictions on air quality are lax for such operations.

The fields that are used to spray the waste to fertilize the fields are believed to be located atop karst geology — which means the land has a thin topsoil above very porous rocky (in this case chert and limestone) ground — and would be unable to handle the amount of nutrient spray to properly filter the toxic bacteria from the manure in the soil. In a karst environment, ground water moves rapidly alongside surface water, and can be difficult to predict how and where it flows. So, there is concern that the waste being sprayed near Big Creek could seep into the ground water and pollute the Buffalo River, which is a federally preserved river.

However, the hog facility has been approved for all necessary permits by ADEQ to operate. In an environmental assessment, the two agencies that conducted it, the Small Business Association and Farm Service Agency, denied that the hog farm and its NMP fields sit atop karst geology.

Van Brahana, a karst geology expert, explained in a letter to the ADEQ that they only considered surface water in their first environmental assessment. In a karst environment, often times surface and ground water run together because of the porous nature of the underground limestone.

Upcoming Buffalo River Events

Still A River – Free Concert by Still on the Hill, Ponca

Still on the Hill will perform a free concert at Ponca Church on the North end of town near the Ponca Creek Bridge Sept. 24 at 2:00 p.m.

ADEQ Public Hearing on Regulation 6 Application

Tuesday, Oct. 4 at 6:00 p.m., at Jones Center for Families, 922 E. Emma Ave., Springdale, AR 72764

Still A River – Free Concert by Still on the Hill, Harrison

Friday, Oct. 7, at 7:30 p.m. at the Lyric Theater on the Harrison square.

Still A River – Free Concert by Still on the Hill, Eureka Springs

Thursday, Oct. 13 at 7:30 p.m. at The Auditorium in Eureka Springs.

Still A River – Free Concert by Still on the Hill, Springdale

Oct. 15 at 2:00 p.m. at the Shiloh Museum 118 W. Johnson Ave, Springdale

Hatch Magazine, for the fly-fishing community

Downstream

This is not where you put a massive, manure-spewing industrial hog farm

by Johnny Carrol Sain - Monday, Sep 12th, 2016

I’d lamented about rained-out local creek smallmouth fishing all summer long. High water had made fish tough to find and often posed a wading hazard. But just an hour’s drive north of my home, the crystalline cool flows of the Buffalo National River resembled something closer to normal summer conditions. Ever since the fly rod — an elegant tool for a more civilized angler — found its way to my hand last fall, I’d dreamed of a trip to the iconic Buffalo River. 

The Buffalo is the archetype of Arkansas’s Ozark streams. Limestone filtration makes for moonshine-clear riffles with dazzling aquamarine pools. There are towering bluff lines and abundant wildlife, and within the Buffalo River watershed, and along the creek itself after canoe season and far from the public access points, you can find that most elusive of natural treasures — blessed solitude. 

Calm winter evenings feature an aching, cold steel quiet that cuts nearly to marrow. There is a sentiment in the silence, a desolation that speaks with old and nearly forgotten languages. And then you might hear elk bugle from a shadowed hollow, the last flickers of an autumn inferno licking at the loins of a confident bull. The screaming roar rouses Pleistocene memories and vestigial urges in any listening human. It’s an invitation, an enticement to rejoin the primal dance. John Muir heard the mountains themselves calling. You can hear that, too, if you listen. But it’s often by cervid proxy here, along the Buffalo River. 

In summer, the river solitude is melodic with the harmony of neotropical songbirds and the hushed movements of secretive creatures. Summer tanagers flash through the canopy with intense singing to match their bold scarlet plumage. Velvet-tailed timber rattlesnakes glide in scaly silence over lichen covered rocks and through the shadowed forest of white oaks and shagbark hickories. Under the stars, a burbling river is accompanied by leopard frogs and Katydids as whip-poor-wills trill in melancholy tones and great horned owls punctuate the night with haunting flutes. 

The Buffalo in her lacy green summer dress had been on my mind at least weekly through the autumn, through the dark dead days of winter, and the anticipation grew with each warm southern breath of spring. But June, July and August came and went and the Buffalo remained just a summer dream. Due to all kinds of obstacles laid down by ordinary everyday life, my only summer 2016 visit to the Buffalo came in early September. It was a family day trip with the noon sun blazing down on a hole of water that featured its own parking lot complete with hers and his restrooms. 

But just a little Buffalo River is better than no Buffalo River. 

Though it’s known far and wide as an epic if hardly formidable float during the spring rains, the Buffalo is an under appreciated smallmouth bass fishery. I’d caught a few dandy fighters through the years, but rumors of 20-inch brownies were the fuel behind my nearly year-long Buffalo River obsession. And this one September trip to the Buffalo has me already looking ahead to summer 2017. 

Spoiler: I did not catch a 20-inch brownie. But I did catch a brownie of significance. 

As the wife, daughters and granddaughter frolicked in spring-fed creek water, I plied green depths and copper shallows with the fly rod. It was the wrong time of day. It was a public access point. Summer was nearly over. But the 16 1/2 inch tiger-striped bolt of bronze that hit the wooly bugger with a nearly audible thump dissolved all of that. The 6-weight bowed in reverence as the fish lunged for safety in boulders that had rolled from sheer bluffs above eons ago. Once, twice, three times the drag ticked with a nervous energy as I prayed strength for the leader and steadfastness for the hookset. 

And then the storm passed. The smallmouth was in the shallows. Ozark light, bent and wrinkled in the water, washed over fierce eyes and golden fins. Current rippled between my fingers as I gently removed the hook and supported the fish in a pebbled shoal. Gills pumped in earnest as she caught her liquid breath. Pectoral fins whirled and her tail took on a slight bend as she prepared to fight for her freedom again. This was when I set her free. 

Just a few downstream miles from where I caught my best ever smallmouth, Big Creek joins the Buffalo. Big Creek carves through a large portion of my heritage. It’s headwaters trickle down a hollow directly across the road from my father’s boyhood home and the general store built by my grandparents now owned by my uncle. The creek winds through valleys and flows into the Buffalo River just a few miles from the town of Mt. Judea. The final resting place for my paternal grandparents, an aunt and uncle, countless cousins and other blood kin is the Mt. Judea Cemetery. Big Creek carries more than water to me.

Less than 10 miles from the confluence of Big Creek and the Buffalo, an industrial hog farm spreads manure on pastureland underlain with porous limestone. A limestone foundation, also known as Karst topography, is why the Ozarks are what they are. It’s why the hills are known for caves, sinkholes and limpid water. Its presence guarantees that any liquid poured on the ground will end up in the groundwater and in the creeks. And it’s the reason that Newton County is the poorest of locations for an industrial hog farm. 

But that didn’t stop the construction of said farm. And, for various complex cultural reasons as well a simple economic reasons, the people of Mt. Judea and all of Newton County were little detriment either. 

The farm houses around 2,500 sows and generates 1.5 million gallons of liquid hog manure annually, and it threatens a county economy that depends heavily on the one million plus tourists visiting the Buffalo River and surrounding area every year. Tourism accounts for 20-30 percent of Newton County’s total economy while number of employee on this farm won’t break double digits. Seems like a lopsided and easily discerned dichotomy. Funny how heavy support from big money tilts the scales. 

You can read more about the farm here and its potential (and likely) threats to the environment and people here.

As more than just a fan of river, the region, and the people, I’ve taken an active role in bringing this issue to the public and was involved with a recently finished documentary called “Downstream People.” We’ve launched a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo to help us recoup expenses involved, provide avenues for viewing the video next spring and also support production of new documentaries that tell the stories about connections between a place and its people. Please visit the site, view the trailer, and consider making a small donation to further the cause. 

They built a hog farm within the watershed of the Buffalo National River. If they think so little of the irreplaceable ecosystem and pristine wildness of our first national river, what does it mean for the countless creeks and streams in our country without such distinguished designation?

Arkansasonline

Off, and then on
Drilling at the hog farm
By Mike Masterson

Last week, the owners of the controversial hog factory in the Buffalo National River watershed changed their minds and refused to allow the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (cough) to drill a test hole deep beneath one of the factory's two manure lagoons.
It was an unexpected development and a sudden reversal of the agreement between state officials and owners of C&H Hog Farms.
But then, only days later, the owners changed their minds again and said they would allow drilling to proceed.
On, then off, then on again. I imagine a light switch.
So for now, unless this changes, or the driller can't make it, the Department of Environmental Quality says it will proceed with its plan to drill but a single hole beneath one of the lagoons to hopefully determine what's created the large, wet plume 120 feet beneath one corner of the lower waste pond.
C&H owner Jason Henson changing his mind about cooperating after the state had arranged for a drilling contractor sounded to me like those hog factory folks saying they didn't want to participate anymore since the initial drilling plan changed in a way they didn't like.
Why would Henson (the H in C&H) decide after weeks of cooperating with plans for the exploratory drilling to suddenly decline permission, yet several days later give the go-ahead again?
Like many others, including the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, I can only guess. Could he have been concerned with what the testing might reveal, perhaps what the Oklahoma State University geologist whose March 2015 tests discovered the plume suspected: leakage from the lagoon?
Something certainly had to have changed to cause Henson to suddenly pull his cooperation. The primary change I see was that the Department of Environmental Quality had revised its drilling plans to eliminate as exclusive "observers" two members of the Big Creek Research and Extension Team from the University of Arkansas' Agriculture Division.
Under the agency's plan, the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, whose sole interest lies in protecting the Buffalo watershed, also wasn't allowed an observer.
Many have come to view the agriculture-oriented Big Creek team as sympathetic to the factory owners, particularly since part of its advertised mission is to explore how a large swine factory can co-exist with a fragile environment like the Buffalo's watershed.
In other words, while it was widely assumed by the public that the Big Creek team would annually be paid $300,000 in tax funds over five years to aggressively monitor the hog factory's discharges to prevent the Buffalo's contamination, the "extension" part of the team's mission apparently was to assist the factory owners' efforts in helping make a success of the misplaced factory.
Had the state proceeded with its misguided plan to have only Big Creek observers at the drilling tests, I'd have been more uncomfortable than ever about the way this intrusion into our precious river's watershed has been oddly championed by state regulators from the day the state wrongheadedly issued the permit three years ago.
I can't overlook that it was the Big Creek team that employed this Oklahoma geologist who (acting on his own volition and using electronic technology) discovered the unidentified plume beneath the lagoon. Yet it was this same Big Creek team who then inexplicably chose not to reveal his disturbing discovery to the Department of Environmental Quality or the Pollution Control and Ecology Commission.
It wasn't until months later that the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance made the possible leak known during a commission meeting.
With credibility and public trust suffering already, the department and the Big Creek team must realize it won't bode well for them in the public eye should this plume turn out to indeed be raw hog waste. Big Creek, a major tributary of the Buffalo, flows at the bottom of the hill and into the Buffalo less than seven miles downstream.
The Department of Environmental Quality responded to Henson's earlier denial of access by slapping C&H with a "Notice of Technical Incompleteness" regarding its permit. That meant C&H either had to allow the agency and its contractors onto the site to conduct the test, or would have to fund its own monitored testing. And its application for a permit was put on hold.
However, with permission now restored, the state said that when the drilling is complete, the deficiency notice will be moot and the factory's permit application will be reviewed.
I can't help wonder what our Gov. Asa Hutchinson is thinking of this multifaceted mess today, particularly since any consequences to bad decisions at this stage will unfold solely on his watch.
The Alliance echoed my sentiments by saying our state is investing so much public money, time and energy when it's apparent to all with common sense that this factory "has no place in the sensitive karst terrain of the Buffalo River watershed." That, my friends, summarizes the on-again, off-again, on-again controversy.
------------v------------
Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at mmasterson@arkansasonline.com.
Editorial on 09/11/2016

Downstream People - A Documentary

Help support this film by director Andy Sarjahani by following the link above where you can view the trailer for this revealing look at the environmental justice issues surrounding the C&H swine CAFO. 

Arkansas Times

Hog farm relents on drilling tests

Posted By Max Brantley on Thu, Sep 8, 2016 at 8:36 AM

Richard Mays, the Heber Springs lawyer, tells me that the C and H Hog Farm at Mount Judea has relented and will cooperate with a plan to do drilling to test whether hog waste from the factory feeding operation is leaking into the Buffalo River watershed.

Mays received a copy of a letter from the Department of Environmental Quality, dated Wednesday, that confirmed the farm had authorized access to the property for drilling as outlined in a compromise agreement that would include an independent monitor. The drilling will begin Sept. 19, if a driller is available.

We reported last week that, despite an apparent agreement on monitoring, the hog farm was resisting access. As a result ADEQ began a review of the farm's permit to operate because it is supposed to allow access to regulators. Once the drilling study is conducted, the letter said, that proceeding will become moot.

Groundwater Contamination In Karst Regions Affects Human Health

Pig farm foes pull suit over drilling