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For those who missed it, Masters’ pro-pork squeal in last Saturday’s paper referred to me indirectly and all those who’ve been vocal about the very real possibility of the C&H hog factory contaminating the Buffalo National River as an exploitative “fear mongering” and “disingenuous” lot.

http://www.baxterbulletin.com/article/20131031/NEWS01/310310017/Hog-farm-protestors-describe-hazards-factory-farms-along-Buffalo-River

Hog factories a major threat to area
Becky Gillette
Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Halloween horror came early to Eureka Springs Monday when representatives from the Waterkeeper Alliance from North Carolina came to give personal reports backed up by photographic evidence of the devastating impacts from the production of eight to ten million hogs grown in the state’s Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). Only this presentation wasn’t about mock horror done for fun during Halloween, but real life devastation of the environment and peoples’ lives from hog factories.

There were photographs of lesions on people and fish caused by the blood sucking pfiesteria organisms linked to hog waste, and grizzly images of hundreds of dead pigs dumped in metal “dead boxes” or even on the ground. There was also video footage of rivers turned to red, rivers clogged with slimy algae caused by the excess nutrients, and hog waste being sprayed directly into ditches and streams leading to major waterways.

Some attendees left the room, finding the scenes too difficult to watch. Even those already opposed to CAFOs, and in particular a new 4,500 hog factory in the Buffalo River Watershed, came away with an increased understanding of what could happen if Arkansas becomes the next target for siting large numbers of hog factories by an industry that is expanding because of increased demand from China for pork.

The Waterkeepers spoke Monday night after a similar presentation earlier in the day in Jasper. They visited the Mount Judea School, and said odor from the hog factory is noticeable from the school even though the factory hasn’t yet started spraying waste.

Larry Baldwin, the North Carolina CAFO Coordinator for the Waterkeeper Alliance, said CAFOs are one of the greatest threats to water quality in the U.S. and the world. Hogs grow rapidly, and produce eight to ten times as much waste as humans. The number of hogs being raised in North Carolina could be compared to the waste from 100,000 million people. But unlike with human waste, CAFOs are not required to install wastewater treatment plants. North Carolina CAFOs alone generate more waste than is produced by the entire country of Germany.

“These are not family farms,” Baldwin said. “They are factories that are controlled by the industry with little regard for the impacts to neighbor’s health and property. These hog factories have impacts far beyond their borders. It is a local issue with global consequences. Without clean water, there can be no healthy life.”

Baldwin also spoke of the high mortality rates from hogs being raised in close confinement. Twelve to 20 percent of the animals die. Some are taken to rendering plants where oil is extracted for cosmetics, and the remains used to make feed for animals – including hogs. Other times the dead hogs are simply buried in an area with a high water table where contamination from rotting carcasses can go directly into the groundwater.

Other concerns he discussed include high rates of asthma and respiratory problems from residents who live near the facilities or children who go to school near the factories; antibiotic resistance from widespread use of antibiotics in the hog’s feed or water; environmental justice and animal welfare concerns; and the potential to spread disease to other animals and humans.

“This is an industry that is out of control,” Baldwin said. “This is your water. This is your state. Don’t do it like we did it in North Carolina because we did it wrong.”

He said there are environmentally sound waste treatment systems that have been developed for hog factories, but the industry that makes billions in profits claims they are too expensive.

Rick Dove, a former commercial fisherman who is a founding director of the Waterkeeper Alliance, spoke about the devastation to fisheries caused by major tributaries like the Neuse River being “fertilized to death” by hog factories. “Year after year, North Carolina has seen hundreds of millions of fish killed,” he said.

“We had no massive fish kills until we got the CAFO industry,” Dove said. “Too many nutrients can make the river sick. You get low oxygen from too much fertilizer and the fish die. The fishery and river are important to the whole economic base where we live.”

The Neuse River, Dove said, was once a very beautiful river that attracted a lot of water-based recreation. But no one wants to swim in hog waste in waters contaminated with dangerous pathogens. The result has been devastating to the economy of the area, particularly tourism.

Dove had personal experience with pfiesteria. When he and his son were fishing and were exposed to fumes from pfiesteria, they experienced temporary memory loss. That memory loss has been so bad that some fishermen can’t remember how to get back to the dock or home.

“Once you bring in the factory farms, life will never be the same,” Dove said.

Kelly Foster, senior attorney with the Waterkeeper Alliance, said not to expect environmental laws like the Clean Water Act to protect you because they won’t. CAFOs often claim to be “zero discharge” facilities, alleging no waste leaves the area so a wastewater permit is not needed. Although numerous studies have documented the hog waste getting into local rivers, the industry is so powerful that it has been able to evade properly treating its waste.

“The environmental laws are all written by the industry,” she said.

In North Carolina, the CAFOs are usually sited by streams or rivers, and the Waterkeepers believe this could be by design as a handy way to get rid of their waste. Foster said with the karst topography of the Ozarks, waste from hog farms is likely to leach into the ground and follow underwater fissures to emerge from the ground in a spring, river, lake or drinking water well. The Ozarks could be the “ideal” place for the hog waste to disappear.

Foster said the Ozark water bodies are in various stages of death from nitrification (over-fertilization from sources such as the poultry CAFOs). Hog factories would make the problem much worse.

“Stop them before they start,” Foster urged. “Organizing your communities is the only way to stop the CAFOs.”

Many states have put moratoriums on new hog factories. In North Carolina, there is a ban on new spray fields. But the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) has adopted a “general permit” that makes it easy for CAFOs to get permits without – in the case of the hog factory near the Buffalo River – proper notification to state and federal agencies, and the public. The Waterkeepers said Arkansas could very well be a target for hog factories expansions because they have been blocked in other states from expanding, and Arkansas has made it easy to get permits.

Warning: hogs worse than smell; Hammerschmidt pushed to protect Buffalo National River
 

Posted: Thursday, October 31, 2013 1:45 am

Publication:Arkansas Democrat-Gazette; Date:Oct 22, 2013; Section:Arkansas; Page Number:7


New take on water repealed
Law said to clash with federal act
RYAN MCGEENEY ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE



After months of revising existing water regulations to comply with new state water-quality standards, staff members at the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality must now revert to the state’s original and long-held interpretation of the federal Clean Water Act.

After last week’s threeday special legislative session, Gov. Mike Beebe signed Act 4 into law Monday, repealing changes to the state’s interpretation of the federal act. Those changes were a part of Act 954, which passed during the regular 2013 legislative session earlier this year and went into effect Aug. 16.

Act 954 changed the way stream flows in Arkansas waterways were calculated, allowing municipalities and industrial centers with water-discharge permits to discharge greater amounts of minerals, including sulphates and chlorides, into waterways. The act also removed the default assumption that all waterways in Arkansas were potential sources of drinking water, unless otherwise determined by scientific study.

Both Act 954 and its repeal were written by state Rep. Andy Davis, R-Little Rock. Although Davis argued the bill was a “common-sense” approach to regulation, department administrators and environmental activists warned throughout the lawmaking process that the legislation would likely put the state out of compliance with federal law.

In late August, about a week after Act 954 went into effect, administrators at the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 6 office in Dallas terminated its “waiver of review” over the state’s permitting authority for permits affected by Act 954, in effect partially federalizing the permit process. In September, members of the Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission warned that municipalities and industries that initially supported Davis’s legislation may soon wish for a return to the original standards.

Calls to Davis on Monday were not returned.

Because Act 4 contains an emergency clause, it will go into effect immediately. Environmental Quality Department spokesman Katherine Benenati said Monday that she was not sure how this would affect water-discharge permits now under review by the department or the EPA, and that the department would be “working through” the issue throughout the week.

The EPA Region 6 office currently has 14 Arkansas water-discharge permits under review, all of which were affected by Act 954. Benenati said last week that the federal agency has until mid-November to state specific objections to the permits, which were temporarily in limbo during the partial shutdown of the federal government.

A spokesman with the EPA Region 6 office did not respond to requests for comment on the fate of the 14 permits.

Bill Kopsky, executive director of the Arkansas Public Policy Panel, said he was pleased to see state law returned to compliance with federal guidelines.

“The bottom line is that the Clean Water Act is still the law of the land in Arkansas,” Kopsky said. “If we had been allowed to skirt federal law, that would be a dangerous precedent.”

Pork producers suggest more danger to Buffalo River from people than pigs
Posted by Max Brantley on Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 1:35 PM
 

CAUTION: People use the Buffalo River and they're more damaging than pigs, the Arkansas Pork Producers say.

The campaign against a mass hog feeding operation in the Buffalo National River watershed is generating enough heat that the agricultural industry is fighting back.

On the jump, find an opinion article written under the name of an Arkansas Pork Producers Association executive. It defends the Cargill-supplied mass feeder pig operation at Mount Judea, along a Buffalo tributary. Themes: Pig farmers love the Buffalo River. They're trying to preserve a dying industry. Fears of contamination from the tons of pig manure produced by the operation are based on "extraordinarily unlikely what if" scenarios.

The pork producers propound that the immediate pollution problem is not pig poop but people poop. Yes, people.

See, the National Park Service puts treated waste on cropland and into the river under permit. 1.5 million visitors put bacteria in the water.

Until the resources being spent by activists are redirected to mitigate actual Buffalo River pollution, not imagined pollution based on speculation and fear mongering, their efforts are as disingenuous as any accusations they apply to others.

If you don't believe the Pork Producers, just ask the Farm Bureau or owners of C&H Hog Farm. They'll straighten you out.

The opinion piece was distributed from a personal e-mail account. The name on the account is the same as that of someone who once worked for a Little Rock PR firm employee, but I haven't heard back yet from the sender about her employer; who's paying for distribution, and whether the named author had help in the writing.

UPDATE: Caitlin Berry, an employee of Heathcott Associates, a PR firm, confirms she circulated the piece as "volunteer" work for the pork producers because her agency works with agriculture agencies in doing promotional work for the State Fair. She said Masters gave it to her to distribute.


Attached is an opinion editorial from Mr. Jerry Masters, Executive Vice-President of Arkansas Pork Producers Association, regarding C & H Hog Farms from northwest Arkansas. Mr. Masters' letter was prepared as an answer to the latest attacks from out-of-state special interests groups that have recently targeted C & H and their legal farming operation.

Buffalo River Opinion-Editorial

Nobody wants to see the water quality of the Buffalo River adversely impacted. That list includes farmers, agribusiness companies, and other ag-related associations, as well as the State of Arkansas. Arkansans wouldn’t know that from reading recent weekly newspaper columns or listening to the information being disseminated by those who oppose a swine farm that was built earlier this year in Newton County, C&H Hog Farm. C & H followed all the appropriate government permit approvals that are in place.

The expansion took place in a rural area of Northwest Arkansas that has been involved in crop, hog, poultry and beef cattle production for generations – long before the Buffalo River received its national designation half-a-century-ago. Poultry barns, cattle herds and hog farms remain part of the area’s economy, and part of the state’s $16 billion annual economic benefit from agriculture. Agriculture remains a key component of the Arkansas economy. However in recent years, hog production has left Arkansas. For example, today there are 85% fewer hogs produced in Arkansas than a decade ago.

Since last winter, when the superintendent of the Buffalo National River complained about the permitting process used by the State of Arkansas to allow the family owned farm in Newton County to expand hog production, some individuals and environmental organizations have expressed concerns. Those concerns, at times reaching a fever pitch, are based on an extraordinarily unlikely “what if” scenario whereby hog manure gets loose from the thick clay walls of the farm’s over-engineered storage lagoons built to 150% of state-mandated capacity.

The flames of fear have been fanned and exploited by some who have expressed opposition to state government, agriculture, and large scale food production. They have attacked the farmers’ motives (making a living by hog farming); assailed the values, ethics, morals and intent of the company buying the farm’s hogs (Cargill); and have tried to generate opposition by comparing the Newton County farm with large scale hog production in other states.

The Buffalo River Watershed Alliance has been founded specifically with the mission to shut down this farm. Activists from New York, California, North Carolina, Missouri, Oklahoma and other states have aligned themselves with efforts to purge this family farm from Newton County. Now, a New York based group called Waterkeepers is travelling around Arkansas trying to convince people that hog waste from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) will lead to inevitable environmental catastrophe. Earlier this year, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette nailed this type of activity on the head by labeling it “Environmental McCarthyism.”

Yes, the hog farm with its 2,500 sows is designated a “CAFO” by the State of Arkansas. It’s the first designated CAFO in Arkansas. It’s the largest designated CAFO in Arkansas. It’s also the smallest and only CAFO in Arkansas. Those opposed to the farm would have Arkansans believe the door has been opened and there will be a stampede of CAFOs into the state that leaves a swath of devastation. Instead, the sad fact is that 85% of the hog production has fled Arkansas over the past decade and it isn’t coming back.

The river itself is a victim of sorts in this debate. If it could talk, the Buffalo River would probably say the following:

Let’s fix the things currently impacting my water quality;

Stop dumping treated human sewage from the National Park Service restrooms into my water (National Park Service is the permittee);
Please fix or replace the leaky septic tanks in the watershed;

Don’t complain about the C&H Farm spreading hog waste on hayfields when the National Park Service spreads treated human waste on croplands in the Buffalo River Watershed (National Park Service is the permittee);

1.5 million human visitors each year introduce a lot of bacteria to my water, so let’s not ignore that impact;

While we’re at it, do we still need those National Park Service signs along the river that warn people about polluted water and high bacteria counts from the yearlong raw sewage spill by the town of Jasper in 2009?

Until the resources being spent by activists are redirected to mitigate actual Buffalo River pollution, not imagined pollution based on speculation and fear mongering, their efforts are as disingenuous as any accusations they apply to others. The Arkansas Farm Bureau, C&H Hog Farm, the State of Arkansas, The University of Arkansas, The Nature Conservancy, Cargill and others truly interested in the long-term stewardship of the area’s nature resources, prefer to work on solutions undefined which they are doing undefined and not to attack others.

-Jerry Masters
 

7-city lecture tour targets hog farm
Buffalo River group fears large operation is just the fi rst
 

Alliance warns and informs
By Mike Masterson

The Buffalo River Watershed Alliance is sounding an alarm to warn of the potential storm of hog factories approaching Arkansas.

“The Buffalo Flows” an excellent documentary produced by the University of Arkansas about the Buffalo National River, will be shown on Saturdays at 1 p.m. through Thanksgiving weekend at the Buffalo Theater in Jasper.

One river’s purity

What about Buffalo?