Buffalo River Watershed Alliance
April 20, 2016
“In a democracy, people get the leaders they deserve.” – Abraham Lincoln
Dr. Luis Contreras – On April 12, 2016, life in Crossett, Ark., made the news. Georgia-Pacific had great things to say about their bond with the community: “Our view is that we don’t just employ local citizens. We work and live in the Crossett community, and we take our commitment to the communities around us very seriously. Many of our employees own property near our operations, and many of our future employees are being educated in nearby schools. It is imperative that we don’t stop at merely being a good local citizen or an economic boost – we also must invest in our communities.”
On the same day, Newsweek had a different tale: “How a paper plant in Arkansas is allegedly poisoning the people of Crossett.” According to Leroy Patton: “The Lawson couple used to live here, Patton says; the street was named for them. “They’re dead from cancer and stroke.” He pointed to another property. “Down here is Pat. Her parents died from cancer back there, and now her husband is sick, too.” He turned to a long driveway lined with trees and junk cars. “And this here is my place. Ain’t nobody but me and my old lady left. Everybody dead in my family but me. All of ’em from cancer.” People in Crossett need jobs and are afraid to speak up.
This story is not going away. Koch Industries owns Georgia Pacific. Their attacks on scientific evidence that formaldehyde causes cancer, after 15 deaths in Crossett, were reported in The Nation, October 12, 2011, “The Kochs and Cancer in a Small Town.”
At the heart of this tragedy is a “generous” permit granted by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality allowing emissions of 1.5 million pounds of toxic chemicals including formaldehyde, dioxin, acetaldehyde and chloroform. GP is not in violation of the ADEQ permit!
ADEQ logic explains why the C&H hogs continue on the Buffalo National River watershed. The National Park Service sent ADEQ a request to declare Big Creek and two other tributaries impaired. In the ADEQ “Draft 2016 Impaired Waterbodies List” the streams recommended by NPS were not included. With this omission, C&H is not in violation, and all the pigs get to stay!
Environmental compliance is smart, sustainable business, a strategic choice made by the board of directors. This is what Tranlin, a new $2 billion paper mill in Virginia, says they are doing to preserve the environment:
GP has no excuse for irresponsible, immoral and abusive behavior. Advanced, sustainable technology is available. Environmental discrimination enabled by ADEQ processes is a dumb business practice.
ADEQ and the Arkansas Economic Development Council decide our future with permits and public funds, selling Arkansas to energy-intensive, high-carbon, low-tech, high-pollution, heavy industries. AEDC is doing all it can to host the Chinese pulp mill, using all available public funds. There is a bidding war for deforestation, traffic congestion, air and water pollution. Foresters can’t wait to sell “forest products” ignoring the destruction of the forest soil.
We elect the people in charge and we can choose a better future. Arkansas has many geographical advantages; it can be the top eco-tourist destination with protected forests, cover crops and no-till farming, solar power, clean air and clean water. We deserve better, vote!
Pollution is created when a business fails to pay the total cost of creating its product in order to pump up profits by dumping, rather than treating, toxic manufacturing byproducts. The cost is passed on to the public at large while the enhanced profits are reserved for the few who own the business. Lead in drinking water, round-the-clock noise from illegal vehicle exhaust pipes and late-night music blaring from downtown bar speakers all have one thing in common. They are pollution. The difference is, drinking lead-laced tap water will drive you crazy faster than memorizing the lyrics to Lynard Skynard’s greatest hits while you’re trying to sleep.
By Mike Masterson
Responses to my recent open letter to GOP Gov. Asa Hutchinson asking him to become involved in stopping the potential contamination of the country's first national river continue pouring in from across Arkansas.
It's been a week since I respectfully asked the governor to do whatever's required within his administration to overrule the lobbyists and other obvious special political interests behind keeping C&H Hog Farms regularly spraying millions of gallons of raw waste into the karst-riddled Buffalo National River watershed.
I
also reminded the governor that his Democratic predecessor Mike Beebe lamented that his biggest regret was that his administration even allowed such a place to become permitted without him knowing.
Should this state and national gemstone now become fouled on Hutchinson's watch, that probability could become an even worse regret for him, knowing what's now been scientifically discovered about diminishing water quality on at least three Buffalo tributaries.
Following are excerpts from a smattering of citizen reactions across Arkansas.
Mary from Little Rock--"I've fretted impotently about this issue for some time and can't understand why the hog farm hasn't been shut down and the site cleaned up before this. Even a moron could predict the long-term consequences of the pollution. It was good to read your frank, factual article and I sincerely hope it's been heard."
From Don--"Thank you for the column, which made all the important points. I've been extremely surprised that Asa has taken no interest in this issue or at least that I have heard about. I did a little checking today to find no indication that the current administration has shown any interest in preservation and ecology issues. I will continue to support any legal efforts that are made toward shutting this farm down."
Vic writes--"If they have their way they are now going to dump in the Little Buffalo watershed. This is like a cancer that never stops. I still think the only way to stop it is for the Waltons and others with wealth to get involved."
Robert from Springdale--"I, too, am waiting for an answer from our governor. Go Hogs Go has taken on a new meaning in Arkansas!"
Bryan from Fayetteville--"Governor: Many of us have been working to understand and cooperate with [the Department of Environmental Quality] these past two years. My conclusion is that [the agency] seems to be working against the [river's] best interests, seemingly at every turn. They cite regulation after regulation in regard to their pursuit of proper procedure, yet when there is hard data from [the U.S. Geological Survey] delivered to them by the National Park Service with a recommendation to find three tributaries as 'impaired,' they decide those rules need not be followed. These three tributaries contribute about one third to the flow of the Buffalo. I can only conclude that there is a political agenda at work within this agency. However, please don't get the impression that any of us have given up. We are in this for the long haul."
From Denise--"The column addressed to the governor was wonderful! Your points were well laid out and easy to understand. I wanted to stand up and applaud after reading it. Thanks for becoming a defender of our beautiful Buffalo River. It is so important."
Bob from Fayetteville--"It's hard to believe a state agency set up to protect us from such misuse actually approved such a deal. The jury's still out on what our river will look like in two or three years, but as long as we have voices such as yours, I think we have a fighting chance. Hopefully, Asa will see the light and help reverse this wrong."
From Dave Johnson--"Your compelling points put the ball squarely in [the governor's] court. Thanks too for keeping this travesty in the public arena. What will you write if he passes the buck ... to another newly created "commission" for further study?"
Phil from Little Rock--"I've been following your crusade and commend you for sticking with it. I cannot understand why some state leaders don't rise up and condemn the hog farm. Please keep up the drumbeat."
Gerald from Berryville--"Enjoyed today's article. As you know, the hog factory location was a very large mistake that will not just go away but can be corrected and it needs to occur quickly. A simple solution could be to agree a mistake's been made and must be corrected ASAP. Shut this farm down immediately, salvage recoverable value and write off all remaining debt."
From George Smith--"Every columnist looks to hit a home run ... Your thoughtful plea to Gov. Hutchinson to save the Buffalo River from possible contamination from hog offal was a walk-off grand slam. It was a high point in my life to have [traveled] to Washington with Neil Compton, Jim Gaston and others to testify before the House and Senate for designating the beautiful resource a national river."
From R.G. Smith--"It's been several years, and it's still there. Again, God bless your persistence. Never, never give up."
No fear of that, R.G.
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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at mmasterson@arkansasonline.com.
Editorial on 04/19/2016
By Emily Walkenhorst
Posted: April 17, 2016 at 3:26 a.m.
The final list of state impaired and polluted water bodies that Arkansas has submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reflects a continuation of the disagreement between the state Department of Environmental Quality and the EPA in regard to water quality assessment methods.
On April 1, the department submitted its 2016 list, which the EPA has until April 30 to act upon.
The list is the 303(d) Impaired Waterbodies list required under the Clean Water Act.
The EPA has not approved an Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality list since 2008, citing its disagreement with how the state assesses water quality.
However, even if the EPA does not approve the 2016 list, any stream placed on that list by the state would receive additional water monitoring as required when the state issues wastewater discharge permits to new facilities or renews existing permits.
If the EPA approves the 2016 list, studies could be required on any listed stream to determine appropriate limits for cities, businesses or others seeking permits to discharge wastewater into that particular body of water.
"With regard to EPA approval of the list, all we can say at this point is that we have submitted the list to Region 6 for review and are ready to answer any questions or concerns the EPA may have," department spokesman Doug Szenher wrote in an email to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. "We have not yet received any indication of how long the approval process may take."
EPA officials did not respond to a request for comment Friday.
In February, after the state Department of Environmental Quality opened its public comment period in regard to the list, Director Becky Keogh initiated a "data integrity review" related to the list that was essentially a double-checking of data sampling, analysis and interpretation to ensure that regulations and methodology were followed, Szenher said.
"The data integrity review was initiated under the direction of Keogh, both as an extension of her previously expressed desire of having a higher level of scientific review for decisions by the ADEQ -- which will be one of the ongoing duties of newly hired chief technical officer Dr. Bob Blanz -- as well as in response to public comments and questions regarding the agency's methodology for developing the 2016 303 d List," Szenher said.
In its comments to the department, the EPA noted its numerous disagreements but commended the department "for the significant effort expended in assessing the State's waters and appreciates the emphasis Arkansas places on maintaining and enhancing the State's abundant natural resources."
But, the EPA wrote, the state did not include a rationale for removing several streams from the list. Further, the department did not list 33 stream segments that the EPA believes data show are impaired. It cited a state change to a water quality standard that the EPA has not approved yet.
In 2014, the Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission, which is the Department of Environmental Quality's appellate body, approved changing water quality standards that would allow certain water bodies to remain in quality compliance.
The changed standard allowed up to 25 percent of total mineral samples within a testing period to exceed water quality criteria for a particular body of water. The previous standard was up to 10 percent. The EPA, which oversees the federal Clean Water Act, has not approved the change.
The change came after the state repealed Act 954 of 2013, which removed the default drinking-water designation for state waterways and altered the way the department measures minerals in the water.
The EPA said Act 954 violated the national Clean Water Act, and the federal agency threatened to take over the water-permitting process if the state law remained in place. As a result, lawmakers repealed Act 954.
"To facilitate a clearer understanding for the public," EPA officials wrote in their 303(d) list public comments this year, "ADEQ needs to provide supporting documentation describing how the exceedance rate change (10% to 25%) is an appropriate and scientifically defensible frequency."
Officials with the state Department of Environmental Quality wrote in their response that the change was the result of negotiations with the "regulated community to address issues raised by Act 954."
Also supporting the shift from 10 percent to 25 percent, department officials wrote, was a change in the department's definition of "critical flow" for minerals in 2014 and the removal of a default assumption of flow in permitting for small streams. Before the removal, Arkansas' regulations allowed pollution-discharge permit limits to be set by assuming that a stream has a flow of 4 cubic feet per second, even if the actual flow of the stream was slower.
Among several requests, the EPA asked that the state list Lake Ouachita as impaired because of an Aug. 11, 2014, fish consumption advisory issued by the Arkansas Department of Health because of mercury levels in the water.
While "fish consumption advisories may reflect impacts on the fishery," the department wrote in its response declining to list the lake, the state's water quality regulations don't specifically identify "fish consumption" as a designated water body use for the lake.
Comments from the Arkansas Public Policy Panel and the Beaver Water District lamented the lack of data on some water bodies, including only two data points in five years for part of Beaver Lake in Northwest Arkansas.
In addition to criticizing the department's method of assessing water quality, many public comments centered on specific listings.
The state held a public comment period on the list March 1 and received 133 written comments.
About 100 of the written comments requested that three tributaries -- Mill Creek, Bear Creek and Big Creek -- to the Buffalo National River be placed on the list because of recent data showing that water in the creeks tested at above the water quality standards.
Department of Environmental Quality officials said the data do not fall within the required time period for assessment in the 2016 list and that the data are not extensive enough to account for statistical anomalies.
"Most of the data used by the commenters did not meet the requirements as set forth in the methodology as being distributed over at least three seasons and two years," department officials wrote in their response to the comments.
"ADEQ appreciates these comments from individuals who have taken an interest in protecting the waters of the state and hopes that this interest will continue," department officials said. "ADEQ will be investigating methods to assess continuous recorded data to assist in the evaluation of data for future assessments. In addition, ADEQ will stay informed about the water quality in these waterbodies and will continue to monitor the issue."
Additional comments came from business groups asking that the more stringent drinking water standards not be applied to bodies of water that are designated as drinking water sources but are not used for drinking water. The Arkansas Environmental Federation asked that the department consider that such bodies of water be used instead for industry and agriculture, which would not require it to meet drinking water standards.
The department declined to make that change, arguing that regulations require the department to assess bodies of water on the basis of their designated uses.
Several groups requested the continued listing of certain streams -- including the Eleven Point River, home of the endangered aquatic salamander Ozark Hellbender -- to ensure continued monitoring and management. But, the department declined to list them, citing current water quality attainment.
Metro on 04/17/2016
Richard H. Mays, a Heber Springs lawyer long active in environmental issues, tells me he's president of a new group, the Arkansas Environmental Defense Alliance, aimed at preserving and defending natural resources. Action today: Comments filed with the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality against reissuance of a general permit allowing medium to large hog farms to be permitted without a rigorous individual permit process In 2011, ADEQ issued a general permit that let hog farms obtain a permit by filing a notice of intent and waste management plan. The one-size-fits-all process didn't take into account location and other specific differences, the Alliance said in a news release. The general permit is open for renewal this year and the Alliance opposes it. The point is the Buffalo River. The general permit was used to allow a hog farm on Big Creek, which feeds into the Buffalo National River. The Alliance says this was "a great mistake and lapse of regulatory judgment that holds significant potential for environmental harm to Big Creek and the Buffalo River." The Alliance argues that because of the volume and toxicity of hog waste and the differences in geology underlying farms, permits should be issued on a facility-by-facility basis. Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who has expressed support for preservation of the Buffalo, picked the current head of ADEQ, Becky Keogh. Sounds like a good test of measuring whether talk will equal action. To date, the department seems to have continued more on a "voluntary compliance" approach to environmental regulation. Here are the Alliance's formal comments.
JASPER -- The National Park Service opposes Arkansas' draft plan to continue issuing "general permits" for concentrated animal feeding operations.
Chuck Bitting, the service's manager of the natural resource program for the Buffalo National River, said the proposed plan allows for less public input than the current setup, which has been in place since 2011.
"We feel that the proposed changes will make the permit less protective of water quality," Bitting told a crowd of about 70 Thursday night at the Jasper School District cafetorium.
The public comment period on the draft plan ended Thursday night.
Doug Szenher, a spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, said by email that four additions are proposed in the draft renewal plan:
• Exclusion of coverage for new concentrated animal feeding operations in the Buffalo National River watershed.
• Submittal of renewal notice of intent and a revised nutrient management plan within 90 days after the issuance date of the new permit, which would allow adequate time to review those documents and allow for public notification.
• Clarification of construction requirements in the general permit for new or revised concentrated animal feeding operations.
• Updated public-notice requirements.
But Bitting said that doesn't include subtractions and other alterations, which amount to 11 pages of changes.
"We really feel it is less protective of the waters because some things have been taken out, wording has been changed, and there's less opportunity for public comment," he said.
Some people thought that this Ozark Mountain town -- 142 miles from Little Rock and 75 miles from Fayetteville -- was an unusual place to hold the state's only public meeting about the renewal of its general permit for concentrated animal feeding operations.
"I object to this meeting being held in Jasper, Arkansas," Nancy Haller of Jasper said. "I think there are hundreds of people -- maybe thousands -- in Little Rock and Fayetteville that would like to have something to say about this."
The meeting was being held in Jasper because of its proximity to C&H Hog Farms, John Bailey told the audience in the cafetorium. Bailey is assistant division manager for the Office of Water Quality at state Environmental Quality Department.
C&H Hog Farms is the only concentrated animal feeding operation that has a general permit from the state.
Jasper, population 466, is the Newton County seat.
General permits are meant to cut down on paperwork and make the permitting process easier, but environmentalists argue that it made the process too easy for C&H Hog Farms to get a permit for a large farm near Mount Judea in 2012. They say the farm may be polluting tributaries of the Buffalo National River, a national park that attracts more than 1 million visitors a year. Mount Judea is 14 miles southeast of Jasper.
"The C&H permit was thoroughly and completely reviewed and all legal requirements were followed by this agency prior to its approval," Szenher said by email.
The agency's ability to issue general permits for concentrated animal feeding operations expires Oct. 31. The agency is requesting renewal of its general-permit authority for another five years, and a public comment period is required. Szenher said Environmental Quality Department will likely make a decision on the renewal before the current permit authority expires.
Some people who spoke Thursday said another public meeting should be held, probably in Little Rock.
"They're hiding from public input," Haller said during a break in the meeting. "This is something that affects the whole state of Arkansas."
Bob Shofner, a beef cattle farmer from Centerton, said the meeting should be held in Jasper because that's where the controversy is centered.
"People can get in their cars and drive up here," he said.
Shofner said there have been two environmental assessments that showed no pollution from C&H.
Evan Teague, vice president of commodity and regulatory affairs for Farm Bureau of Arkansas, said, "I'm sick and tired of hearing people from the environmental community berate farmers."
The meeting Thursday wasn't about the renewal of the permit for C&H. The hog farm has a permit that will expire next year.
General permits allow the state agency to "streamline the permitting process for a category of facilities which share similar characteristics and operational procedures," Szenher said by email.
There is a short waiting period for a general permit compared with "individual permits," which can take six months or longer, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The Clean Water Act prohibits anybody from discharging "pollutants" through a "point source" into a "water of the United States" unless such a "discharger" has a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit.
An individual permit is unique to a specific discharger. The individual permit is normally written to reflect site-specific conditions of a single discharger based on information submitted by that entity, according to the EPA.
A general permit is written to cover multiple dischargers with similar operations and types of discharges based on the permit writer's professional knowledge of those types of activities and discharges, according to the EPA.
"Individual permits are issued directly to an individual discharger whereas a general permit is issued to no one in particular with multiple dischargers obtaining coverage under that general permit after it is issued," according to the website.
"Many hog farms in Arkansas and other states have similar features and operating characteristics, and at some point a decision was made at the agency that it would be appropriate to offer a general permit for [concentrated animal feeding operations], just as we have created general permits for other types of operations," Szenher said by email.
Until 2011, the Environmental Quality Department issued only individual permits for concentrated animal feeding operations, but beginning that year, general permits were also available, and so far only one has been issued -- to C&H Hog Farms.
C&H is near Big Creek, which is a tributary to the Buffalo National River. C&H, which began operation in 2013, is permitted to hold up to 2,503 sows and 4,000 piglets at a time.
In August, the Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission put a five-year moratorium on new medium and large concentrated animal feeding operations in the Buffalo River watershed.
Metro on 04/15/2016
Fayetteville Free Weekly
Staff Photo Nick Brothers
Van Brahana, UA Hydrogeologist, holds up a sample of underground rock from the Boone formation in north central Arkansas. The holy nature of a karst environment will cause rapid flow of groundwater, which could be dangerous for water quality if polluted.
A 6,500 swine hog farm’s waste management may be negatively impacting the water quality of the Buffalo National River near Mt. Judea, according to findings from an independent environmental research team led by a UofA hydrogeologist.
After a year and a half of conducting tests and gathering data on water flow, water quality and the geology of the area surrounding the C&H Hog Farm, UA hydrogeologist Van Brahana and his team have found the Buffalo River found higher number of microbes and nutrients, oxygen levels are decreasing and trace metals (such as zinc and copper, found in feed) appear to be high-spreading.
On April 20, a short presentation of the findings from the Karst Hydrogeology of the Buffalo National River (KHBNR) water quality study will be made by Brahana at the Fayetteville Public Library on April 20 from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Questions and answers will follow. The event is free and open to the public, and light refreshments will be served.
“I think it is important that our community be educated about what’s going on with the Buffalo River,” Brahana said. “In my opinion these are very serious concerns, and the practical items we can learn from this is if you look at this and it makes sense to you, I feel it will enable people to become more active in governing and allowing government agencies to evaluate things.”
In an effort to spread the lore and history of the Buffalo River to the masses, Kelly and Donna Mulhollan of Still on the Hill will be performing a few of their songs they’ve written for “Still a River,” an album of original songs dedicated to the river.
“We are very concerned about the impact of the hog farm and wanted to do something about it,” Kelly said. “We figured the best way to make a contribution to the effort is to celebrate the river and give people a sense of the history behind the region they might not know about it. Our idea is if people love the river, they’ll be good stewards to the river.”
Eventually, the group hopes to do a river tour of sorts to provide free concerts to the communities surrounding the Buffalo River. The duo are in the midst of a fundraiser to gather enough donations through their website, stillonthehill.com. The project is partnered with the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, and donations are tax deductible.
Many of the album’s songs are based on the works of Ken Smith, who’s written a lot about the Buffalo River.
“The stories that he tells about the Buffalo River’s history and people are so beautiful, that I’ve been gleaning the stories and turning his stories into song,” Donna said.
C&H Hog Farm, Buffalo River, Karst Controversy
Here’s a refresher to the events surrounding the April 20 presentation.
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.
Brahana 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.
In early 2016, the Patagonia Foundation awarded a grant to the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance (BRWA) to help fund the KHBNR project. KHBNR is an independent research project which assesses and documents the water quality of surface and groundwater as it flows across and through karst underground to the Buffalo National River.
“The Buffalo River belongs to all of us, and it’s such a lovely natural setting. I used to take all of my classes on a float trip each semester,” Brahana said. “My concern is that this concentrated amount of animal waste, if people are swimming in the water some of those contaminants may impact public health.
“The question that if I know it’s going to happen for sure, it appears that it’s very likely. My concern is they’re not looking at the groundwater, at the karst. By omitting those studies, it appears to be making a special interest decision.”
BY EMILY CRANE LINN ON 4/12/16 AT 1:32 PM
“Let me give you a sketch of the neighborhood,” Leroy Patton said as he put his car in Park on the side of Lawson Road. He took his toothpick out of his mouth and used it to point to an empty house, an abandoned doll lying facedown in the weeds in front of the hollow structure. The Lawson couple used to live here, Patton says; the street was named for them. “They’re dead from cancer and stroke.”
He pointed to another property. “Down here is Pat. Her parents died from cancer back there, and now her husband sick too.” He turned to a long driveway lined with trees and junk cars. “And this here is my place. Ain’t nobody but me and my old lady left. Everybody dead in my family but me. All of ’em from cancer.”
The Patton family has lived on Lawson Road in Crossett, Arkansas, for three generations. Like most of the town, the Pattons earned their living from the nearby lumber and paper mill. In 1962, when Patton was 20, Georgia-Pacific, a fast-growing lumber and paper products company, bought the mill and turned it into a paper, chemical and plywood plant. Production soared. Patton watched the mill prosper and bring prosperity to his town—1,200 jobs, $6.7 million in annual tax revenue, a zoo, a 3-D printer for the library. But he also watched, one by one, his parents, neighbors and high school friends die.
Less than a mile away, Penn Road tells a similar story. In 15 homes, 11 people have died from cancer. “Look there,” Patton said as he stood on Penn Road, pointing to the permanent cloud that hangs above the Georgia-Pacific plant. “Look how close to the plant you are here.” The plant runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and emits upwards of 1.5 million pounds of toxic chemicals every year, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Toxic Release Inventory, which is based on self-reported calculations from emitting facilities. In the case of the Georgia-Pacific plant, these emissions include known carcinogens such as formaldehyde, dioxin, acetaldehyde and chloroform.
The plant also emits a steady stream of another toxin, hydrogen sulfide, both in the air and in the effluent streams of its water treatment system. One of these streams, which residents call “Stink Creek,” runs through the back of Patton’s land. When the wind is blowing the wrong way, it brings a harsh, metallic smell into the homes of nearby residents. A strong whiff stings the nose and burns the throat and lungs.
Residents began complaining about emissions back in the 1990s. In addition to the worrisome odors, there were the chemicals eating through air-conditioning units and copper wiring. Georgia-Pacific responded by going door to door, doling out checks in exchange for signed release forms absolving the company of any responsibility for damages to the residents’ property—or their health. “There was this man who was coming around talking to different people about the damages on their houses, coming around analyzing the property,” Patton said. “He came out with a checkbook, said he was gonna write a check. I ran him off.”
Others signed: Marion and Lila Thurman from Thurman Road received $158,000. David and Barbara Bouie from Penn Road received $34,000. In exchange, they agreed to absolve Georgia-Pacific of “any and all past, present, or future, known and unknown, foreseen and unforeseen bodily and personal injuries or death.”
Asked about these release forms, Georgia-Pacific says they were issued in response to allegations of property damage. The wording about personal injuries and death was nothing more than “standard legal practice” and did not reflect the possibility that the plant might be responsible for residents’ illnesses.
The Ouachita River begins at Lake Ouachita in central Arkansas, where it is a vibrant blue. But by the time it reaches Monroe, Louisiana, about 50 miles after it passes by the Georgia-Pacific plant, it’s a dark coffee color. “Most of the people in Monroe and West Monroe do not know that the river is the wrong color, because it’s the only color they’ve ever seen,” says Cheryl Slavant. “But it is. It’s the wrong color. I can remember when our river was blue and beautiful.”
Slavant can also remember sitting on the levee as a child and watching the water-ski shows on the river. Her husband recalls fishing there and frying up his catch for supper. But in the late 1950s, the river began to change. It’s not just that the water turned brown. The local department of health warned residents to limit the quantities of fish from the river that they were eating because of high levels of mercury. There are no more water-skiing contests because residents are afraid to swim in that water. On some days, residents say, the river puts off a foul stench.
In 2007, Slavant launched Ouachita Riverkeeper, a group working to clean and protect the Ouachita River through community organizing. Slavant and her volunteer river patrolmen had just begun investigating the cause of the pollution in 2009 when she received a call from Crossett. Residents there had heard about her work on the local news. They said they knew what was turning the river brown and believed it was making them all sick. So Slavant met with a group of residents, among them Patton and the Bouies, and helped them form an organization, the Crossett Concerned Citizens for Environmental Justice, which grew rapidly. At one point, Slavant counted over 700 members—over 10 percent of the town’s population. At their meetings, she heard stories about Stink Creek and how it carried discharge from the plant, through the town, to the treatment basins and, eventually, into the Ouachita River.
Georgia-Pacific says its water treatment system is thorough, carefully monitored and in full compliance with the law according to parameters laid out in the permit given to it by the Arkansas Department for Environmental Quality (ADEQ). The company also says the body of water residents call Stink Creek is a lawful, necessary part of that process. Barry Sulkin, an environmental scientist with the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER, disagrees. Stink Creek, he says, is not supposed to be a water treatment canal. It’s actually a stream called Coffee Creek, a naturally occurring body of water that predates the plant—and is protected by the federal Clean Water Act.
The United States Geological Survey has been mapping the region since 1934, three years before the plant started producing paper and decades before Georgia-Pacific acquired the mill. The earliest maps show Coffee Creek beginning inside where the Georgia-Pacific complex would eventually stand and running down into Mossy Lake before continuing on into the Ouachita River; later maps show the creek beginning inside the complex. The Clean Water Act, passed in 1972, requires that any pollutants discharged into bodies of water be clean enough so as to not disrupt the activities in those waters, such as fishing, drinking and supporting animal life. The law gives state regulators, such as ADEQ, the power to determine what those activities are and what the limits on pollutants should be. In this case, ADEQ determined that Coffee Creek and the lake through which it flows, Mossy Lake, do not have any “fishable/swimmable or domestic water supply uses.”
But in a 2007 Use Attainability Analysis (UAA) published by the EPA, the agency found that, “aside from the fish and macroinvertebrate communities using Coffee Creek and Mossy Lake, other wildlife live in or frequently contact the [Georgia-Pacific] effluent. Muskrat, beaver, nutria, turtles and ducks are known to use Coffee Creek and Mossy Lake, sometimes in very large numbers.” Most important, it concluded that “the waters of Coffee Creek and Mossy Lake have the potential to support aquatic life indicative of streams in the ecoregion.”
Those findings might have seriously affected the parameters of Georgia-Pacific’s permit—had ADEQ been required to consider them. But the company sent a letter to the EPA (cc’ing several Arkansas and Louisiana congressmen and senators) in which it accused the regulatory agency of acting without its knowledge and demanding the opportunity to redo the study using a contractor of its choosing. The EPA agreed, the 2007 UAA was set aside, and Georgia-Pacific’s effluent flowed on. Meanwhile, Georgia-Pacific hired the environmental engineering company Aquaeter to conduct a study. It completed a draft UAA in 2013 but has not yet finalized or published any findings.
Slavant says it all comes down to politics. The EPA gets its funding from Congress, and members of Congress get their funding from businesses. Members of Congress also answer to their constituents, and those constituents want jobs. Georgia-Pacific provides southern Arkansas with 1,200 of them, and no one—not the state of Arkansas, nor its representatives, nor the residents of Crossett—can afford to put those jobs in jeopardy.
For Tim Toler, president of the Crossett Chamber of Commerce, those jobs are more than just jobs; they’re Crossett’s lifeblood. “Those jobs provide an excellent standard of living in our town, they provide retirement for people...and they provide health care for employees,” he says. “And, of course, those jobs provide an income that allows people to shop in our town, eat in our restaurants and purchase services and goods. Our town would not exist [without the mill].” Which is why, while many citizens are deeply concerned that the plant’s emissions might be making them sick, the townsfolk are far from sharpening their pitchforks. On the contrary, most residents are fiercely protective of the plant and quick to shoot down the possibility that it could be harming them.
Ben Walsh, a Crossett family practitioner, rejects claims that Crossett suffers from any abnormal health problems. “We have to look at the science, and the science says there’s no increased rate of cancer in Ashley County,” Walsh says. He’s right. The Arkansas Department of Health cancer registry shows the rate of cancer deaths in the county to be slightly belowthe state average. So what does Walsh make of places like Penn or Lawson Road? “You would want to look at all the variables, such as whether these people smoked or were obese,” he says.
Or you might want to look at how close they are to the wastewater stream, Slavant says. The numbers of affected people clustered in the area are just too improbable for her to consider any other possible cause. And it’s hard for her to get Georgia-Pacific’s release forms out of her mind, with the wording “past, present, or future...personal injuries or death.”
Chemist and environmental consultant Wilma Subra is certain emissions are to blame for the town’s many respiratory illnesses. In 2012, the Louisiana Environmental Action Network commissioned Subra to set up air-monitoring stations all around town to sample levels of hydrogen sulfide. At the same time, she asked resident to fill out symptom reports recording instances of dizziness, headaches, coughing or eye irritation. She found that hydrogen sulfide levels were highest nearest the stream and that higher levels corresponded with greater and more severe symptoms among residents.
In addition to the chemicals Georgia-Pacific reports, there could be any number of unreported chemicals leaching into the atmosphere “off the books.” On an inspection last year, the EPA observed several defective pieces of equipment that were allowing unidentified gases to escape into the atmosphere. It also observed filtrate tanks and storage tanks that were knowingly being vented into the atmosphere rather than through a controlled system, as required by the Clean Air Act. Altogether, the EPA found 33 areas where Georgia-Pacific was noncompliant with federal laws and dozens of other “areas of concern.”
Georgia-Pacific is working on addressing the EPA’s concerns, says Jennifer King, a public affairs manager with Georgia-Pacific. In the meantime, however, the plant continues to operate around the clock.
Georgia-Pacific’s permit is up for renewal, and if enough concerned citizens submit comments to ADEQ, it could be pressured to modify the permit this time around. “The state has to open the draft permit up for public comment,” says Corinne Van Dalen, Ouachita Riverkeeper’s lead attorney. “And if there are enough public comments, they will have to hold a hearing to discuss the permit…. After that, even if the permit is approved, anyone can appeal a permit decision to the permit appeals board and from there to the state court.”
Slavant isn’t looking for Georgia-Pacific to close up shop; she only wants to see regulatory agencies hold the plant to the standards of the law. “There needs to be a GP plant here, but it needs to be updated, it needs to be fixed,” she says. “And it can be done.”
KUAF Radio, Ozarks At Large
Interview with Dr. Van Brahana
By Jacqueline Froelich
Scientists studying the environment around a new controversial swine breeding industrial farm on the Buffalo National River Watershed presented their latest findings to the Arkansas Academy of Science April 2nd.
We talk with independent hydrogeologist Dr. Van Brahana. Several key public meetings are also scheduled this week, one regarding Arkansas's general CAFO permit regulation, another on expanding the swine farm's sewage waste spraying to more farm fields--both hosted by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality in Jasper.
Posted: April 12, 2016 at 2:31 a.m.
Dear Governor Hutchinson: Having known you and our gracious state's first lady Susan for years, you realize I wouldn't write this unless my heartfelt convictions were firmly behind these words.
I know you, having served in the same 3rd District congressional seat my uncle, the late John Paul Hammerschmidt, held for 26 years, understand better than most the trials of public responsibility and how close the Buffalo River was to his heart and conscience. That's why he acted in the face of strong local resistance to ensure this precious resource was preserved for generations to come.
His willingness to do what he and some Arkansas colleagues in Congress knew deep inside was the right thing to do resulted in the Buffalo being named our country's first national river in 1972. How wonderful for our state.
Of his many achievements in the career of public service he so honored and cherished, I believe his efforts to ensure the Buffalo River remained protected were the ones in which he took most pride.
So I write to sincerely ask you, on behalf of myself and untold thousands of concerned Arkansans and others who've enjoyed the experience of the magnificent Buffalo National River, to do whatever's necessary to stop the likely contamination of our precious Buffalo National River from raw hog waste.
Good-ol'-boy arm-twisting politics, self-interested lobbyists and campaign contributors be damned; we ask you to act as the elected governor of Arkansas to ensure this natural treasure is never polluted by what geoscience experts believe is the inevitable contamination from swine waste continuously dumped into the Buffalo watershed through rapid, steady subsurface seepage, as well as into its primary tributaries, including Big Creek.
No lesser authorities than the National Park Service and the U.S. Geological Survey, as well as nationally respected former UA geosciences professor John Van Brahana, have conducted studies that strongly agree, indicating such pollution already is affecting the watershed through increased E. coli counts and/or low dissolved oxygen levels.
Warning lights are on. Yet your state agency solely responsible for ensuring our Buffalo is never contaminated, the very one that wrongly allowed this travesty into the karst-laden region more than two years ago, stands by idly, even making hollow excuses why it can do nothing due to "policies."
Above all words and excuses, Mr. Governor, common sense tells every Arkansan that one cannot continually spray raw feces and urine in amounts larger than are created by the nearby city of Harrison onto overly saturated fields bordering Big Creek without those millions of gallons causing pollution. Water does flow downhill to the Buffalo.
Yes, I realize your predecessor Mike Beebe formed a five-year survey called the Big Creek Research and Extension Team from the UA's Department of Agriculture. That group not only costs the taxpayers at least $300,000 to perform its responsibilities, but there is widespread skepticism as to its making impartial assessments when it comes to policing C&H Hog Farms at Mount Judea and its 6,500 confined swine.
After all, we have state agricultural academics using state funds to investigate the credibility of the state's Department of Environmental Quality that wrongheadedly permitted this place, with its former director saying she didn't even realize her agency had done so. Neither did the governor, the Park Service or even Environmental Quality's local staffers.
Those who embrace the hog factory staying put in this precious and sensitive environmental location claim to support farming and the farmer, as well as the pork-producing industry. I say this type of corporately financed concentrated animal feeding operation obviously diminishes and even eliminates genuine family farms who can't compete. In this instance, a misplaced factory seriously endangers a $54 million-a-year recreation and tourism gemstone in one of Arkansas' poorest regions.
Finally, in my appeal to do the right thing and take meaningful action with the Pollution Control and Ecology Commission you appoint, and the seemingly neutered and politicized Department of Environmental Quality, I refer to previous Gov. Mike Beebe's biggest confessed regret being that he was unaware this factory was being permitted.
Beebe was quoted by a fellow columnist saying: "I wish it was never there. I've stopped all future ones. ... If I had it to do over, it wouldn't happen."
Today, Governor Hutchinson, the people of Arkansas are closely watching how you choose to step up to resolve this most significant matter. I'm truly hoping you choose to follow John Paul's sense of integrity and do the obvious proper and honorable thing by our only national river.
Rather than regret, closing this misplaced factory before it irreparably contaminates our national river could become among your finest achievements in office.
Editorial on 04/12/2016
How new tests prove hog, poultry pollution of NC waters See link at bottom of article to USGS report.
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