Eureka Springs Independent
Why the Buffalo River is having an allergic reaction
November 14, 2018
Recently I attended yet another public hearing in the cafetorium of the Jasper High School in Newton County. This time it appears, at least for now, that the tide is turning. ADEQ denied C&H Hog Farms a new Reg. 5 permit to replace the Reg. 6 permit which enabled them to evade public notice and rush to get their facility built before anyone could question the placement along a major tributary to the Buffalo National River.
It seems that in their hurry, they failed to do some things that might have qualified them for the Reg. 5 permit. Waste lagoons were not properly constructed, as revealed in depositions now public. We already knew the environmental assessments were cursory and inadequate because a judge who reviewed them found them so.
The critical issue of the presence of karst, the geologic formation that creates lovely bluffs, springs and caves along the Buffalo, is the same stuff that makes our area vulnerable. What we do on the land impacts water quality everywhere, but in areas of karst, transmission into and through the ground can be almost as rapid as runoff, and far more insidious. Water running through crevices and crannies below the surface can’t be seen. The ground feels so solid that it’s easy to ignore evidence that it often acts more like a sieve.
Since C&H began growing hogs, they have spread 14 million gallons of liquid waste onto fields in the Buffalo watershed. Most of the initial fields already tested at above optimum before they began using them, and came with the recommendation that 0 additional phosphorus be applied, so it’s not surprising that the operators quickly needed more land to dispose of the waste. They call it fertilizer, and it is, until application exceeds the agronomic needs of the fields.
What happens when more is applied than the grasses can take up? It binds with the soil, and either trickles through the ground during rainfall (like a leak in your roof), or washes off into tributaries during heavier rain.
Due to an error in calculations, experts estimate that perhaps as much as 10 times more phosphorus was applied to the spray fields than could be used as fertilizer. That’s a lot of loose nutrients that have to go somewhere. Eventually they end up in the largest waterway, the Buffalo River.
It didn’t happen overnight. The first couple years saw little change. In 2016 the first areas of unusual algal blooms were noted. They were larger in 2017, and this year more than 70 miles of waterway filled will algae floating on the surface and wafting in the current below. Most is ugly but harmless, but some is bacterial and can produce toxins.
While two sides argued about a confined animal feeding operation (CAFO) in the watershed, the river was making it clear to all who looked that something was out of balance and getting worse.
Residents from around Newton County came to the public hearing to express their views, and some claimed there had always been algae in the river in late summer. Algal growth is a natural process, it’s true. But this year we saw it growing in the spring, and by mid-summer it was covering large areas below Carver and increasing all the way down river.
Data collected by Big Creek Research and Extension Team, our tax-funded research study, was indicating problems although team members kept saying they needed more data and appeared to avoid analyzing data they didn’t like. Scientists evaluated the raw data themselves and it revealed clear trends.
USGS monitoring, meanwhile, showed oxygen in Big Creek falling below standards for a healthy waterway, over several seasons, enough to be officially designated as impaired. E. coli counts exceeded safe levels for contact recreation along the same stretches of the Buffalo where dye tests had indicated a direct subsurface connection to the hills surrounding C&H and its spray fields.
If testing had been allowed on C&H property, would the results have been different? It’s unlikely, but the owners refused permission.
Many residents continued to contend there is no real proof that the hog CAFO was causing the problems. The representative of the Arkansas Pork Producers loudly proclaimed this to be the case, and that, further “something had shifted in Little Rock” that caused ADEQ to change their minds about issuing a new permit.
What changed was that the science began to back up what geologists, environmentalists and supporters of the river said all along; this sensitive area was exactly the worst place for such a facility to be sited. Six thousand hogs in one place, with tons of feed trucked in and tons of waste hitting the hillsides is putting the ecosystem out of balance. It can’t go on.
The Farm Bureau is fear mongering, telling farmers they will be next. But since when have “farmers” needed permits? Industries need permits to operate industrial facilities. The meat industry uses contract growers to create the façade of a “family farm” while environmental safeguards require that large amounts of sewage, whether from animals or humans, must be regulated to avoid impacting the environment. That is why C& H has to have a permit.
Cargill came into the region with the aim of taking one of our state’s more vulnerable areas and making it a foothold for many more hog CAFOs. Being an astute private conglomerate, they have seen rising public awareness of the toll massive hog operations are having on the resources and rural communities in other states. They sold out to JBS, a Brazilian multi-national corporation with a dismal track record of compliance.
When the concept of industrial scale animal production began, right here in Arkansas, farmers had to be re-educated to see animals as “widgets,” not living creatures deserving of consideration. It was especially hard for hog farmers, who know how intelligent pigs are and appreciate them.
As animals were recast as things, farmers were also remade, turned into contract growers in a system where they would own the farm and buildings, but not the animals they raised. From being independent producers they’ve been reduced to cogs in the industrial agri-machine now controlling most food production and distribution.
Farmers and environmentalists have a lot in common. Both groups recognize the value of clean water and healthy ecosystems.
Lin Wellford