Buffalo River Watershed Alliance
The EPA delays promised rules to control the waste
Mark Drajem
August 20, 2015 — 10:00 AM CDT
Share on FaShare on Twitter
Don't Miss Out — Follow Bloomberg On
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
Rene Miller grew up on a seven-acre slip of Duplin County, N.C., where her mother, Daisy, raised corn, chickens, and hogs. Now, what was a neighbor’s tobacco farm across the narrow two-lane road is a field where a giant sprinkler sprays waste from an industrial hog-raising operation onto whatever happens to be planted there—corn, hay, soybeans. The force of the liquefied manure is so strong it splatters the street sign Miller installed to mark Daisy Miller Lane. “I can’t go out in my yard to watch the cars go by. I can’t put my clothes out on the line,” she says. “It stinks.”
Duplin County has the nation’s highest concentration of industrial hog farms, with about 2 million pigs and 60,000 people. Environmental groups estimate the state’s 8 million hogs produce about 14 billion gallons of waste a year. Nationally, according to the most recent report by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, feedlots for cattle, dairy cows, hogs, and poultry produce 300 million tons of manure a year.
There are about 2 million pigs in Duplin County (none as cute as this one).
Photographer: Pam Francis/Getty Images
The problem is how to dispose of it. In the swine facilities, hogs in groups of more than 20 are put into stalls with slats in the floor. Their feces and urine go through the openings and out pipes into open-air lagoons that can hold 180 days worth of waste. The industry says the holdings allow bacteria to break down the waste and gobble up pathogens. In its ideal state, the wastewater becomes free fertilizer for adjoining crop fields. “The application of waste is something that’s become more and more popular because it’s recycling,” says Kraig Westerbeek, who oversees environmental compliance at Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest hog producer and pork processor, which has contract farms and packing operations in North Carolina.
Yet nutrient-rich runoff from spray fields like the one across from Miller’s farm also nurtures algae blooms that choke rivers by depleting them of oxygen. North Carolina has seen blooms in the Cape Fear River and fish kills in the Neuse River since hog feedlots moved in 30 years ago. The farms “are inarguably the biggest source of nutrients to the coastal region,” says Larry Cahoon, a University of North Carolina at Wilmington professor who studies water quality in the Cape Fear River. “Are the creeks and streams showing the effects of nutrient loading? Yes.”
In 2010, after being sued by the Waterkeeper Alliance and other environmental groups, the EPA pledged to reconsider a rule issued during the George W. Bush administration exempting feedlots from having to disclose hazardous emissions to the agency and the public. Five years later, the EPA hasn’t done anything about it. On July 13 agency lawyers went back to court and said the regulations wouldn’t be changed after all.
The Obama administration had early on signaled a different approach. Lisa Jackson, Obama’s first EPA chief, pledged to crack down on water violations and make public more information about problems. (Jackson now oversees environmental initiatives at Apple.) The president’s first appointee to oversee the agency’s water quality office had been Nancy Stoner, an environmental attorney who’d sued the EPA to win tighter regulations on animal feedlots. Stoner left the EPA in 2014 to become director of water programs for the Pisces Foundation. She declined to comment.
The EPA says it’s focusing on taking action against livestock producers that break the rules. “We are committed to civil and criminal enforcement for the cases that have the highest impact on protecting public health and the environment,” Liz Purchia, an EPA spokeswoman, said in an e-mail. “At the same time, we’re providing states with guidance and resources to help them.”
Former EPA officials say the agency faces a hostile Congress urging it to go easy on the animal farms. Budget cuts have also constrained its ability to act. The EPA is also preoccupied with implementing carbon emissions rules, a top White House priority before Obama leaves office. Agency data show that its inspections and fines of feedlots, known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), dropped to a seven-year low last year, with 26 enforcement actions compared with 71 in 2008. A study of animal air pollution has dragged on for decade. While the study continues, thousands of CAFOs continue under a safe-harbor accord guaranteeing they won’t face any fines from the EPA for air pollution.
In June, the U.S. Geological Survey published a study on nutrient and pollution levels in streams near hog operations, comparing them with those far from feedlots. “Land applications of waste manure at swine CAFOs influenced ion and nutrient chemistry in many of the North Carolina Coastal Plain streams that were studied,” the researchers concluded. In other words: CAFOs polluted the water. The North Carolina Pork Council disputes those findings and commissioned its own analysis of the USGS data, concluding that soil type, not the number of hogs, determined the amount of nutrients reaching streams.
For farmers, keeping up with the constant flood of waste is an issue. The Waterkeeper Alliance has documented hog farmers spraying on fallow and frozen fields and even on cattle as they grazed. Spraying also occurs on rainy days, despite regulations that are supposed to limit spraying during wet periods, when more effluent washes into waterways. “What they can put on the fields depends on average rainfall,” says Rick Dove, a longtime Waterkeeper activist who’s been tussling with hog farmers for decades along the Neuse River, which runs through the heart of North Carolina hog country before emptying into the Pamlico Sound.
The expansion of North Carolina’s poultry industry is adding to environmental hazards. While the total number of hog lagoons has been capped since the late 1990s, chicken production has grown by more than 42 percent to 795 million birds last year from 559 million in 1992. From a small airplane above Duplin County, it’s easy to spot the long, metal-roofed buildings for chickens. Poultry doesn’t produce as much liquid waste, but its litter is also spread on fields and can release nitrogen into groundwater or waterways.
Residents say they don’t think anything will change without the federal government’s involvement. “EPA needs to do what it should do, because we’re living with this on our land,” says Elsie Herring, who lives in Wallace, N.C., next to a field where the liquefied manure is sprayed. Former regulators say it’s much harder to deal with agricultural runoff than factories. “The idea of treating a farm like a DuPont chemical plant is not good government or good business,” says Sally Shaver, a former EPA official who consults with the hog industry on environmental issues. “I don’t think there would be problems if these things didn’t stink.”
By Emily Walkenhorst
This article was published today at 4:05 a.m. Updated today at 4:05 a.m.
A proposed five-year ban on new medium and large hog farms in the Buffalo National River watershed cleared its second-to-last hurdle Wednesday morning when it passed through the Arkansas Legislature's Rules and Regulations Committee with only one representative objecting.
A final decision on the ban could come Aug. 28 when the Pollution Control and Ecology Commission -- the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality's appellate body -- meets.
The commission originally got the rule-making process underway after the Ozark Society and the Arkansas Public Policy Panel submitted a proposal seeking a permanent ban on new medium and large hog farms in the watershed.
"I don't have any reason to believe the commission won't support this at this point," said Sam Ledbetter, an attorney with the McMath Woods firm representing the Ozark Society and the Arkansas Public Policy Panel.
Flanked by former U.S. Reps. Vic Snyder and Ed Bethune of Arkansas, Ledbetter testified in favor of the ban Wednesday.
The five-year ban -- a compromise among environmental representatives, Gov. Asa Hutchinson's office and some state legislators -- requires that, in five years, the Department of Environmental Quality's director initiate a new rule-making process to delete the ban or make it permanent. That step would allow the director, the commission and legislators to review the continuing study by the University of Arkansas System's Agriculture Division on the environmental impact of C&H Hog Farms in Mount Judea in the Buffalo River watershed.
C&H Hog Farms is a large hog facility on Big Creek, six miles from where it meets the Buffalo River. The facility, now 2 years old, has been criticized by environmental groups for its potential to pollute the river with millions of gallons of hog feces kept in lagoons or spread out as fertilizer on the rough karst terrain in the area.
The Buffalo National River -- the county's first national river -- is a popular tourist spot, with more than 1.3 million visitors in 2014 who spent about $56.6 million at area business, according to National Park Service data.
The proposed ban would have no impact on C&H Hog Farms.
Banning medium and large hog farms means no new facility could have more than 750 swine at the 55-pound level nor more than 3,000 swine coming in below the 55-pound level.
Since C&H began operating, the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality has not received any applications for new medium or large hog farms in the watershed. The agency has been unable to issue such applications since April 2014 because of temporary bans imposed by the Pollution Control and Ecology Commission.
An Arkansas Pork Producers Association official has said no one is interested in a new hog farm in the area because of the uproar about C&H.
Cargill, the supplier or operator of more than 90 percent of pork-production facilities in the state, has self-imposed a ban on new medium or large hog farms in the watershed. Brazil-based JBS recently agreed to purchase the company's pork division.
Rep. Nate Bell, a Mena independent, opposed the rule making.
Bell argued that restricting how landowners can use their property constitutes an "uncompensated taking" in violation of the Arkansas Constitution. Property owners have the right to review and decide what they want to do with their own land, which they couldn't do if they wanted to start medium or large hog farms under the rule, Bell said.
Rep. Jeremy Hutchinson, R-Little Rock, said he's sympathetic regarding property rights, but noted that the Legislature already sets rules that tell people what they can and cannot do with their land, such as prohibiting liquor stores from being within a certain distance of churches. The rule heard Wednesday was no different, he said, arguing that those landowners have "many other uses available to them."
Bell made a motion to oppose the rule, the first such motion that a member of the Rules and Regulations Committee has made since voters passed a state constitutional amendment that required the committee to approve or disapprove new rules proposed by most state agencies.
Previously, state agencies sent rules to be reviewed by committees in a nonbinding fashion.
Committee Chairman Rep. Andy Davis, R-Little Rock, called for a vote on considering Bell's motion. Only Bell voted in favor of it after a short pause.
Snyder and Bethune testified in favor of the rule making.
Bethune and former Rep. John Paul Hammerschmidt, who died earlier this year, had written a letter to state legislators last year urging them to review the permanent ban, which would have sent it back to the Pollution Control and Ecology Commission for final approval.
On Wednesday, Bethune, a Republican who represented Arkansas in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1979 until 1985, asked that legislators consider the value of the Buffalo River and efforts to preserve nature in the state.
"I'm probably the oldest person in this room today -- if not, I'm damn close -- and I remember when we had to struggle as kids to tell what was so good about Arkansas," Bethune said, mentioning the diamonds near Murfreesboro and an alligator farm among the short list of things he used to tell people about.
"And now we have so much to be proud of," he said. "Most noteworthy in that, I think, is the Buffalo National River."
Snyder, who served as a Democrat from Arkansas in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1997 until 2011, said Wednesday that a review would symbolize the committee's wish to "protect this river."
Other legislators said the five-year ban before them Wednesday was a welcome compromise for everyone concerned.
Rep. Kelley Linck, R-Flippin, lamented the approval of C&H Hog Farms but said he thought the compromise would satisfy the concerns of the Legislature's agriculture committees and tourism interests.
"I think this is a good rule," he said, noting that he hoped officials would have a greater consensus at the conclusion of the UA System's Agriculture Division study on the hog farm's environmental impact.
"I think that whatever we do should be science-based and not just a blanket rule," said Sen. Bruce Maloch, D-Magnolia, said as a reflection of his favor for agriculture-related business.
Wednesday was the fourth time that proponents of the ban had gone before a legislative committee but the first before the Rules and Regulations Committee, which had to approve the rule making after the Legislature's Public Health, Welfare and Labor committees reviewed it in July.
The public health and agriculture committees were hesitant to review the rule in 2014, when it was a permanent ban, with some legislators concerned that the ban would put the state on a "slippery slope" of anti-agricultural rules.
But the compromise plan has successfully passed through the public health committees and now Rules and Regulations Committee this year.
"I think this is a good path forward," Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality Director Becky Keogh said after meeting, noting the opportunity to consider the study in five years.
Metro on 08/20/2015
Environmentalists want to clean up North Carolina’s hog farms. To do so, they’re calling on the federal government, which could withhold state funds.
The EPA’s 180 days are almost up.
By Aug. 19, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency must address allegations over North Carolina’s hog industry, which environmentalists say is harming the health of racial minorities.
The EPA’s actions could have wide-reaching effects on the industry and public health near hog farms. But despite its deadline, the agency doesn’t appear ready to make a decision, according to an environmental group that lodged the formal allegations.
The possibility of a missed deadline comes as the EPA faces national scrutiny over its handling of civil rights cases. A recent investigation by the Center for Public Integrity and NBC News found that the EPA’s Office of Civil Rights, the office handling North Carolina’s hog case, has repeatedly lagged in its action – sometimes more than a decade at a time – and has rejected almost all public claims.
In North Carolina, environmentalists – including the N.C. Environmental Justice Network and the Waterkeeper Alliance – believe they have a strong case against the hog industry. In their legal complaint, filed last September, the groups alleged that hog farms are allowed to operate with substandard technology, which puts the health of nearby minorities at risk.
Many of the state’s large, concentrated hog farms treat animal feces in open-air lagoons and dispose of that waste by spraying it onto nearby fields. These practices have raised concerns among health researchers.
In published studies, researchers have found increases in potentially harmful air pollutants, such as hydrogen sulfide and ammonia, near hog farms. Additionally, residents near hog farms have complained of headaches and intense malodors, and researchers have associated the farms’ air pollution with increases in asthmatic symptoms among nearby school children.
“For so long, people have been talking about the problem in terms of environmental justice,” said Marianne Engelman Lado, a lawyer with the group Earthjustice, which is representing the environmental groups. “That eastern North Carolina is disproportionately low income, that it’s disproportionately people of color, that the facilities are disproportionally near people of color.”In addition to these concerns, researchers, including Steve Wing, an epidemiologist at UNC-Chapel Hill, say hog farms disproportionately affect racial minorities. Racial minorities live in large numbers in the eastern part of the state, the region where North Carolina’s hog farms are densely clustered.
In 2007, North Carolina’s legislators permanently banned new lagoons and spray systems. But the law left an exception: Older farms could continue to use the systems. So the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources has continued to permit older farms that use the systems for hog feces and urine.
The state’s pork industry denies that farmers willingly threaten the health of nearby residents.
“More than 80 percent of North Carolina’s hog farms are owned and operated by individual farm families, almost all of whom live in close proximity to their swine or in communities where their swine operations are located,” Ann Edmondson, a spokeswoman for the North Carolina Pork Council, said in an emailed statement. “It strains credibility to believe our hog farmers are risking the health of their own families, along with their neighbors’ health, in order to make a living.”
Edmondson also questioned the validity of scientific studies, which she said failed to establish a direct link between hog farms and health problems.
But Engelman Lado of Earthjustice said that the science is clear.
“We know that the density of hog facilities in eastern North Carolina is polluting people’s waters, it’s affecting the air, it has a relationship with asthma and other health problems for people who live in proximity to the facilities,” she said.
In their complaint to the EPA, the groups say that DENR has effectively ignored residents’ complaints for years by continuing to permit farms that use lagoon and spray systems.
It’s possible the EPA may not find that DENR intentionally discriminated against minorities. But it may not matter, because if the EPA finds that DENR’s actions had the effect of discrimination, the EPA could rule that DENR is in violation of federal law, according to a guide from the Department of Justice.That’s why the environmentalists turned to the EPA. Under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, state agencies that receive federal funds, such as DENR, cannot act in a racially discriminatory way.
Jennifer Colaizzi, a spokeswoman for the EPA, declined to comment on this question, citing the pending investigation.
Colaizzi did say that the EPA first seeks voluntary changes from those it finds to have violated the law. It has other means to enforce the law too, she said.
“If voluntary compliance cannot be achieved, pursuant to the regulation, [the Office of Civil Rights] may use any means authorized by law to achieve compliance or enforce the laws, including initiating proceeding to terminate federal financial assistance from EPA or referring the matter to the Department of Justice for judicial enforcement,” she said in an email.
For DENR, a loss of funding could be significant. In its 2013-14 budget, DENR received $111.2 million from the EPA, roughly 16 percent of its full $701.2 million budget.
Of course, such an action will require that the EPA finish its investigation. Engelman Lado said that based on her conversations with the Office of Civil Rights, she does not believe it will meet its deadline this week.
Colaizzi did not respond to recent requests for comments about the status of the investigation. And, just as it has delayed its action for communities across the U.S., the Office of Civil Rights has offered several delayed responses to questions from North Carolina Health News, sometimes missing deadlines by weeks.
Still, Engelman Lado expressed optimism about the work ahead.
“I believe EPA would like to do a better job,” she said, adding that her case is receiving attention at the agency.
But if the EPA’s civil rights office does stall, Engelman Lado’s group will not sit still.
“We wouldn’t let it languish for 20 years,” she said. “We can go to court.”
Sides agree on lawyer fees in hog farm case
by The Associated Press
09:02 AM, Monday, August 17 2015 | 1712 views | 0 | 0 | |
LITTLE ROCK — Two federal agencies have agreed with attorneys for environmental groups on a proposed settlement for attorney fees in a lawsuit over a hog farm near the Buffalo National River. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported Saturday that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency and the U.S. Small Business Administration have agreed to pay $250,000 to attorneys with Earthjustice, Earthrise Law Center and Little Rock-based Carney Bates Pulliam. The proposal now goes to a federal judge for approval. Those attorneys filed a lawsuit in 2013 on behalf of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, Ozark Society, national parks Conservation Association and Arkansas Canoe Club, alleging the two federal agencies improperly conducted an environmental assessment on C&H Hog Farms at Mount Judea. The original 2012 study had allowed for the Farm Service Agency and the SBA to back loans needed for the C&H facility to open — called loan guarantees. A federal judge agreed with the environmental groups and ordered a new study, which was released Thursday and comes to the same conclusion as the tossed-out 2012 assessment, determining no likely significant effect from the farm on the Buffalo River watershed area. The attorneys for the environmental groups originally applied for $370,510 in fees in May. The proposed settlement now goes to U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. for approval.
Arkansasonline
My Buffalo hangup
So Mike, why are you so hung up on our state issuing a general permit for that mega-waste-generating hog factory in the Buffalo River watershed at Mount Judea, one reader recently asked. It deserves a response.
As one who enjoys pork chops, pork rinds and barbecued pulled pork, my concerns have nothing to do with pork.
In one way, we Arkansans remain fortunate to even have the Buffalo National River to protect and preserve. Serious plans were being formulated four decades ago to dam this precious stream and turn its watershed into another massive lake when my late uncle, 3rd District Congressman John Paul Hammerschmidt of Harrison, teamed with others in the Arkansas delegation to create legislation that in 1972 preserved the river by placing it under the national park system as America's first national river.
Since a river can neither defend nor argue for itself, I believe I'm but one of many concerned people and groups willing to speak for her.
While I'm back on the Buffalo fiasco, I'm pondering a serious question.
If the Small Business Administration and the USDA's Farm Service Agency under a federal court order spent seven months to complete a supposedly genuine assessment of the potential environmental impact of enormous waste generated by C&H Hog Farms on the Buffalo National River, why are no detailed groundwater-flow studies included in their findings?
I'd certainly expect any professional environmental assessment to include some science showing how water will flow through fractured limestone karst permeating the subsurface into nearby Big Creek, a major tributary of the Buffalo. I'd also expect to see detailed ground-absorption rates in fields where millions of gallons of lagooned waste are being routinely sprayed.
Here's the real rub: A considerable amount of such specific data has already been steadily accumulated over two years thanks to University of Arkansas professor emeritus John Van Brahana and his band of volunteers who've been collecting it since this factory began operating. Did these federal agencies who agreed to underwrite federal loans for the factory not bother contacting Brahana?
Did no one call the professor, send him a text? Facebook message? Smiley face?
Here's a nationally respected geoscientist who, on his own volition and using his resources and skills in this area, has collected many months of data highly relevant to potential environmental impact. Yet he wasn't even consulted over crispy bacon and eggs.
There's not a drop of this kind of critical data in the revised assessment these agencies submitted to please the court.
So why not, fellas? It's not like Brahana and his work have gone unnoticed. He's been making headlines across Arkansas for two years now. And, as you may have noticed, he's referred to your everything's-just-copacetic report as "hogwash."
Say, ya suppose his feelings were hurt by being strangely ignored, or maybe he just wasn't impressed that while you made a passing reference in the assessment to subsurface water flow, you wrote right past it without spilling even a shot glass full of supportive data?
------------v------------
Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at mikemasterson10@hotmail.com.
Editorial on 08/15/2015
This article was published today at 2:38 a.m
The Buffalo River Watershed Alliance has filed a formal complaint with the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, alleging that C&H Hog Farms in Mount Judea has violated the terms of its permit.
The alliance cites University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture quarterly reports on conditions surrounding the facility as evidence that it is contributing to higher levels of E. coli and nitrate in Big Creek, a Buffalo National River tributary on which the facility sits.
Alliance President Gordon Watkins said the hog facility's permit is a no-discharge permit, meaning any discharges not connected to a significant storm would be a violation of its permit. The complaint suggests that the higher levels are evidence that hog waste is either leaking through the karst terrain or that runoff from waste applied as manure is making its way into the creek.
But lead researcher Andrew Sharpley said that although E. coli and nitrate levels near the facility have increased, such levels vary seasonally and can be affected by rain. Further, he said, the source of pollution could be a something other than the facility, such as a faulty septic tank.
He said his team is studying the increases but that they had not concluded the source yet.
"It's higher but it's impossible to say what that might be caused by," he said. "We are looking further into that."
Sharpley said it was premature to say whether the levels were a problem and mentioned that E. coli levels have been elevated before, including before the facility was built.
"I'm not going to say there is a problem and it turns out there isn't a problem," he said, adding that his credibility could be hurt by such an event.
The complaint notes higher levels of E. coli in the House Well, a private water well used for consumption by hogs and humans.
Watkins said the well had a filter on it and noted that private wells are not regulated, but he said any amount of E. coli would be considered harmful to drink by state and federal standards for public drinking water.
"I would encourage them to determine that source," Watkins said. "There are ways to find out."
Watkins noted tests that can be used to detect both E. coli and nitrate sources.
"Whether we're right or wrong we feel like ADEQ needs to investigate and look at the data and make their own determination," he said.
Katherine Benenati, a spokesman with the department, said officials had received the complaint and were still in the process of reviewing it.
A voice mail left Thursday afternoon with C&H co-owner Jason Henson was not immediately returned.
The alliance complained previously to the Environmental Quality Department -- on Feb. 8, 2014 -- along with the Arkansas Canoe Club, National Parks Conservation Association and Ozark Society. The complaint was filed by Earthjustice, a national environmental law group.
That complaint requested that the department reopen the facility's permitting process, citing taxpayer interest and "misrepresentations" by C&H Hog Farms regarding its operations.
C&H Hog Farms is a large-scale swine facility permitted to house 2,503 sows and 4,000 piglets. The facility has been the target of environmental groups for more than two years since receiving an expedited permit to operate from the Environmental Quality Department.
In 2014, the Buffalo National River -- the country's first national river -- had more than 1.3 million visitors who spent about $56.5 million at area businesses, according to National Park Service data.
Metro on 08/14/2015
Print Headline: Alliance filing says hog farm violates permit
By Mike Masterson
Posted: August 11, 2015 at 3:28 a.m.
The two federal agencies, ordered last December by a federal judge to assess potential environmental damages from the waste produced by C&H Hog Farms in the Buffalo National River watershed, have released their draft report.
Their conclusion: All's hunky-dory above the river. So we can all relax, fall back asleep and quiet the unfounded concerns. Meanwhile, one geoscientist studying the potential contamination called their assessment "hogwash."
This paper's Emily Walkenhorst reports that a complete assessment wasn't submitted with the original approval of Farm Credit Services' loan guarantees by the Small Business Administration and the USDA Farm Service Agency. The original assessment without nearly enough significant data to suit U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall essentially found no potential problems, but in a lot fewer words. The new one finds no need for concern that the millions of gallons of hog waste being routinely spread six miles above the Buffalo might permanently contaminate the country's first national river, not even after an historic rainfall.
Whew! I'm glad those agencies finally performed a supposedly "complete" assessment that ... drum roll, please ... happened to affirm their initial decision. The new draft basically contends concerns for the well-being of the precious river from waste leakage just aren't warranted.
Well, excluding any possible accidental discharges from historic rainfall amounts. But even that, the revised document contends, would be "unlikely" to cause lasting contamination.
The report also concludes there's not even the need to change anything about the surface water, groundwater or soils to ensure there's no contamination. It also says, according to Walkenhorst's thorough account: "The assessment concluded permanent damage is unlikely: 'The construction and ongoing operation of the C&H Hog Farm did not and is not expected to result in any irreversible or irretrievable resource commitments.'"
While I'm just tickled pink these agencies predictably justified their initial oversights by spending seven whole months to determine they were right in their original inadequate assessment, I give ample credibility to qualified differing views.
Geoscience professor emeritus Dr. John Van Brahana, about whom I've written plenty, and his band of volunteers already have spent about two years studying how subsurface water flows through the fractured limestone karst that channels it throughout the region, as well as water quality in Big Creek, flowing beside the factory.
So I asked if the findings contained in the revision happen to correspond with his own discoveries. He called the findings "hogwash."
"This draft environmental assessment is flawed," he said. "It completely ignores groundwater and karst, although this version does at least include paragraphs that mention the terms unlike their original notice of intent approved by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality. The flow of water streaming through the rocks and soil is essential to study and understand so to protect those who live downstream. It's a key component of any environmental assessment. Yet meaningful discussion remains missing in this version.
"The factory hoses its slatted floor so all manure and urine flow into troughs piped to and stored in clay-lined lagoons," he continued. "Lagoons are allowed to leak, more than 5,000 gallons a day under the terms of the state's permit. Because hogs are continually creating waste, the lagoons must be emptied lest they overflow.
"So they spray the hogwash on fields, all of which are uphill from Big Creek, a major tributary of the Buffalo. On karst terrain, rain or hogwash introduced on the land surface typically infiltrates through soil and moves downward unseen through voids and fractures in the rock beneath the surface. It re-emerges as springs and base flows to the streams, some which we have traced with dyes to other drainage basins, but always flowing to the Buffalo."
He said this latest report fails to address groundwater studies, which is dominant water flow in this basin. "In fact, it introduces no specific groundwater quality data whatsoever," he said. "Our team, Karst Hydrogeology of the Buffalo National River (KHBNR) has observed and documented these changes. Their assessment offers no pre-factory measurement of any groundwater quality with which to compare and evaluate changes caused by this factory, nor do they report any measurement of its current state.
"This assessment ignores not only the KHBNR studies, which strictly follow standards of the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Arkansas, but they don't even mention key karst hydrogeologic research conducted by peer-reviewed journals, numerous faculty, graduate theses, or relevant studies of water quality problems in karst that are known from many other areas.
"Our KHBNR studies are expanding into areas that continue to reflect the concentrated hogwash, already is affecting groundwater and surface water downstream. Space limits my comments to this groundwater. But based on what we have found and I know to be true, the [report] is rife with errors, omissions, and misrepresentations."
No flies on that!
by Mike Masterson
I appreciate it when readers respond to my opinions. It matters not to me should they agree or disagree (poetic, eh?). I'm always pleased they took their valuable time to read and reflect upon their feelings.
Following a recent column in which I enjoyed speculating on what a day in the life of a roomful of D.C. bureaucratic regulators might be like, I received some complimentary, along with less-than-favorable, email messages.
Here was one reactive letter about that column from reader Ben Novak of Monticello published on the Voices page.
"Mike Masterson has on many occasions written about the pig farm in Northwest Arkansas, trying to get it regulated out of business, but in a recent column he ridiculed the very government that would pass such regulation. You can't have it both ways, Mike. Or do you think that you are the only one who knows what should or should not be regulated?"
Well, by golly, Ben, after lengthy consideration, I believe I might just be the one.
Mike's regulations would be simple. Ignore special, competing business and personal interests who try to use my mandates to their advantage. Regulate only what is demonstrably necessary to maintain a level playing field for everyone and prevent our citizens from being harmed by obviously unscrupulous, wrongheaded or unsafe practices created out of ignorance, stupidity or political favoritism.
I'd classify the hog factory our state Department of Environmental Quality (cough) allowed to operate in the watershed of our precious Buffalo National River, at the very least, as a remarkably wrongheaded decision.
Beyond that, I'd be satisfied letting taxpaying adult citizens in a representative governmental process decide their own personal risks to take. I do believe one of my favorite Ozark armchair philosophers, the Durable Ralph Guynn of Harrison, might proclaim of my regulatory plan: "Ain't no flies on that!"
Two federal agencies issued a draft environmental assessment Thursday for C&H Hog Farms in Mount Judea that comes to the same conclusion as a tossed-out 2012 study: The farm is not likely to have a significant detrimental impact in the Buffalo National River watershed.
The assessment is good news for the facility but disappointing to environmental groups that have worked to shut down C&H and curb future medium and large hog farms in the watershed for fear of hog waste pollution in the popular tourist area and rough karst terrain.
The facility sits on Big Creek, 6.8 miles from where it flows into the Buffalo National River. It is the first large-scale hog facility in the watershed, which is the area that drains into the river.
The new assessment was mandated by a 2014 federal court order after a judge ruled the 2012 study was faulty because it did not address the Endangered Species Act or the National Environmental Policy Act.
The original study allowed for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Farm Service Agency and the U.S. Small Business Administration to back loans needed for the C&H facility to open -- called loan guarantees.
The court order suspends the guarantees during the reassessment process. But because C&H Hog Farms has been up and running for two years, it could have been affected by the court order only if it defaulted on its loans.
The assessment can be considered a positive development, C&H co-owner Jason Henson said.
"It's good news for the next farmer who might be wanting a USDA or SBA loan."
Henson owns C&H along with his two cousins, Phillip and Richard Campbell.
Jack Stewart, vice president of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, isn't convinced that the assessment is definitive.
"Big agriculture industry has slowly over the years managed to get the rules in their favor, and so it makes it extremely difficult for the average person to object," he said. "They can always say they're following the rules. The rules were written for this kind of large-scale structure, and they're calling it a farm, which it isn't -- it's a factory."
C&H Hog Farms, considered a large facility permitted to house 2,503 sows and 4,000 piglets, opened in May 2013.
The alliance was created in response to C&H's permit approval from the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality and was one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit that led to the assessment released Thursday.
The Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, the Ozark Society, the Arkansas Canoe Club and the National Parks Conservation Association sued the federal agencies in 2013 after they agreed to back loans made to C&H that allowed the facility to open.
Before the agencies could back the Farm Credit Services of Western Arkansas loans -- meaning the agencies would pay them back if the facility defaulted -- officials had to conduct an environmental assessment.
U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. issued the 2014 order that required the Farm Service Agency and the Small Business Administration to follow both the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, and consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the process, finding the agencies had failed to do so the first time.
The assessment issued Thursday studied surface water, groundwater and soils in the surrounding area, among other things, and determined that no action is needed in any of those areas to avert negative consequences.
Several passages in the assessment acknowledge that a rain event exceeding 50-year or 100-year levels could lead to accidental discharges from waste lagoons that would have "short-term" impact on nearby surface water.
But toward the end of the 81-page report, the assessment concluded that permanent damage is unlikely: "The construction and ongoing operation of the C&H Hog Farm did not and is not expected to result in any irreversible or irretrievable resource commitments."
People can comment on the assessment until Sept. 4. A public hearing on it will be held at 6 p.m. Aug. 27 at the Jasper School District Cafetorium on South Street off Arkansas 7. Doors open at 5:30 p.m.
If the draft environmental assessment stays as is, Stewart said, he is concerned that it will be used to justify the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture study that is referred to within it. Stewart and others opposed to C&H are skeptical of the study's scope.
The five-year UA study looked at the cumulative impact of the hog farm's presence on Big Creek. It has been cited by Gov. Asa Hutchinson as his reason for supporting a five-year ban on new medium or large hog farms in the watershed -- as opposed to a previously proposed permanent one. The proposed five-year ban will go before the Arkansas Legislature's Rules and Regulations Committee at 9 a.m. on Aug. 19.
While new farms are being targeted, Stewart said he still thinks environmental interests have reason to hope that C&H could close someday.
He cited Brazil-based JBS' recent purchase of Cargill's pork division. Cargill supplies the hogs and feed to C&H.
"We're not sure that JBS will be pleased to discover all of what they're buying," he said. "There's been so much negative publicity with Cargill on this. ... In the scheme of what they're buying, C&H is pretty small, so it might be wise of them to close it down and move on."
Meanwhile, C&H Hog Farms is examining different waste-disposal methods to better satisfy environmental groups.
One includes a permit modification currently before the Environmental Quality Department that would add liners to some waste lagoons and place a cover on another that would capture gas emissions, send them through an upward pipe and burn them.
Another proposal would involve vaporizing the hog waste with technology from Florida-based Plasma Energy Group, but progress on that effort has stalled, and it has not received Environmental Quality Department approval. Henson, Cargill and Plasma Energy Group officials have said they still plan to pursue the technology.
In 2014, the Buffalo National River -- the country's first national river -- had more than 1.3 million visitors , who spent about $56.5 million at area businesses, according to National Park Service data.
Print Headline: 2 agencies' 2nd look: Hog farm no big risk
North Arkansas Democrat Gazette
Intentionally ignored
Some of you will recall how the whole controversy over our state's wrongheaded permitting of C&H Hog Farms in our treasured Buffalo National River watershed arose when the National Park Service (official stewards of that river) complained loudly and publicly that the state and its Department of Environmental Quality (chortle) had never notified them it was allowing a swine factory into its purview.
Well, thanks to the 2014 master's thesis by University of Arkansas civil engineering student Samantha Hovis, we learn a special committee appointed by former Governor Mike Beebe under Act 1511--comprised of the Department of Environmental Quality's Water Division now-former director Ryan Benefield; a livestock operator and an agriculture grower, both members of the Arkansas Farm Bureau; an agriculture professor; and a Little Rock attorney--apparently made that decision.
What, no environmental, geoscience or what I'd consider genuine water-quality experts?
Hovis writes that this committee did not approve giving notification to the National Park Service superintendent of "possible CAFOs in the Buffalo River watershed."
Oh, really? And so it was written and so it wasn't done. Governmental transparency at its least transparent with the very people responsible for maintaining the purity of the country's first national river.
Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him atmikemasterson10@hotmail.com.
Editorial on 08/01/2015
Buffalo River Watershed Alliance is a non profit 501(c)(3) organization
Copyright @ 2019
Contact Us