Buffalo River Watershed Alliance
MOUNT JUDEA, Ark. undefined Anita Hudson’s moment of realization came early this year when she saw cement trucks whizzing past her home in this blip of an Ozark town. For Sam Dye, it was when an employee at the school where he once was principal pointed out bulldozers clearing a wooded area in the distance.
For many months, Ms. Hudson and Mr. Dye had been among those who brushed off rumors that a large hog farm would be built here in the scenic watershed of the Buffalo River.
But now they were confronting reality: a farm that could house as many as 6,500 hogs was being built near them, within the pristine ecosystem of the Buffalo undefined designated America’s first “national river” and overseen by the National Park Service. Since then, the operation, C&H Hog Farms undefined which began producing piglets for the agricultural giant Cargill in the spring undefined has divided the community, drawn scrutiny from environmentalists, politicians, and state and federal officials, and left many wondering how one of the largest hog operations in the so-called Natural State ended up in the heart of a major tourist area.
For environmentalists, the development of the Mount Judea (pronounced Judy) hog farm provides a stark example of what they see as lax oversight of such farms by state and federal regulators. Many of them were dismayed last year, for instance, when the Environmental Protection Agency withdrew proposed regulations that would have required all concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, to submit “basic operational information” and would have increased the number of such farms that require permits.
But C&H Hog Farms has many supporters, who say that these farms have long dotted the watershed without causing major environmental damage. They argue that the owners of C&H followed all the required steps to obtain a permit and will do all they can to make sure that the farm does not hurt the ecosystem.
“We believe that modern farming and environmental conservation and protecting the environment can coexist,” said Mike Martin, a spokesman for Cargill. “A lot of the fear and concern is based on a ‘what if’ scenario that may never take place.”
The controversy simmers as a report released in October by a group of Harvard-led scientists found that nitrogen levels were too high in about half of the country’s national parks undefined in large part because of ammonia emitted into the air by agricultural operations, which can deprive fish of oxygen or drive out some vegetation in an ecosystem. This phenomenon is expected to worsen in coming decades as corporate farming increases, according to the report.
In response to the uproar here, the state has temporarily imposed more stringent notification requirements for future CAFO applicants, acknowledging that many crucial players, including the superintendent of the river and the director of the state agency that permitted the operation, knew nothing about the project until after it had been approved.
Gov. Mike Beebe of Arkansas, a Democrat, has allocated more than $340,000 to test and monitor the water quality in the watershed. Both of Arkansas’ United States senators undefined John Boozman, a Republican, and Mark Pryor, a Democrat undefined have said they were concerned about the location of the farm, and supported close monitoring.
Environmental groups have filed a federal lawsuit against the Farm Service Agency and the Small Business Administration to try to block $3.4 million in loan guarantees for the farm, arguing that the agencies had not properly considered its environmental impact.
“I was just sick over it undefined I just couldn’t believe it,” said Jewell Fowler, 87, who found out about the hog farm after it had been approved, through a notice in a local newspaper. Born in Mount Judea, Ms. Fowler has lived for the past four decades in a wooden cabin on the banks of the Big Creek, one of the main tributaries to the Buffalo River: a quiet oasis where the trees emit a sugary scent and water laps over rocks in a soothing whir.
“I’m just afraid of the stink, maybe contamination, make people sick,” Ms. Fowler said.
But the farm in Mount Judea has received considerable support, not least from some residents who live close by. Many see it as an economic bright spot in Newton County, which has high poverty.
On a recent chilly morning, a scent evoking a mucky lagoon curled over the hill where Glen Ricketts lives. He cracked a smile.
“You smell it,” he said.
From Mr. Ricketts’s property, looking down a valley in the distance, a pair of white triangular roofs pop up like fins amid a sea of trees. They are the large barns that house the pigs.
“Reason why it don’t bother us, we’re just hillbillies,” said Mr. Ricketts, 55, who is related by marriage to some of the farm’s owners. “When you’re raised up around a hog, it don’t bother you.”
Charles Campbell, 77, has permitted the farm’s owners to spray some of the manure on his land.
“I don’t think that it would pollute the river at all,” he said. “I’ve lived in this country for, well, all my life, and cattle and hogs has been raised up and down the creek here, and to me it ain’t bothered nothing so far.”This, however, is unlike any other hog operation in the area. With just over 2,500 sows undefined producing thousands of piglets undefined C&H has more of them than all of the other hog farms now operating in the Buffalo River watershed combined.
The farm, its operators say, produces nearly 1.5 million gallons of hog manure a year if it runs at capacity. The waste is being stored in large lagoons and sprayed as fertilizer on nearby fields, some of them close to the Big Creek. Ten of the 17 fields that will receive fertilizer will have dangerously high phosphorous levels within a year, Kevin Cheri, the superintendent of the Buffalo River for the National Park Service, wrote in a letter to the Farm Service Agency.
Environmentalists also worry that rain could cause the manure to run off into streams and creeks, especially because of the type of topography in the area. Known as karst, it is essentially a permeable limestone rock with many cracks and caves beneath the surface that water flows through quickly and easily, potentially allowing contaminants from the manure to seep into the ground and settle throughout the watershed. Some business owners worry that pollution would devastate tourism. The river attracts more than a million visitors each year for hiking, horseback riding and canoeing.
“There is a probably greater than 95 percent chance that we are going to see impacts of degraded water quality and major environmental degradation,” said John Van Brahana, a recently retired hydrogeologist from the University of Arkansas who has conducted tests in the area.
Supporters of the farm argue that unlike the small operations that have been common throughout the watershed, this one uses more environmentally friendly technology to prevent pollution. For one thing, the lagoons holding the waste are larger than required and use a clay liner that will prevent leakage, supporters have said. (Dr. Brahana said he believed the type of clay the operation was using would leak.)
C&H was the first undefined and still the only undefined hog farm in the state approved through a new general permit that officials created for CAFOs to comply with federal rules. That permit did not require the strict procedures for notifying neighbors required for other agricultural permits in the state.
Even some of the farm’s staunchest opponents said its owners were good, hardworking people looking to make a living, but they were critical of how they went about establishing the operation.
Teresa Marks, the director of the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, said that while
the public should have been better notified about the operation before approval, she had enough confidence in the environmental integrity of the project that it would not have affected the ultimate outcome.
“Will there be some of this waste that could reach the Buffalo River? Sure,” she said. “Will it cause an environmental problem? No, we don’t think there’s going to be any environmental harm caused.”
Living near a hog farm or a field fertilized with pig manure significantly increases the risk of being infected with a dangerous superbug, new research finds. Two new studies published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine focus on a bacteria called methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus , or MRSA, which caused more than 80,000 invasive infections in the USA in 2011. ...In 2011, for the first time since officials began tracking invasive MRSA infections, more Americans were infected with MRSA in the community than in the hospital, one of the studies shows. In the second study, researchers found that exposure to hog manure is related to 11% of MRSA infections, even among people who don't work on farms.
The controversy centers on the inevitable byproduct of the farm: pig crap. Based on C&H's nutrient management plan (NMP), the facility will generate more than 2 million gallons of manure and wastewater per year. The waste is first collected in 2-foot-deep concrete pits below the animals. Once the shallow pits, diluted with water, are filled, the waste drains into two large man-made storage ponds. Eventually, as the ponds fill, C&H will remove liquid waste and, in an agreement with local landowners, apply it as fertilizer on more than 600 acres of surrounding fields.
Farm Bill Could Hide Farm Locations From Public
WASHINGTON November 7, 2013 (AP)
By MARY CLARE JALONICK Associated Press
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Parts of the nation's $500 billion farm bill that Congress is considering would prohibit the government from disclosing some information about farmers or their employees, possibly preventing people from learning about nearby agricultural and large-scale livestock operations blamed for polluting water or soil.
The secrecy effort arose after the Environmental Protection Agency said it had mistakenly released names, email addresses, phone numbers and other personal information about some farmers and employees twice this year under the Freedom of Information Act. The EPA later determined it should not have released the information; in at least one case, an environmental group that received the data agreed to return it.
The provisions in the farm bill were intended to protect farmers who fear they would be targeted by animal advocacy groups.
The House version, now part of negotiations with the Senate, would prevent the EPA from disclosing the addresses, among other identifying information, of an owner, operator or employee of an agricultural operation. Other federal agencies could not release such information.
Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, blocked a Senate amendment similar to the House proposal.
"We must take care not to draw a veil of secrecy around important information about threats to the public's health and safety or government accountability," Leahy said.
Journalists and open government groups that want Congress to remove the proposals say federal law already bars the release of most personal information and the provisions are too broad.
"Members of the public have a right to know about agricultural and livestock operations that affect them, including where such operations are located," a coalition of 43 groups, including Society for Professional Journalists, Sunlight Foundation and Openthegovernment.org said in a letter Wednesday to House and Senate farm bill negotiators. "This information is especially critical for people who live near or share waterways with concentrated animal feeding operations."
Rep. Rick Crawford, R-Ark., who wrote one of the proposals, said many farmers and ranchers live on their farms, so releasing corporate addresses of their companies is the same as releasing their home addresses. Crawford said farmers and ranchers should be able to provide personal information securely to the Agriculture Department, but they believe that environmental activist groups could obtain the material if it were shared with the EPA.
"Activist groups should not be able to leverage their relationship with the EPA to get this information that could pose a threat," Crawford said.
Colin Woodall of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association cited cases of people trashing farmers' property.
"There are more and more folks on the activist side that don't like what we do, and we want to protect our members," Woodall said.
An attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, Jon Devine, one of the groups that received the personal information about some farmers, said his group wasn't interested in such details and returned the information when the EPA asked for it. He said the farm bill would go well beyond limiting such personal information and could jeopardize groups from getting facts they say they need, including the locations of farms. Craig Cox of the Environmental Working Group said he worried that the provisions could interfere with his group's ability to compile information about farm subsidies distributed every year, which the farm industry complains about. It's unclear whether the House language could be interpreted to restrict information about subsidies, he said.
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