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  • 16 Feb 2014 7:51 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Whose Side Is the American Farm Bureau On?

    The answer: Big Ag.

     Just ask the family farmers who dared to protest an industrial hog farm in Missouri.

    Ian T. Shearn July 16, 2012
     
    Produced in collaboration with the Food & Environment Reporting Network.

    The American Farm Bureau, with its 6 million “member families” and carefully cultivated grassroots image, talks a good game. In the pitched battle over US farm policyundefinedwith agribusiness giants on one side, and small family farmers, organic and local food advocates and environmentalists on the otherundefinedthe Farm Bureau positions itself as the voice of the farmer.

     
    “If you know agriculture in this country, it is dominated by family farms, and those are the people who come to our meetings, those are the people who set our policies,” claims Mark Maslyn, executive director of the American Farm Bureau Federation’s public policy department, a team of twenty-two registered federal lobbyists that spend more than $2 million annually on a variety of agriculture issues.

    But Rolf Christen, a cattle farmer in Missouri who was at one time an enthusiastic member of his local farm bureau’s board, tells a different story.

    Christen realized that the bureau’s “family farmer” talk was cheap when he sought its help battling an industrial scale hog operation with 80,000 animals just up the road from his farm in northern Missouri beginning in 1993. The waste from the facility created a sickening, eye-watering stench that seeped across the land and into the homes of Christen and his neighbors, starting what would be an epic battle against Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) that continues to this day.

    Logo for the Food & Environment Reporting NetworkAt that time, Christen had become the leader of local resistance to the CAFO, then owned by Premium Standard Farms. He organized town meetings and lobbied elected officials to fight Premium Standard. But he hadn’t counted on also fighting his local Farm Bureau, which he had joined as a young farmer in 1983, even getting involved with state legislative issues. When it came to this fight, the Farm Bureau sided with Premium Standard and cut Christen and his small farmer friends loose.

    “All of a sudden laws were changed in the state in order to make it easier for [Premium Standard], and that’s where the Farm Bureau and I quickly parted ways,” said Christen. Then, and to this day, Christen says, the “Farm Bureau has always supported the industry…and not the small farmers.”

    How had this happened? Missouri had become a popular destination for the pork industry. The state produces millions of pigs a year, predominantly for Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork producer, which purchased Premium Standard in 2007. The rise of the factory farm has been the death knell for the small family farmer in Missouri, as it has across the country. In 1964, there were 62,000 pig farms in Missouri; as of 2007, there were about 3,000, producing roughly the same number of pigs. To these giant hog producers, who depend on the support of the Farm Bureau to keep their efficient model humming, farmers like Christen and their worries about air and water quality are little more than troublemakers.

    Although illustrative, Christen’s case is not unusual. From California to New York, the Farm Bureau leads the charge for industrial-scale food production. It opposes the labeling of genetically engineered food, animal welfare reform and environmental regulation. In Washington, its well-funded team of lobbyists and lawyers seeks to undermine the federal Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act, opposing pesticide restrictions and increased scrutiny of greenhouse gas emissions and pollution from CAFOs, like the “farm” up the road from Christen.

    The Farm Bureau has sued the EPA, which is trying to limit farm runoff from polluting the Chesapeake Bay. At the same time, the Bureau pushes hard to expand international trade and lobbies for the stream of government subsidies that disproportionately benefit the nation’s biggest commodity farm operations and, indirectly, the agribusinesses at the heart of this system.

    In Washington, the 2012 Farm Bill has predictably been a top priority for the Farm Bureau lobby team. They have surprised players from both sides of the debate by conceding cuts in traditional subsidies in exchange for a large expansion of subsidized crop insurance that protects against disasters and falling prices at an estimated cost to taxpayers of $9 billion a year. The tactical, philosophical shift garnered praise even from Farm Bureau adversaries. Nonetheless, it should be noted that crop insurance is a small, but significant piece of Farm Bureau insurance companies’ portfolio. In 2011, they collected over $300 million in crop insurance premiums.

    In rural areas, the Farm Bureau grooms compliant political candidates, mostly Republicans; it wields the power to dictate outcomes of legislative elections and appointments to powerful state agriculture committees. Then it influences which farm-related bills become law. Along the way, it has become a close second to Monsanto in lobby expenditures for agriculture-related issues, spending nearly $6 million in 2011 undefinedall in the name of “farmers.”

    American Farm Bureau Federation president Bob Stallman was succinct, almost militant in his opening address last year at the group’s annual meeting: “We will not stand idly by while opponents of today’s American agriculture…try to drag us down…try to bury us in bureaucratic red tape and costly regulationundefinedand try to destroy the most productive and efficient agricultural system in the world,” he said.

    Stallman could well have been talking about Christen and his neighbors.

    * * *

    Christen has firsthand experience with the underbelly of that efficient system, because hog-raising is a messy business. Although afforded similar status to farms, CAFOs are more like automobile assembly-line factories, where thousands of animals are birthed, nourished with corn and other grains and supplemented with antibiotics and growth-promoting supplements. They are raised in climate-controlled darkness, confined to pens so cramped they cannot turn around. Hogs produce four times the waste of humans, and these CAFOs produce millions of gallons of manure annually. But in cities, human waste ends up at a sewage treatment plant; in CAFOs, untreated livestock waste is flushed out of confinement buildings into large lagoons, sprayed on fields as fertilizer and then too often migrates into streams and groundwater. In Missouri, this waste not only fouls the air; it has made its way into the rivers, streams and groundwater of surrounding communities.

    By 1995, Christen had found two local farmers, Terry Spence and Scott Dye, to join him in his fight. Rebuffed at every turn by the Farm Bureau, elected officials and regulatory agencies, they concluded their only hope was in the courts. So, they went lawyer shopping and found an unlikely candidate in Charlie Speer, a Kansas City attorney, who was once a financial analyst for Ford Motor Company and then represented corporate polluters who had fallen out of favor with the EPA.

    The three men provided Speer with evidence of a litany of infractions by Premium Standard’s operationundefinedbreaches of their lagoons, runoff from spreading manure on the land, burst pipes that sent hog waste flowing into streams, lakes and onto neighboring properties, causing miles of polluted streams and killing fish. Speer would soon discover that Premium Standard operations emit more ammonia and hydrogen sulfide than any other industry in Missouri. Neighboring farmers would later testify about the effects of the ubiquitous odorundefinedburning eyes, noses and throats, gagging, nausea, vomiting and headaches.

    In fact, Smithfield and its subsidiaries have been the subject of numerous environmental enforcement actions by the state and the federal government over water and air pollution caused by their hog production factories. From 1997 to 2004, Smithfield was fined $19 million. Bo Manly, president of Premium Standard at the time and now executive vice president and chief financial officer at Smithfield, admitted in a deposition with Speer that Premium Standard was the most fined agriculture company in Missouri.

    “I quickly learned that the ag industry today is like when I was working at Ford Motor,” Speer said. “It’s cheaper to pay the fines and keep dumping the paint in the creek.”

    With this kind of evidence in hand, Speer initially thought the case was a slam-dunk and easy money. It would be neither. In 1997, Christen and 60 of his neighbors formed the Citizens Legal Environmental Action Network, or CLEAN. With Speer as their counsel, they filed a federal citizens-action suit against Premium Standard alleging improper waste disposal near their homes. In 1999, the US EPA intervened in the suit, joining CLEAN as a co-plaintiff against Premium Standard.

    After the CLEAN suit was filed, Premium Standard spokesman Charlie Arnot weighed in with his view, one that has dominated the national discussion over food: “I think people need to understand that this [CAFO] is part of an ongoing changing structure in agriculture…. It’s a different model than we’ve ever seen before. Is it the right model? Not for everybody. But I think communities that want to continue to sustain a quality rural way of life have to begin to look beyond what we’ve always looked at in the past.”

    Christen and CLEANundefinedfully aware of what that “quality rural way of life” meansundefinedemerged victorious in its lawsuit, leading to a 2002 federal consent decree requiring Smithfield and Premium Standard to clean up its act. But enforcement is still being argued in the courts by both sides, and, Christen says, the air at his house still stinks. “It pisses me off that after fifteen years the company still does not even acknowledge that there is a problem up here,” he says.

    As it turned out, Christen and his friends weren’t an anomaly. Since meeting with the group, Speer has racked up big damage awards on behalf of individual farmers living next to these hog CAFOs throughout Missouri. In 2010, Speer attracted national attention with a record $11 million verdict awarded to fifteen plaintiffs who had been subject to the foul odors emanating from a Premium Standard pig CAFO in northwestern Missouri. In total, Speer has won over $25 million for 101 neighbors of CAFOs in eight “odor nuisance suits,” as they are called.

    To date, Speer has filed nearly 500 odor nuisance complaints in seven states, roughly half in Missouri. In one of Speer’s odor cases, it became evident that the Missouri Farm Bureau had more than a philosophical interest in the issue. A Missouri Farm Bureau insurance affiliate (that’s right, those family farmers at the Farm Bureau have a big hand in the insurance industry) was the carrier for one of the hog producer defendants. It paid $550,000 to settle the case, and also paid the defendant’s legal bills.

    The court battles have become a threat to the bottom line of America’s biggest pork producers. In fact, Smithfield Foods threatened to pull all of its hog operations out of Missouri after Speer’s $11 million judgmentundefinedand that put the issue front and center for the Missouri Farm Bureau.

    In response, the Farm Bureau moved the battlefield to its favored arenaundefinedthe Statehouse floor undefinedwith a bill from a friendly legislator the bureau helped elect. The aim of the bill: to keep all the farmers like Christen from seeking meaningful legal redress against the pollution from CAFO operations.

    In the waning days of the 2011 Missouri legislative session, Senate Bill 187 was signed into law, limiting citizens’ ability to sue large agribusinesses over the harm their factories inflict on neighboring property owners. The Farm Bureau had been pushing various forms of this bill for years, but with a Republican surge in the 2010 legislative elections and a new crop of freshman legislators, it finally passed. Though its sponsors spun the bill as protection for family farmers, it was, in reality, exactly the opposite. Senate Bill 187 limits the number of times a farmer can sue and caps damages at property value, which of course have decreased after the CAFOs moved in.

    Despite its track record, the Farm Bureau insists it has been and always will be the champion of the small farmer and rural America. To those who claim the Farm Bureau has sided squarely with one side, against the interests of many farmers, the Bureau’s Maslyn responds, “I’d say they’ve never been to one of our meetings.”

    Christen takes issue, as do a growing number of small farmers: “The point is, operators that raise hundreds of thousands of animals in confinement are ‘industrial operations’ and need to be regulated. And the Farm Bureau is never going to concede to this,” he said. “Their argument and scare tactic was and is: If we regulate the ‘big’ guys, we will have to regulate the ‘little guys’ also. Soon it will be too late, there will not be any family farmers left. But why would the Farm Bureau worry; they will sell their insurance anyway. The billboard in my town reads: ‘You don’t have to be a farmer to insure with us.’ ”

    * * *

    Christen is referring to that other, lesser-known facet of the Farm Bureau. It’s not just a non-profit “farmers organization” but a multi-billion dollar network of for-profit insurance companies, the third-largest insurance group in the United States. Its premiums generated more than $11 billion last year alone, on top of has assets worth more than $22 billion. In many states, Missouri among them, members of the Farm Bureau board and the board of its affiliated insurance company are one and the same, sharing office buildings and support staff.

    And those 6 million farmers it claims as members? In many states, anyone who signs up for Farm Bureau insurance becomes a member of the Farm Bureau automatically, which explains why the American Farm Bureau Federation boasts 6 million members when the United States has only about 2 million farmers. In Missouri, less than a third of its members are farmers. Nonetheless, all of its 113,000 members pay annual dues, as they do throughout the country, which fuels a potent political machine.

    In addition to the American Farm Bureau Federation’s twenty-two lobbyists, no fewer than 20 of the state Farm Bureaus, including Missouri, have registered lobbyists in Washington, leading the field of agribusiness lobbyists. Over the past decade, the nation’s ten largest agribusiness interests gave $35 million to Congressional candidatesundefinedled by the Farm Bureau, which gave $16 million, or 45 percent of the total. Farm Bureau PACS donated another $16 million to state candidates, according to election records.

    The Farm Bureau also has a financial interest in agribusiness corporations. In recent years, its insurance affiliates have bought stock in companies like Cargill, ConAgra, Dow Chemical, DuPont, Tyson and Archer Daniels Midland, all major food industry players. The Southern Farm Bureau Annuity Insurance Co. once owned more than 18,000 shares of Premium Standard stock.

    It has also grown increasingly concerned about the mounting resistance to the get-big-or-get-out agribusiness model, which has led increasing numbers of farmers and consumers to seek out alternatives.

    So the American Farm Bureau has pushed into public relations, spearheading the launch of the U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance, an advertising/social media/PR campaign to paint agriculture in a more favorable light. With an $11 million annual budget and most of the national commodity groups on board, the big ag-business players are now joiningundefinedDuPont, John Deere, Monsanto and BASF.

    “Our adversaries are smart and resourceful,” said the American Farm Bureau’s Stallman, who also heads the Farmers and Ranchers Alliance. “But we’re now matching them in using new communications tools, new strategies and new tactics.” The group’s promotional videos display polished vignettes but they are not filmed inside CAFOs; rather they are shot in sunlit fields of wheat and corn with attractive and articulate family farmers and distributed to partners such as the Discovery network on cable TV. It is the Rockwellian image of the farmer America loves, and one the Farm Bureau uses to pursue public approval for its agendaundefinedand against small farmers like Christen.

    Christen, now 58, is still fighting Premium Standard and the Farm Bureau; it has pretty much consumed his life. Now, a 140,000 hog factory is located seven miles south of him. As his original lawsuit drags on, the stench persists. Whether Speer’s legal barrage proves to be a game-changer or merely an aggravating blip on the EKG of corporate agriculture has yet to be seen. It’s also unclear whether the voices of small farmers, like Christen, will be strong enough to counter the ingrained image of the Farm Bureau as their savior andprotector.

    “There’s only so many times you can tell farmers you’re acting in their interest, and then act in the complete opposite manner,” says Rhonda Perry, a Missouri farmer and a former Farm Bureau “princess” who runs the Missouri Rural Crisis Center, a grassroots organization supporting family farmers. “So, now they’re saying we have to convince the consumers that agriculture is good and this new way of producing animals is really the best way.”

    Then she sighs.

    “As long as you have money to perpetuate the myth, the war is going to go on and on and on.…”

     

    Lauren Hasler, a freelance journalist, contributed to this report. It was produced in collaboration with the Food & Environment Reporting Network, an independent non-profit news organization producing investigative reporting on food, agriculture and environmental health.

  • 16 Feb 2014 1:37 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
    "Rethink that Permit " by
    Mike Masterson In the Northwest Arkansas Times February 16, 2014

    The unbelievable saga of the Cargill-sponsored hog factory our state wrongheadedly permitted in the Buffalo National River watershed just became more twisted where reason and common sense are concerned. (As if that were possible.)

    Now we read that attorneys for the national law firm Earthjustice (representing four public-interest groups) sent a letter last week to the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (cough) that spelled out alleged misrepresentations and problems with the permit this agency so quickly and quietly issued to the controversial hog factory.

    And this latest development means the entire matter of the permit likely will be reopened for public hearings.

    Among the Earthjustice concerns was a real doozy. C&H Hog Farms said in the nutrient management plan of its permit application that it had access to 17 fields around the 6,500-swine factory on which to spray tons of the resulting waste. However, the rightful owners of three of those 17 fields say they never gave permission to C&H to use their property.

    It gets worse. Last year our state agreed to spend over 500,000 of our tax dollars to monitor water quality around this factory.

    University of Arkansas researchers began testing on three fields.

    And, you guessed it, two of those three belong to those who denied their permission in the first place. (And none of those three fields being tested had even received waste applications.) Huh?

    Farmers and landowners around little Mount Judea, which borders the C&H factory, wrote to the university last week asking its researchers to stop testing and water monitoring on the fields where C&H was denied approval.

    Moreover, the letter to the Department of Environmental Quality contends that the agency and C&H owners have known about the ownership issues and even acknowledged as much in inspection reports. So just what the whole-hog, half-ham has been going on here?

    As a result of these alleged misrepresentations in the permit, Earthjustice says it has presented the state agency with legitimate reasons to reconsider the permit issued late in the summer of 2012. They are seeking a public review and full reconsideration of the permit.

    In a resulting news release, Ozark Society President Bob Cross of Fayetteville said: “The people of Arkansas and the university research team have been seriously misled … both ADEQ and C&H previously knew that three fields were improperly identified as fields set to receive manure applications. So why did they erroneously allow the University of Arkansas research team to use these fields to conduct monitoring and consequently waste a lot of taxpayer money?”

    Nothing I see worth arguing over. Just answer one simple question:Why would you allow such nonsense to stand up in the permitting process?

    Earthjustice lawyers concluded: “Public involvement and transparency from the start could well have prevented the ill-advised siting of a factory farm in the watershed of the treasured Buffalo National River and the subsequent waste of taxpayer dollars to monitor and study the facility.”

    The Earthjustice and activists’ concerns extend to a ground-penetrating radar study by the university’s team which shows evidence of subsurface features capable of allowing water contaminated by hog manure to rapidly travel into adjacent surface waters rather than being absorbed into field crops, as the factory’s disposal plan shows. Big Creek (a major tributary of the Buffalo National River) runs adjacent to some application fields and close to others.

    “C&H is contracted with Cargill, one of the world’s largest privately owned businesses, which had sales and other revenues of $136.7 billion in fiscal year 2013 alone,” says the letter of complaint. “Despite this, C&H put taxpayers on the line for $3.4 million in federal loan guarantees in order to obtain a loan for construction.”

    Earthjustice says the Department of Environmental Quality granted C&H coverage under a state general permit on August 3, 2012. And that permitting process flew under the radar and was devoid of public participation.

    Now the hog factory is seeking what amounts to more than a half-million dollars in taxpayer assistance to conduct the water-quality monitoring studies around its facility “that could and should have been performed by C&H and Cargill before the permit application was ever filed and before ADEQ granted any permit,” Earthjustice so correctly adds.

    “In short, C&H, contracted with a corporation worth billions, has now cost the Arkansan taxpayers more than half a million dollars and continues to rely on the public [treasury] to address problems that it and ADEQ should have addressed before the permitting of an industrial-sized hog facility in the karst terrain of the Buffalo River watershed. In exchange, C&H has created six local jobs.”

    So there you have the latest installment in this unbelievably cartoonish drama I hereby propose we title “ Buffalo before Swine.” -
  • 12 Feb 2014 10:00 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    State testing wrong fields near hog farm, opponents of operation say

    Posted by Max Brantley on Wed, Feb 12, 2014 at 9:36 AM

    WRONG WAY: Opponents say environmental testing is being done of land that isn't receiving waste from C and H hog feeder operation.
    WRONG WAY: Opponents say environmental testing is being done of land that isn't receiving waste from C and H hog feeder operation.
    A coalition of groups fighting the Cargill-backed hog feeder operation in the watershed of the Buffalo National River in Newton County issued a news release blasting the state's effort to monitor water quality in the area. It said the state is testing property unaffected by spreading of hog manure.

    This makes the state's spending on the project, encouraged by Gov. Mike Beebe, a waste of money, the groups say.

    The group, which is suing over the environmental assessment done for the farm's permit, said this is just the latest in a series of mistakes, omissions and flaws in the regulatory process that improperly allowed the mass feeding operation to go forward. the group wants the permitting process reopened.

    Its full release follows.



    Newly Released Arkansas C & H Water Monitoring Study Used Taxpayer Money to Test Wrong Fields for Hog Waste Contamination

    Coalition calls on state to fully reopen C & H’s permitting process; Local citizens ask University of Arkansas to cease unauthorized testing on their land

    Mt. Judea, Arkansas – Earlier today, a coalition of public interest groups sent a letter to Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) Director Teresa Marks pointing out misrepresentations around the permitting of C & H Hog Farms – a 6,500-swine facility in the Buffalo National River watershed. As a result of these misrepresentations, which reports show occurred as recently as January, the coalition is urging the agency to fully reopen the permitting process for C & H. In addition, a letter was sent this week by Mt. Judea farmers and landowners to a University of Arkansas research team studying the impacts of the C & H operation. The landowners asked that the research team cease water monitoring and testing that is currently underway on their land and that was never approved by the property owners.

    Last year, Arkansas approved the spending of over half a million dollars in taxpayer money for water monitoring around C & H. As part of the facility’s nutrient management plan (NMP) submitted and approved by ADEQ, C & H claimed to have access to 17 fields to dispose of their hog waste. However, property owners of land in three of those fields had declined permission to use their properties as manure sprayfields when they were initially approached by C & H. Remarkably, two of those three fields have since been identified as the focus of the state-funded University of Arkansas water monitoring project, despite the fact that they have not and will never receive C & H waste. This has occurred while both ADEQ and C & H had knowledge of the ownership issues with the fields identified in the NMP, as acknowledged in subsequent compliance inspection reports.

    “The people of Arkansas and the university research team have been seriously misled,” said Ozark Society President Robert Cross. “We’ve learned that both ADEQ and C & H previously knew that three fields were improperly identified as fields set to receive manure applications. So why did they erroneously allow the University of Arkansas research team to use these fields to conduct monitoring and consequently waste a lot of taxpayer money?”

    In its first quarterly report sent to the governor this week, the University of Arkansas research team noted that they have already accessed one of the falsely-identified properties for research and monitoring, and plan to conduct further testing on these fields moving forward.

    The aforementioned letter sent by Mt. Judea landowners to the University of Arkansas states: “We have not granted permission for C & H to use our lands as manure sprayfields, nor have we granted permission for the Big Creek Research Team to access our lands to perform research on the impacts of the C & H facility. We request that your Team immediately cease all activities on our property and seek our approval before accessing our properties in the future.”

    In June of last year, well-known Arkansas hydrogeologist Dr. John Van Brahana called on ADEQ to suspend C & H’s permit to address “significant omissions and potential problems.” While Dr. Brahana proposed a research program to assess the water quality of the region to more fully understand the impacts of the facility before field application began, his offers were bypassed – with the state instead opting to fund a University of Arkansas monitoring program that costs taxpayers over half a million dollars to identify issues after the fact. Brahana has moved forward with testing with his own money and support from other organizations.

    “The more we look into this permitting process for C & H, the more flaws, misrepresentations, and omissions we’re finding that allowed this hog facility to fly through under the radar,” said Earthjustice attorney Hannah Chang. “This whole monitoring process is such a huge waste of taxpayer money and one that our coalition warned about when the water testing was originally proposed by the state. Given these recent discoveries of serious missteps and scientific research that validates our environmental concerns, we are urging ADEQ to fully reopen the permitting process for C & H Hog Farms.”

    C & H is under contract with Cargill – the largest privately held company in the nation and the sole customer for the facility. Public pressure has been mounting against both Cargill and ADEQ to remove the facility from its current location, with billboards, rallies and petitions appearing across the state. Both ADEQ and Cargill have steadfastly supported the location of the facility, though ADEQ Director Teresa Marks readily admitted in a December New York Times article that “some of this waste could reach the Buffalo River.” In the same article, Dr. Brahana, whose experience with such matters is considerable, was much more explicit, saying: “There is a probably greater than 95 percent chance that we are going to see impacts of degraded water quality and major environmental degradation.”

    In another equally important facet of this case, the coalition opposing C & H 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. In providing federal assistance, SBA undertook no environmental review, while FSA prepared a deeply flawed and insufficient environmental assessment that fails to comply with the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act. The agencies also failed to consult with the superintendent at Buffalo National River, as required by law.

    “We’re not talking about a bunch of conservationists who are the only ones opposed to this hog factory,” said Buffalo River Watershed Alliance member Dane Schumacher. “The letter from local landowners illustrates how C & H Hog Farms is already impacting life for local Mt. Judea farmers. Opposition is being driven by those most affected by this operation, and it’s time ADEQ and C & H listen to their concerns.”

    Today’s letter was sent by Earthjustice, Earthrise Law Center, and local attorney Hank Bates on behalf of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, National Parks Conservation Association, The Ozark Society and Arkansas Canoe Club.

    To read the letter the coalition sent to ADEQ, as well as the letter sent by local landowners to the University of Arkansas, click here.

    For the University of Arkansas’s flawed initial report on water quality testing, click here.

    For background on the lawsuit, click here.
  • 11 Feb 2014 6:19 PM | Anonymous
    It's the Location
    Democrat-Gazette-February 11, 2014
     
    I've got to smile whenever I read how some lobbyists and others with special-interest agendas try to make it seem in news stories as if
    public opposition (including my own) to the hog factory placed in the precious Buffalo National River watershed, when our state's Department of Environmental Quality (cough) quickly and quietly permitted that mega-waste-producer in such a sensitive location, somehow equals wide-spread opposition to hog farms and Cargill.  Talk about a crimson oinker (pork version of a red herring).
     
    Once again for the record, the only protests in this instance are over the wrongheaded location of this particular swine factory, not the farmers or hog farming itself. Period. End of sentence.

  • 09 Feb 2014 12:02 PM | Anonymous
    ADEQ notified C&H yesterday of a necessary permit modification with a new notice of intent and nutrient management plan.  This will be a major modification requiring a public notice on ADEQ's website with a 30-day comment period.  We will post when public notice has been made and comment period is open.  Access letter at link below:
     
  • 09 Feb 2014 2:00 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
    JUDGE FILES SCHEDULE IN HOG FARM SUIT

    By Ryan McGeeney

    Posted: February 9, 2014 at 1:41 a.m.

    A lawsuit seeking a new environmental assessment of the possible effect of a Newton County hog farm on its natural surroundings has moved one step closer to resolution.

    Judge D.P. Marshall Jr., a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Western Arkansas Division in Little Rock, issued a finalized legal-proceedings schedule Wednesday in Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, et al., v. Department of Agriculture, et al.

    The schedule is the 25th document filed in the case that began in August when Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental litigation group, filed suit against defendants that include the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Small Business Administration and several top administrators in branches throughout both agencies.

    The lawsuit questions the validity of the environmental impact study conducted by the Farm Service Agency in support of loan guarantees that were issued to the owners of C&H Hog Farms, a concentrated animal feeding operation built last year in Mount Judea. The farm, which is permitted by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality to house about 2,500 full-grown sows and as many as 4,000 piglets at any one time, is near Big Creek, a major tributary to the Buffalo National River. In addition to seeking a new environmental impact study, the suit asks the court to enjoin the loan guarantees.

    According to documents previously filed in the case, on March 6 lawyers for the plaintiffs are to file a request for summary judgment asking the judge to issue a ruling in their favor with out them presenting additional evidence in the case, along with a brief supporting their argument. On April 7, lawyers for the defendants are scheduled to file a motion opposing the request for summary judgment.

    While the suit, which grew out of a public outcry over the Environmental Quality Department’s decision to issue a wastewater permit to a facility that’s estimated to generate more than 2 million gallons of manure a year near a national park, and a perceived lack of adequate public notice, it’s likely thathog farming in Arkansas will remain essentially unchanged.

    The production facility, which contracts with Cargill Inc. to provide weaned piglets for eventual processing as pork, is surrounded by about 630 acres of grasslands on which C&H Farms operators are permitted to spread the hog manure as fertilizer. According to an inspection dated Jan. 23, operators at C&H Hog Farms began spreading the manure in late December 2013, applying more than 100,000 gallons of the waste on 40 acres between Dec. 27 and Jan. 20.

    Although C&H Hog Farms is the first and only operation in Arkansas to receive a general permit for concentrated animal feeding operations under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, Arkansas began regulating similar operations in 1992 under "Regulation 5" individual permits. Federal permits for concentrated animal feeding operations didn’tappear until 2003, according to Environmental Protection Agency documents. The initial regulations were finalized in 2008.

    According to the state department’s permit database, there are more than 260 facilities in the state that have active individual permits for concentrated animal feeding operations.

    Nearly three-quarters of those are hog operations. Most of the rest are either dairy farms or chicken egg producers. Only one farm - at the Arkansas Department of Corrections Cummins Unit in Grady - has a Regulation 5 permit for general livestock.

    Sevier and Howard counties have the most Regulation 5 hog farms in the state, with more than 50 active individual permits for concentrated animal feeding operations between those two counties. But hog farms dot the northwestern half of the state. And though much of the public debate over C&H Hog Farms centers on the wisdom of having a large farm so close to a river, there have been multiple Regulation 5 concentrated animal feeding operations within the river’s watershed for decades.

    Mike Martin, a Cargill spokesman, said neither public debate nor the ongoing lawsuit are likely to affect the company’s decisions regarding farm contracts in Arkansas. "Cargill currently has no plan to significantly alter its hog production footprint in Arkansas," Martin said. He said the company considers many factors when working with contract farms, and the regulatory environment is only one of them.

    Martin said Cargill currently has contracts with 87 hog farms in Arkansas, and that C&H Hog Farms is "a relatively small [concentrated animal feeding operation] by today’s standards."

    Regardless of the success or failure of Earthjustice’s suit against the USDA, the case is likely to have very little of an effect on the future of hog farming in Arkansas, said Steve Eddington, a spokesman for the Arkansas Farm Bureau.

    "I don’t hear complaints about environmental regulations, other than that they’re in place, and they’ve got to comply," Eddington said of farmers. "I’m not hearing, ‘Well, I’m not going to do this because of the environmental regulations.’"

    Eddington said the biggest thing that affected hog farming in the state was the decision by Tyson Foods Inc. more than a decade ago to stop contracting with hog farmers in the region.Tyson Foods was a major "integrator" in terms of buying weaned piglets from multiple farmers for slaughter operations.

    In 2002, Tyson began phasing out contracts with more than 130 hog farmers in Arkansas and Oklahoma, according to previous Arkansas Democrat-Gazette articles. The move meant that Arkansas ceased being a primary pork-producing state. Between 2004 and 2013, hog inventory in the state fell from more than 325,000 head to about 115,000, while overall U.S. farmed hog inventory rose from about 60 million head to about 66 million over that same time period.

    Jerry Masters, executive vice president of the Arkansas Pork Producers Association, said the effect of Tyson’s decision on independent hog farmers was felt immediately.

    At one time "we were 10th in the nation in hog production," Masters said. "When Tyson pulled out, we lost 65 percent of production in just a few months. Now, we’re not in the top 20. It was a dramatic, dramatic change in the industry in our state."

    Masters said current efforts to change the notification requirements for concentrated animal feeding operations in the state are unlikely to dissuade future generations of farmers from entering the business. "I really don’t think it’ll have an effect," Masters said. "Agriculture is more than a job or career, it’s a way of life."

    One result of the public outcry over the permitting process for C&H Hog Farms was the creation of a special committee, appointed by Gov. Mike Beebe, to make recommendations to the state Legislative Council about changes in notification policies regarding future concentrated animal feeding operations permits.

    Environmental Quality Department spokesman Katherine Benenati said the five-member committee met twice last year - on Nov. 18 and Dec. 20 - and submitted its recommendations to the Legislative Council on Jan. 16, after reviewing comments received during a public comment period.

    Ross Noland, a lawyer with the Little Rock-based lobbying group Arkansas Policy Panel and a member of the recommendation committee, said the committee’s recommendations were based in large part on practices in neighboring states. The recommendations included requiring permit applicants to notify property owners adjacent to the proposed facility, the county judge of the facility’s county, mayors of all municipalities within 10 miles of the site, and the superintendents of the school district that serves the area in question.

    A co-chairman of the Legislative Council, state Sen. Bill Sample, R-Hot Springs, said the recommendations report won’t be discussed until the legislative fiscal session ends, probably in March or April. At that point, Sample said, the report will likely be referred to a standing committee, such as the Budget Committee, for review. That committee will then report its recommendations back to the Legislative Council.

    Another outcome from public concern over C&H Hog Farms was the allocation of more than $340,000 in state funds to conduct extensive, ongoing water and soil testing in and around the Big Creek Watershed. Andrew Sharpley, a professor with the University of Arkansas Department of Crop, Soil and Environmental Sciences, was appointed to lead the Big Creek Research and Extension Team.

    Sharpley said his research team had been working with residents, who have been collecting weekly water samples since September 2013 to establish "baseline data" for water quality in Big Creek, the Buffalo National River and some wells in the area.

    Sharpley said the samples are analyzed at a UA laboratory in Fayetteville for nitrogen phosphates, ammonia nitrate, e.coli and a number of nutrients. Sharpley said periodically researchers will send "blind samples" to other EPA-certified labs in the region to verify their overall findings.

    On Friday, the researchers released their first quarterly report, which primarily detailed existing conditions in the area. According to the report, the team will begin installing surface and subsurface monitoring equipment during the coming quarter.

    Northwest Arkansas, Pages 11 on 02/09/2014

  • 08 Feb 2014 2:01 PM | Anonymous

     

     

    ADEQ has made  a 2nd inspection report for C&H.  Below is an edited version.  To see entire inspection go to  "Documents & Videos" and "ADEQ Compliance Inspection #2"

     

    January 28, 2014

    Mr. Jason Henson, Owner

    C&H Hog Farms

    HC 72 Box 10

    Mount Judea, AR 72655

    RE: Compliance Inspection/Complain Investigation

    AFIN: 51-00164 Permit No.: ARG590001

    Dear Mr. Henson:

    On January 23, 2014 I performed a compliance inspection of the above referenced facility in accordance with the provisions of the Arkansas Water and Air Pollution Control Act, and the regulations promulgated thereunder. Additionally as part of the inspection I reviewed application field17 in response to a complaint the Department received on January 16, 2014.  A copy of the inspection and complaint reports are enclosed for your records.

     Please refer to the “Summary of Findings” section of the attached inspection report and provide a written response for each violation that was noted. This response should be mailed to the attention of the Water Division Inspection Branch at the address at the bottom of this letter or emailed to Water-Inspection-Report@adeq.state.ar.us. This response should contain documentation describing the course of action taken to correct each item noted. This corrective action should be completed as soon as possible, and the written response with all necessary documentation (i.e.photos) is due by February 11, 2014.

     If I can be of any assistance, please contact me at bolenbaugh@adeq.state.ar.us or 501-682-0659.

    Sincerely,

    Jason Bolenbaugh

    Inspection Branch Manager

    Water Division

     

    SUMMARY OF FINDINGS THE ITEMS REFERENCED BELOW IN THIS SECTION REQUIRE A WRITTEN RESPONSE

    The holding pond embankments were not stabilized and erosion rills were found within the inside banks of the holding ponds. Stabilization of the embankments needs to occur to 1) prevent sediment from entering the holding ponds which may decrease the capacity of the holding ponds, and 2) ensure the integrity of the holding ponds are maintained. Please see Photographs 1 and 2.

     The maps in the Nutrient Management Plan (NMP) do not correctly identify the land application areas.

    Specifically, there are sections of Fields 12 and 16 that are identified as application areas; however, land use contracts are not available. You did indicate you were aware of the errors and were in the process of generating new land application maps, and those sites were not being applied to. Please provide those updated maps or a date when those will be completed in your response.

     Your NMP indicates there are 630.7 available acres to land apply to. However, that includes Field 5 that was previously mentioned in the June 23, 2013 inspection report and has been removed as an application field, as well as Fields 12 and 16 which must be revised. Please revise the NMP to reflect the total acres available for application. The highlighted areas in the attached site maps indicate the approximate areas that are outlined in your NMP as application sites but are ones you do not possess land use contract for.

     At the time of the inspection you could not verify the exact number of swine on site that were above 55 lbs. and below 55 lbs. On January 27, 2014 you confirmed there were 2,499 sows (> 55 lbs.) and 700 nursery pigs (< 55 lbs.) on site. Your NMP states there will be no more than 2,500 swine (> 55 lbs.) and 4,000 swine (< 55 lbs.) on site. Please ensure you are maintaining an actual head count at all times so you do not exceed the given number of swine.

     

    GENERAL COMMENTS

    THE GENERAL COMMENTS SECTION DOES NOT REQUIRE A RESPONSE

    As a reminder, per Part 3.2.4 of your permit your annual report is due to the Department by January 31, 2014.

    Per Section B.3.c.4 of your NMP, soil samples for Nitrate-N and Phosphorus shall be taken no less than annually. This differs from Part 4.2.1.3 of your permit. Please ensure you continue to abide by the requirement of your NMP.

     At the time you indicated land application is only occurring by use of the vac tanker which coincides with your application records. Per Section M of your NMP, please ensure you only use a vac tanker on fields 1-4 and 10-17, and only use the pipeline/sprinkler system on Fields 5-9. Your NMP will need to be revised if you wish to use both practices to apply on a given field.

     A review of your application records indicated a rating of "Fair" for Field 17. When asked, you indicated the field was a "little soft" and this was noticed once you began applying and ruts from the equipment formed.

    However, you indicated you took appropriate action and immediately ceased application. Please see Photograph 3.

     The Holding Pond Level was below Must Pumpdown elevation. The level of Holding Pond 1 was low enough so that waste was not flowing over the spillway.

     Mortalities are promptly disposed of in the two incinerators that are on site. Please see Photograph 4.

    At the time of the investigation we did not note any violations pertaining to your application practices. You indicated you have implemented more stringent buffer and setback requirements than are documented in the permit.

     

    INSPECTOR’S SIGNATURE: Jason Bolenbaugh

     

     

     

     

     

  • 29 Jan 2014 6:47 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
    Brahana Talks
    Mike Masterson- Democrat-Gazette, January 28, 2014


    Former UA geoscience professor John Van Brahana last week addressed the state Pollution Control and Ecology Commission about the need to protect the Buffalo National River's watershed. This political body oversees the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (cough).

    Brahana has invested large amounts of personal time, resources and energy into voluntarily conducting water-quality testings around the controversial C & H Hog Farms at Mt. Judea that was quietly and quickly permitted by the Department of Environmental Quality. He and students have been baseline testing around the factory, critical preliminary studies that I believe should have been required of the factory and its supplier, Cargill Inc.

    "We had an eventful meeting in Little Rock. I was able to speak to the commission for the first time. We requested a temporary moratorium. We requested that the general permit be completely revised and I requested that my dye-tracing permit be approved after being tied up since early November (actually, since last summer)," said Brahana.

    Let's hope the commission listens to Brahana, whose only agenda is preserving the water quality of the country's first national river.
  • 23 Jan 2014 4:42 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
    Eureka Springs Independent

    Exploring Cargill statement
    ESI Staff
    Wednesday, January 22, 2014

    Editor,
    In response to Mike Martin, Cargill director of communications, [Jan. 8 Independent].
    I have searched ADEQ’s website and other documents finding that in 1992 Randy Young, executive director of Arkansas Soil and Water Conservation Commission, initiated a study of confined animal operations in the Buffalo River Watershed. Confined animal operations were viewed as one of the greatest potential contributors of bacteria and nutrients in the watershed. The project concentrated on swine operations that the Arkansas Department of Pollution Control & Ecology considered as the more eminent threat to the water quality of the Buffalo River.
    At the time of the project there were 11 permitted hog facilities. Nine of the farms were on the southern edge of the watershed high on the sandstone and shale formation of the Atoka and Bloyd Formation, around 2000 ft. elevation. Two were near but outside the watershed, also high in elevation. There were a total of 3,094 sows in 1994.
    C & H Hog Farms is located in the recharge zone of the Springfield Aquifer and isolates 2,500 sows at an approximate elevation of 900 ft. There are three other permitted hog farms in or near the Buffalo River watershed for a combined number of sows at 3,525. The other three farms are located in the Atoka and Bloyd formations on the southern edge of the watershed, high in elevation.
    The Agricultural Statistics Board, NASS USDA, shows that in 1990, on average, a sow produced 13 pigs per breeding animal per year, in 2008 the average pigs per breeding animal increased to 18.7 per year. In 2013 a sow produced 9.90-10.20 pigs per litter in a large operation like C & H’s.
    C & H Hog Farms has the largest concentration of sows in one location in the Buffalo River watershed, it is the only facility ever permitted in the Springfield Aquifer; it has larger amounts of waste per animal due to sow size and litter numbers per sow than 1990 according to statistics; it is spreading untreated manure on fields that have very shallow soils with porous rock outcrops in the middle of winter and the facility itself is within ½ mile of a school and town. The facility is .4 of a mile from Big Creek.
    Once there were 11 family jobs now there are four family jobs.
    I urge everyone to please speak out. The air we breathe and the water we drink are the basic elements in our everyday lives. We are the ones to do something to insure our future generations the same values we have known. We have the education and the research has been done, it is time to acknowledge that we make a difference.
    Carol Bitting Marble Falls
  • 22 Jan 2014 8:48 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
    Hog issue complex?
    By Mike Masterson
    Posted: January 21, 2014 at 2:45 a.m.

    Two avid supporters of the Buffalo National River in Newton County recently sent their concerns to state legislators.


    They asked the representatives to do everything possible to prevent the potential pollution of the treasured stream by C&H Hog Farms. That’s the deeply controversial hog factory that the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (cough) wrongheadedly permitted along a major tributary of the Buffalo.

    Patti Kent, a Newton County property owner, and Pam Fowler of Jasper also were asking what can be done legislatively to stop the possibility of hog waste polluting our river as it has in water bodies in other states such as North Carolina. The hog factory (supplied and supported by Cargill Inc. at the hamlet of Mount Judea) is spread across 600 acres, much of which is widely underlain by fractured subsurface terrain called karst.

    This mountainous limestone topography allows subterranean groundwater to rapidly flow through cracks and caves for miles into nearby streams. That means Big Creek, which is adjacent to or near the fields to be sprayed with C&H waste routinely drawn from two large lagoons, could well be threatened by contamination. Big Creek flows into the Buffalo National River about six miles downstream.

    Two legislators’ responses cite a need for balance in resolving what they contend is a complex matter. Fowler included a photograph with her message to one legislator that shows a large highway billboard on U.S. 65 near Western Grove which shouts: “Come Enjoy the Buffalo River. It’s Not Polluted … Yet!”

    Here (edited for space) are responses the women say they received: From Rep. Kelley Linck, R-Yellville: ”If I understand your thoughts correctly … you don’t believe this is a complicated issue at all. You believe that the only right solution is to do away with C&H Farm. There’s no possible way to pass legislation that makes C&H Farm illegal and mandate its removal. I’d be shocked if that legislation were to receive better than 2 votes out of the 135 legislators. Truthfully, I’d be shocked to see it receive a single vote.Do you think [you] can muster enough lobby support to move 50 percent of the Legislature to do something that currently zero percent supports? It cannot … happen. We will all continue to work for the best possible outcome in a situation none of us wanted to be in. … We will also work to not get caught in the same or similar situations in the future.” From Rep. Greg Leding, D-Fayetteville: “I can assure you we’re working to do what we can to ensure the continued protection of the Buffalo River and other extraordinary watershed resources. The current situation involving C&H is a complex one that, unfortunately, we learned about too late. It’s my sincere hope that the issue is settled in a way that’s fair to all parties and safe for our state’s water and air quality. Looking ahead, I believe there must be a balance between our ecological and agricultural concerns. We’ve got a beautiful state, and tourism is vital to our economy. But our state also plays a key role in feeding millions of people and agriculture’s just as critical to our state’s economic health. Making sure we find that fair balance is no easy task but one to which I’m committed. As to current efforts, I spoke with ADEQ this week. We should learn within days the full recommendations made by a panel we put together through the legislation passed at the end of last year’s legislative session. These recommendations should increase public notification requirements for future projects, allowing concerned parties to voice their concerns much earlier in the process. It’s a small step, but a step forward.”

    I emailed the legislators about their responses but didn’t hear so much as an oink in reply by my deadline.

    My response is that while there’s certainly no question that we humans need food to survive, unelected me sees nothing complex in legislating that hogs be mass-produced only in areas of Arkansas that don’t pose what scientists and others contend presents a clear danger to our state’s only national river. As to seeking “balance,” even I could not have found a more inappropriate and controversial place to embed up to 6,500 hogs. Where does anyone other than lobbyists for agriculture find balance in this worst possible location?

    Matters became even less balanced after I learned the director of our state’s Department of Environmental Quality admitted to not realizing her agency had issued the factory’s permit in this hypersensitive watershed until it was approved. Neither the agency’s local office in nearby Jasper nor the National Park Service in Harrison were informed this factory was being permitted.

    Simply put, this supposedly “complex” factory should never have been allowed in such a sensitive location, especially by the alleged guardians of our environmental quality. In fact, count me among those who remain surprised that the agency director still holds her political position, considering the way her agency so badly mishandled what amounted to an accommodation that (all complexities and balance aside) benefited Cargill and one family contrasted with a flagrantly unacceptable risk to a state’s national treasure.


    Mike Masterson’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him atmikemasterson10@hotmail.com. Read his blog at mikemastersonsmessenger.com.

    Editorial, Pages 11 on 01/21/2014

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