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  • 13 Mar 2014 6:36 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
    The Opinion Pages 

    The Unhealthy Meat Market
    MARCH 12, 2014
     
    Nicholas Kristof
     
    Where does our food come from? Often the answer is Tyson Foods, America’s meat factory.

    Tyson, one of the nation’s 100 biggest companies, slaughters 135,000 head of cattle a week, along with 391,000 hogs and an astonishing 41 million chickens. Nearly all Americans regularly eat Tyson meat undefined at home, at McDonalds, at a cafeteria, at a nursing home.

    “Even if Tyson did not produce a given piece of meat, the consumer is really only picking between different versions of the same commoditized beef, chicken, and pork that is produced through a system Tyson pioneered,” says Christopher Leonard, a longtime agribusiness journalist, in his new book about Tyson called “The Meat Racket.”

    Leonard’s book argues that a handful of companies, led by Tyson, control our meat industry in ways that raise concerns about the impact on animals and humans alike, while tearing at the fabric of rural America. Many chicken farmers don’t even own the chickens they raise or know what’s in the feed. They just raise the poultry on contract for Tyson, and many struggle to make a living.

    Concerned by the meat oligopoly’s dominance of rural America, President Obama undertook a push beginning in 2010 to strengthen antitrust oversight of the meat industry and make it easier for farmers to sue meatpackers. The aim was grand: to create a “new rural economy” to empower individual farmers.

    Big Meat’s lobbyists used its friends in Congress to crush the Obama administration’s regulatory effort, which collapsed in “spectacular failure,” Leonard writes.

    Factory farming has plenty of devastating consequences, but it’s only fair to acknowledge that it has benefited our pocketbooks. When President Herbert Hoover dreamed of putting “a chicken in every pot,” chicken was a luxury dish more expensive than beef. In 1930, whole dressed chicken retailed for $6.48 a pound in today’s currency, according to the National Chicken Council. By last year, partly because of Tyson, chicken retailed for an average price of $1.57 per pound undefined much less than beef.

    Costs came down partly because scientific breeding reduced the length of time needed to raise a chicken to slaughter by more than half since 1925, even as a chicken’s weight doubled. The amount of feed required to produce a pound of chicken has also dropped sharply.

    And yet.

    This industrial agriculture system also has imposed enormous costs of three kinds.

    First, it has been a catastrophe for animals. Chickens are bred to grow huge breasts so that as adults they topple forward and can barely breathe or stand.

    “These birds are essentially bred to suffer,” says Laurie Beacham of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which argues that there’s an inherent cruelty in raising these “exploding chickens.”

     
    Poultry Science journal has calculated that if humans grew at the same rate as modern chickens, a human by the age of two months would weigh 660 pounds.

    Second, factory farming endangers our health. Robert Martin of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health notes that a farm with 10,000 hogs produces as much fecal waste as a small city with 40,000 people, but the hog operation won’t have a waste treatment plant. Indeed, the hogs in a single county in North Carolina produce half as much waste as all the people in New York City, Martin says.

     


    Another health concern is that antibiotics are routinely fed to animals and birds to help them grow quickly in crowded, dirty conditions. This can lead to antibiotic resistant infections, which strike two million Americans annually (overuse of antibiotics on human patients is also a factor, but four-fifths of antibiotics in America go to farm animals).

    Third, this industrial model has led to a hollowing out of rural America. The heartland is left with a few tycoons and a large number of people struggling at the margins.
     
    Leonard writes in his book that in 68 percent of the counties where Tyson operates, per capita income has grown more slowly over the last four decades than the average in that state. We may think of rural America as a halcyon pastoral of red barns and the Waltons, but today it’s also a land of unemployment, poverty, despair and methamphetamines.

    It’s easy to criticize the current model of industrial agriculture, far harder to outline a viable alternative. Going back to the rural structure represented by the inefficient family farm on which I grew up in Oregon isn’t a solution; then we’d be back to $6.48-a-pound chicken.

    But a starting point is to recognize bluntly that our industrial food system is unhealthy. It privatizes gains but socializes the health and environmental costs. It rewards shareholders undefined Tyson’s stock price has quadrupled since early 2009 undefined but can be ghastly for the animals and humans it touches. Industrial meat has an acrid aftertaste.

    A version of this op-ed appears in print on March 13, 2014, on page A27 of the New York edition with the headline: The Unhealthy Meat Market. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe
  • 12 Mar 2014 6:12 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
    By JAIME ADAME ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
    Posted: March 12, 2014 at 6 a.m.
    University of Arkansas researchers will use radar technology and work with outside experts to monitor any environmental effects of a large new hog farm on the “fairly pristine” Big Creek watershed, the group told a packed-house crowd Tuesday.

    About 150 attended the information session, with several intent on asking prickly questions of researchers at the Fayetteville campus presentation. Some attendees asked how consultants were chosen for the project and questioned the intent of the Big Creek Research Team, whose work is being paid for with $340,000 in public funds approved by the state Legislature after a public outcry over the C&H Hog Farms site in Newton County.

    The farm, described previously as a 6,500-pig operation, received approval from state environmental regulators in August 2012. Despite the farm’s state-approved waste management plans, critics last year began to voice concerns that manure from the Mount Judea farm might contaminate streams or other water sources. Big Creek is a tributary to the Buffalo National River, whose wildlife and outdoor recreation opportunities draw tourists.

    “We’re not a regulatory agency,” Andrew Sharpley, research team leader, told the crowd near the beginning of an approximately hour-long presentation filled with detailed charts and maps. “We are here doing this research and this monitoring as part of finding the science, and the science will dictate what goes from here.”

    Sharpley, a soils and water quality professor, went on to emphasize how researchers over the past several months carefully decided where and how to take measurements. For example, laser technology driven around the fields near the farm help researchers precisely measure changes in elevation. This lets them know where to put stations measuring soil and water conditions, because “water’s going to go downhill,” he said.

    Because researchers wanted to avoid disturbing private property and directly changing natural land features, radar provided a peek beneath the land’s surface. Sharpley said data from the radar generally confirmed karst characteristics, or patchy limestone areas where water flows more easily.

    “It looks like nice, flat green pasture from when you’re standing there, but obviously below the surface it’s quite complicated,” Sharpley said.

    The study involves taking detailed measurements in three fields, two of which will be spread with manure from C&H Hog Farms. One of the fields is near Big Creek, while the other is at a higher elevation away from the creek, with a different type of soil formation and more prominent karst characteristics. The third field was originally meant to be used for manure spreading, but a mistake involving maps submitted with the farm’s permit application now leaves the field as a place for researchers to gather baseline data.

    Manure will also be spread on areas not being directly studied by the research team.

    Before farm operations kick into high gear, researchers have been taking quality samples, some of which go back to October.

    “The levels of nutrients that we see here are typical of these fairly pristine type of watersheds,” Sharpley said. He told the crowd that he believed the farm spread the first manure at the end of December. However, Sharpley said in an interview after the presentation that the manure spreading has yet to take place in the fields being closely monitored.

    Water samples will be taken “from above and below the farm on Big Creek,” Sharpley said, adding that the group will also monitor other water sources like springs and ephemeral streams.

    Officials with the United States Geological Survey will also assist with the research, Sharpley said.

    In describing the origins of the project, Sharpley stressed the amicable relationship between farm operators and state agriculturalagents.

    “The first thing was that the owner of that farm went over to our county extension agent over in Newton County and asked for help,” Sharpley said.

    Also under study are manure treatments at the farm to more easily export it as a resource to other farmers.

    “Obviously, we won’t solve this, we’re not that naive. But we hope we will provide some science to go a little further on this pathway to get sustainability,” Sharpley said.

    However, some in the crowd expressed displeasure with all or part of the research team’s efforts during a 25 minute question-and-answer session.

    One topic of criticism came after Sharpley said some consultants will come from outside the state. Someone asked whether anyone associated with Cargill - the ultimate buyer of the farm’s pigs - will be a project consultant, but Sharpley said the people involved will eventually all be named publiclyand that they are affiliated with universities.

    Sharpley said Cargill met with researchers early on. However, he stressed that the team made its decisions on the study independently.

    “I chose to not consider what they suggested because I didn’t think it was sound science,” Sharpley said.

    Organic farmer Dane Schumacher expressed concern about the researchers’ talk about studying farm sustainability solutions.

    “That seems different than a group independent and unbiased to find how this hog farm might contaminate the river,” Schumacher said.

    Sharpley replied that three-quarters of the research effort involves “assessing water quality impact.”

    Researchers said they have funding for one year of study, agreeing with a questioner that funding to extend the study over more time will be needed to best assess any environmental impacts of the farm.

    Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 03/12/2014
  • 07 Mar 2014 4:12 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

     

    Governor’s Conference on Tourism Should Address C & H Hog Farms Impacts on Buffalo National River, Local Economy

    Coalition Opposed to Factory Hog Farm to Join Rally Outside Conference

     

    On March 11, Arkansas’ Governor Beebe will speak at the annual Governor’s Conference on Tourism. Simultaneously, outside the conference, individuals from across the state plan to rally in support of the preservation of Buffalo National River and the tourism the river supports throughout Arkansas.

    The Buffalo River Coalition – which includes the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, Ozark Society, National Parks Conservation Association, and Arkansas Canoe Club – plans to attend in support of the Buffalo with information on the C & H Hog Farms threat and media availability with coalition spokespeople.

    The Buffalo National River is consistently ranked as the #2 tourist destination in Arkansas and is an economic engine for the Ozarks, where it supports $44 million in spending and 610 jobs annually. C & H, located a few miles upstream on one of the largest tributaries of the Buffalo, threatens that important source of income. Teresa Marks, director of Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ), has publicly stated that waste from this concentrated animal feeding operation will likely reach Buffalo National River. When that happens, tourism will suffer.  Tourism brings in approximately $6 billion dollars and employs almost 60,000 people in Arkansas. It generates $1.1 billion in salaries. C & H Hog Farms supports 6 jobs.

    The coalition urges members of the media to ask the difficult questions that need to be addressed around C & H Hog Farms, including:

    • ·       Why was this massive hog factory permitted with little to no public input, and why won’t the state reopen the permitting process to allow the public to weigh in given the outcry on threats to the river and region?
    • ·       Why is Arkansas so willing to jeopardize 610 tourism-related jobs for the six jobs produced by C & H Hog Farms?
    • ·       Why was the University of Arkansas instructed to use taxpayer money to monitor some manure spray fields that were not included in C & H’s nutrient management plan and general permit?

    The Buffalo River Coalition was formed to protect the Buffalo National River from this urgent factory hog farm threat. The coalition filed a lawsuit in August of 2013 challenging the U.S. Department of Agriculture Farm Service Agency (FSA) and the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) for their inadequate review and improper authorization of loan guarantee assistance to C&H. More recently, the coalition pointed out additional misrepresentations around the permitting of C & H Hog Farms and called on ADEQ to reopen the permitting process. Those calls have been ignored by the state.

     

    Members of the National Parks Conservation Association, the Ozark Society, the Arkansas Canoe Club, and the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, along with concerned citizens and business owners.

    Media availability from coalition members, including:

    • ·       Gordon Watkins, Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, 870-446-5783
    • ·       Jack Stewart, Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, 870-715-0260
    • ·       Dane Schumacher, Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, 870-545-3120
    • ·       Robert Cross, Ozark Society, 479-466-3077

    ***For interview requests, please check in at the Buffalo River Coalition information table located near the rally.***

     

    Tuesday, March 11th, 11:30-1:00CT

     

    Governor’s Conference on Tourism

    Embassy Suites and John Q. Hammons Convention Center

    3303 Pinnacle Hills Parkway – Rogers, AR 72758

    ###

  • 07 Mar 2014 2:05 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
    Posted on: March 3 2014

    State of Arkansas Wastes Taxpayer Money in Flawed Water Monitoring Study

    By Emily Jones, Senior Program Manager, Southeast Region

    The fight to protect the Buffalo National River from an industrial hog farm continues to twist and turn, much like the river itself.

    C&H Hog Farms opened in 2013 on the banks of Big Creek, a major tributary of the Buffalo, and the state approved the facility without adequate public notice or official public comment period. Last summer, NPCA asked advocates to urge Cargill’s CEO to move the operation to a more suitable locationundefinedone where the CAFO’s two million gallons of pig waste a year wouldn’t sully the Buffalo River’s pristine waters.

    Now it turns out that the state’s decision to allow the CAFO to operate at this ecologically sensitive location was based on faulty information, resulting in a misuse of taxpayer money.


    Above: See the recent video by the Buffalo River Coalition for an overview of its campaign to save America’s first national river from inappropriate industrial hog waste.

    One of the most serious environmental concerns for any industrial hog farm is how operators will dispose of the waste from so many animals kept in such a small space. Manure can enrich the soil if it is spread across enough land, but if the soil becomes too saturated with waste, excess manure can run off and pollute waterways, especially in regions like this one, which has porous terrain. C&H’s nutrient management plan, submitted to the state last year, claimed that the facility had access to 17 parcels of land (sometimes referred to as “manure sprayfields”) to spread its waste. However, owners of three of these 17 fields say that they denied the company permission to use their properties for this purpose.

    Meanwhile, Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe approved spending more than half a million dollars in state taxpayer money to monitor the water around C&H’s sprayfields through a University of Arkansas study. Two of the three fields where landowners denied C&H permission to spray its waste are included as part of the researchers’ study. Including non-sprayed fields in the study seriously impacts the integrity of the monitoring process: The water quality assessment as a whole may not accurately reflect the environmental impact of the hog farm, since researchers would be testing virgin fields; and property owners may be subjected to trespassing and violation of privacy as researchers unknowingly gather samples from these properties based on C&H’s incorrect management plan data.

    Fortunately, there is still a chance to reverse this bad decision before it does more harm. NPCA is part of a coalition of concerned residents, advocates, and scientists called the Buffalo River Coalition. The coalition is asking ADEQ to reopen the permitting process to reconsider whether it makes sense to allow this CAFO to add two millions of gallons of harmful pig waste to the watershed each year.

    If you live in the state of Arkansas, you can ask ADEQ Director Teresa Marks to reopen this flawed permit for public comment. Even Director Marks admitted in a recent New York Times article that “some of this waste could reach the Buffalo River.” Respected Arkansas hydrologist Dr. John Van Brahana put the situation in more urgent terms: “There is a probably greater than 95 percent chance that we are going to see impacts of degraded water quality and major environmental degradation.”

    If you don’t live in the state of Arkansas, you can still ask Cargill’s CEO Gregory Page to move the CAFO out of a sense of corporate responsibility, even if the state isn’t doing its due diligence.
  • 05 Mar 2014 9:05 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
    Addendum issued for Big Creek first quarterly report
     Newton County Times

    Posted: Tuesday, March 4, 2014 11:00 am
     
    FAYETTEVILLE  The University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture's Big Creek Research and Extension Team has issued an addendum to the first quarterly report on its study of a hog farm in the Buffalo River Watershed.


    The addendum correctly identifies the fields sampled by the team. The addendum, available at http://arkansasagnews.uark.edu/bigcreekreport.quarter1addendum.pdf, addresses maps in the original report issued Jan. 31, that contained fields that were incorrectly identified in the original management plan for the C&H Hog Farm in Mount Judea.

    “With the correctly labeled maps, we want it to be clear that we have taken samples only from fields for which we had authorization from the landowners, regardless of previous labeling,” said Dr. Andrew Sharpley, team leader and professor at the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.

    Aside from the addendum, the team also noted a change in its sampling plan due to a planned revision in the manure management plan for the farm -- a revision that is pending regulatory review.

    “One of the fields in our work plan won't be receiving manure until the fate of the management plan is determined,” said Sharpley. “This will give us an opportunity to determine a baseline for water quality prior to any manure being applied.”

    The Big Creek Research and Extension team, comprised of faculty and staff from the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, is conducting a multi-phase, long-term study of the farm and its potential impacts on the watershed.

    The first quarter report, covering work conducted from Oct. 1 to Dec. 31, is available online at http://arkansasagnews.uark.edu/bigcreekquarter1.pdf.
  • 04 Mar 2014 5:24 PM | Anonymous
    The Big Creek Research & Extension Team's seminar on its study of the hog farm in the Buffalo River watershed has been rescheduled for 3 p.m., Tuesday, March 11. The seminar will be held in the Hembree Auditorium of the Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences building on the University of Arkansas campus.

    Mary Hightower
    Director-Communication Services
    U of A System Division of Agriculture
    Office: 501-671-2126
    Fax: 501-671-2121
    mhightower@uaex.edu
    Twitter: @AgWriterArk

  • 04 Mar 2014 9:35 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
    Is it profiling?
    By Mike Masterson
    Posted: March 4, 2014 at 2:26 a.m.

    Questions for candidates
    In the ongoing campaign for governor between Republican Asa Hutchinson and Democrat Mike Ross, I believe each candidate during their statewide campaign stops should be asked some simple yet hardball questions about the state’s wrongheaded permitting of that hog factory in our treasured Buffalo National River watershed. Below are six I feel they each should answer honestly rather than in typical political doublespeak.
    In fact, they are welcome to respond in this space at my email address and I will gladly tell the state.
    What legislation would you support to protect our land and rivers in karst areas of north Arkansas from factory hog farms?
    What’s your specific position on the role of the state Pollution Control and Ecology Commission, the Department of Environmental Quality, and the governor’s office toward adequately protecting Arkansas’ precious groundwater and surface waters from agricultural pollution?
    Which is more significant to you, protecting the business of the Cargill-sponsored hog factory or the state’s tourism business of the Buffalo River?
    What would you specifically do to resolve the ongoing matter of this hog factory versus the pollution of the Buffalo River?
    Would you take whatever actions are necessary to reinstate the moratorium on factory hog farms in the state’s ultra-sensitive karst regions, in particular, for the Buffalo National River watershed?
    Would you appoint members to the Pollution Control and Ecology Commission with ties to the agricultural industry, or those with scientific/ environmental backgrounds?
  • 03 Mar 2014 3:07 PM | Anonymous
  • 27 Feb 2014 10:17 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Hog farm foes: Map flawed, redo permit
    By Ryan McGeeney
    Posted: February 21, 2014 at 5:24 a.m.
     

    A coalition of environmentalists and lawyers is asking the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality to reopen the permitting process for a Newton County hog farm because of discrepancies in the farm’s original permit application.

    In a Feb. 12 letter to the department, lawyers with Earthjustice, a nonprofit litigation firm, claim the owners of C&H Hog Farms in Mount Judea intentionally misrepresented the location and available acreage of several grassland fields on which they plan to spread manure.

    The hog farm, a large-scale concentrated animal feeding operation, is permitted to house approximately 2,500 adult sows and as many as 4,000 piglets at one time. According to the farm’s nutrient management plan, which outlines how its operators will handle the estimated 2 million gallons of waste annually, the owners lease or own approximately 630 acres of grassland in Mount Judea, separated into 17 fields.


     

    The farm abuts Big Creek, 6 miles upstream from its confluence with the Buffalo National River.

    According to the let-ter, the farm owners falsely claimed that they had a land use agreement with the owner of an area labeled “Field 5,” an approximately 24-acre tract belonging to Tommie Wheeler of Vendor, according to Newton County deed records cited by Earthjustice.

    The farm’s nutrient-management plan includes signed land-use agreements with several landowners, using both narrative descriptions and latitude and longitude coordinates to identify the fields. Although the contract that identifies “Field 5” includes coordinates that describe Wheeler’s property, it is signed by Shawn Ricketts. Jason Henson, who co-owns C&H Hog Farms with two of his cousins, Richard and Philip Campbell, said Ricketts is a nephew of Richard and Philip Campbell.

    “It was a typographical error,” Henson said. “I have the land-use agreements and the soil sample from the actual land, but when the engineers drew up the maps, the fields were misprinted on the map sheet.”

    Attempts to reach Wheeler and Ricketts for comment were unsuccessful.

    In their letter to the Environmental Quality Department, Earthjustice lawyers also cite discrepancies in portions of two other tracts, fields 12 and 16, which account for more than 100 acres. While the farm’s land-use agreements for those fields are signed by Barbara Hufley, approximately 34 acres within those fields are owned by other landowners with whom the hog farm owners do not have land-use contracts.

    During a Jan. 23 compliance inspection of the hog farm, a department inspector noted the discrepancy in fields 12 and 16. In a Feb. 6 reply to the department, Henson acknowledged the discrepancy, writing that a certified nutrient management planner was revising the maps for fields 12 and 16, and the corrected maps would be submitted by March 30. The discrepancies in the two fields account for about 34 acres, or about 5 percent,of the 630 acres.

    Robert Cross, president of the Ozark Society and a signatory to the Earthjustice letter, said that regardless of the revisions the farm owners are now making, the fact that the department granted a permit based on inaccurate information means the permitting process should be revisited.

    “We think the whole permit should be reopened,” Cross said, noting that when Henson and his partners first applied for the general permit, they largely avoided public scrutiny because it was the first of its kind in the state. “In August 2012, there was a public comment period, which no one commented on, because no one knew anything about it.”

    Teresa Marks, director of the Environmental Quality Department, said she and her staff had reviewed the letter from Earthjustice, as well as documentation associated with C&H Hog Farms. She said that while the total acreage available for spreading manure would need to be recalculated, there still appeared to be sufficient acreage on which to spread the farm’s manure. Additionally, Marks said the farm operators had not applied manure to any of the areas in dispute and so were not in violation of the terms of their permit.

    Earthjustice lawyers also asserted that the inaccuracies in the farm’s mapping have led to a waste of taxpayer money. In September, the state Legislature appropriated about $340,000 from the Arkansas Rainy Day Fund to pay for a longitudinal study of the water and soil in the area surrounding the hog farm. The proposed study came in response to widespread concern that nutrients from the farm’s hog waste could pollute both groundwater and surface water in the area and reach the Buffalo National River.

    Shortly after the study funds were appropriated, University of Arkansas professor of soils and water quality Andrew Sharpley and his research team began contacting landowners in Mount Judea, asking for permission to gather soil and water samples on land that is scheduled to receive manure from the hog farm.

    Sharpley and his team settled on three sites to conduct their research, fields 1, 5 and 12, which include two of the three fields identified by department inspectors as being incorrectly mapped on the farm’s nutrient-management plan.

    In a Feb. 8 letter to Sharpley, the owners of the three properties in question, fields 5, 12 and 16, emphasized that they do not have land-use agreements with C&H Hog Farms and have not granted permission to Sharpley to enter their property or conduct research there. The letter is signed by Wheeler, Ronnie Campbell and Samuel Dye.

    Campbell’s wife, Judy Campbell, confirmed byphone that she and her husband had been approached by representatives of C&H Hog Farms about the possible use of their land for application of hog waste and that they had declined. Attempts to reach Dye were unsuccessful.

    Sharpley said he had been aware of the mapping discrepancies for some time, and neither he nor members of his research team had trespassed on any of the fields in question.

    On Feb. 7, the Big Creek Research Team released its first quarterly report, outlining its research methods and plans for future research. The report includes a map of the 630 acres identified in the hog farm’s nutrient-management plan, with fields 1, 5 and 12 highlighted. Although the “Field 5” highlighted in the report’s map is Wheeler’s property, Sharpley said his researchers were working on the adjacent Ricketts property, for which Henson has a land-use agreement.

    “I elected to use the old maps in the permit for the quarterly report. That’s where the misunderstanding originated,” Sharpley said. “The fact is, we haven’t been on those fields mentioned in the letter. We’ll never be on any property we don’t have prior, expressed permission to be on.”

    Sharpley said that in the early stages of his research, he realized that the existing map in the nutrient-management plan - the same map that eventually appeared in his team’s quarterly report - was incorrect, but he felt it was outside the scope of his responsibilities to publicly call attention to the discrepancy.

    “I chose at that time not to raise the issue,” Sharpley said. “I’m there to do the science. I felt [the map] was somebody else’s issue. I continued to talk about what we were actually doing and the science in the report. In hindsight, it would’ve been better to redo the report with the correct map.”

    Monica Reimer, a Florida-based lawyer with Earthjustice, said even if Sharpley is gathering water and soil samples on the Ricketts field, the research is a waste of time because C&H Hog Farms will likely never spread manure there.

    “The whole point of spending the taxpayers’ money was to determine the risk of pollution or environmental harm that was being caused by C&H,” Reimer said. “So instead, what’s happening is, they’re looking at fields that aren’t part of C&H, or they’re doing all this work on a field that is not in C&H’s [nutrient-management plan].

    “It seems like there’s this train wreck of things that are happening as a consequence of the misrepresentation that took place at the very beginning,” Reimer said. “And no one seems to be interested in trying to resolve [these problems].”

    Marks said that changes to the hog farm’s nutrient management-plan map constitute only minor revisions that are not cause to reopen the permit for public comment. However, Henson and his partners have applied to the department to change the method of manure application on several of the grasslands within the plan, constituting a “major modification,” which does allow for public input.

    Wednesday, the department announced that the public hearing for the modification is scheduled for March 24 at 6 p.m. at the Jasper School District cafetorium at 600 School St. in Jasper.

    Marks said she and her staff expect to get strong feedback during the public comment period, although she stipulated that public comment will only be allowed on the portion of the permit being modified, not on the entire permit. The department began accepting written public comments on the modification Wednesday.The comment period will remain open until 4:30 p.m. March 24.

    Henson said he himself had requested the public hearing for his farm’s proposed modification.

    “They’re trying to ruin my name now, but the truth is, we have nothing to hide,” Henson said. “I’m the one who asked for the public hearing. I don’t want them coming back to say ‘we didn’t know.’”

    Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/21/2014

     
  • 23 Feb 2014 4:40 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
    A bipartisan plea
     
    By Mike Masterson
    This article was published today at 3:07 a.m. Arkansas Democrat Gazette

     
    You likely haven’t read the bipartisan op-ed co-bylined by former U.S. Reps. Ed Bethune, a Republican, and Democrat Vic Snyder. They spell out the obvious need for our state to revoke the permit for the Cargill-sponsored hog factory that the state Department of Environmental Quality (cough) inexcusably permitted in the treasured Buffalo National River watershed.

    Their piece, published by The Hill newspaper in Washington, is an account from two men who served Arkansas’ 2nd Congressional District. Bethune held the office from 1979 to 1985, Snyder from 1997 until 2011.

    The politically oriented Hill publishes daily while Congress is in session. I’m convinced the space I’m allotted sometimes is best filled by the opinions of others with whom I (and many others) agree. So their story (edited for space) follows:

    “In 1972, something miraculous by today’s standards happened in Congress. A Republican [Rep. John Paul Hammerschmidt of Harrison], working with Democratic colleagues, passed legislation that was then signed by a Republican president. The bipartisan effort created the Buffalo National River, America’s first. …

    “Saved once from harm, the Buffalo faces a new and impending pollution problem-a poorly placed industrial hog farm-that will likely change the nature of this magnificent river.

    “The Buffalo is an ecological jewel that meanders 135 miles through the heart of the Ozark Mountains. When this free-flowing stream of pristine waters, carved bluffs, and dramatic waterfalls became part of the National Park System it was to be spared from dams and development-or so we thought.

    “Just a few miles away, on a major tributary of the Buffalo, a factory farm of 6,500 pigs is now operating. The animals are owned by international conglomerate Cargill and raised by a local group called C&H Hog Farms. The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) granted the permit without public hearings or even putting a public notice in a newspaper. Not even the National Park Service, the agency charged with protecting the Buffalo, was consulted.

    “How did this happen? It was a combination of failed leadership among multiple agencies and a political culture that favors Big Ag.

    “There have been pig farmers in the Buffalo River watershed in the past. But these were mom and pop operations with a hundred or so head. Such farmers are becoming extinct, being put out of business and replaced by industrial farms, not just in Arkansas but across America. Agriculture is an important part of our state’s economy. But locating a factory hog farm next to a national treasure is irresponsible and the damage to our billion-dollar tourism industry will be irreversible.

    “The pigs at C&H Farms will generate as much fecal matter and urine as a city of 35,000 people. The 2 million gallons of waste per year is being flushed untreated into lagoons and then spread over hay fields. When the rains come, the runoff will flow into Big Creek and then into the Buffalo River downstream.

    “But runoff is not the only problem. The Ozarks consist of porous limestone rock called Karst geology. Anything placed on the land leaches through the fissures and into the underground water system. The Buffalo National River is being threatened from above and below. And then there are the noxious fumes that residents and school children of the community of Mount Judea, Ark., must endure. The state’s response so far has been to set aside money to monitor the amount of water pollution. All that means is that we Arkansans will be the first to tell the world that “hog doin’s” have found their way into our precious Buffalo River.

    “What are the chances of water pollution from this factory hog farm? Nationally known Arkansas hydrologist Dr. Van Brahana, who is studying the region’s hydrology, says that there is a 95 percent probability rate. Even ADEQ Director Teresa Marks admitted in a recent New York Times article that pollution was certain. There are many places suitable for a factory hog farm, but the watershed of a national river is not one of them. The feces and urine from the hogs create a toxic brew of pollutants. It threatens the Buffalo’s unique ecosystem and endangers the health of local residents and park visitors.

    “The Buffalo is the crown jewel of The Natural State and an intricate part of the Ozark heritage, but it belongs to all Americans. It is one of the few unspoiled environments in America-a timeless, spiritual haven. … It is also an economic engine generating more than $38 million and 528 jobs in one of the poorer areas of the state. Compare those numbers to the five or so low-paying jobs provided by the factory hog farm.

    “More than 40 years ago, a disparate group of visionaries formed an alliance to create America’s first national river. … Now a coalition of local and national groups is trying to save it again. We, as former Arkansas congressmen from different sides of the aisle, are joining that fight. The permit must be revoked and the factory hog farm moved from its current location. We understand that factory farmers have a right to make a living, but not at the expense of a national river and the surrounding community.”All I can add is, “Amen, congressmen.” Oh, and suppose you might pass the bacon?

Buffalo River Watershed Alliance is a non profit 501(c)(3) organization

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