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Buffalo makes list of 'endangered' rivers - Baxter Bulletin

18 Apr 2019 10:38 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

Baxter Bulletin



Buffalo makes list of 'endangered' rivers

SCOTT LILES, Baxter BulletinPublished 9:46 p.m. CT April 16, 2019 | Updated 4:05 p.m. CT April 17, 2019


The Buffalo National River has been included on list of “America’s Most Endangered Rivers” by a prominent river-advocacy group for the second time in three years.

The nonprofit organization American Rivers ranked the Buffalo River as the nation’s eighth most-endangered waterway in its 2019 Most Endangered Rivers report, which was released Tuesday. The river was previously named the ninth most-endangered river in 2017 and did not make the group’s list in 2018.

The 153 mile-long Buffalo was the first waterway to be designated as a National River by Congress in 1972. The lower 135 miles flow within the boundaries of an area managed by the National Park Service and is one of the few remaining undammed rivers in the lower 48 states, according to the NPS.

In 2017, more than 1.47 million people visited the Buffalo to camp, canoe, hike or fish, American Rivers reported in the 2019 assessment of the river. The Buffalo River supports more than 300 species of wildlife, including beaver, elk, black bear, smallmouth bass and catfish. The federally-endangered gray bat, Indiana bat and Northern long-eared bat are all found in the karst caves flanking the river.


The Most Endangered Rivers report is an annual list first created by American Rivers in 1984 that highlights waterways whose health and future is at a tipping point. Rivers are selected based on three criteria: The river is of regional or national significance to people and wildlife; the river and communities that depend on it are under significant threat, especially in light of a changing climate; and that each river on the list will face a major decision in the coming year that the public can help influence.

The Buffalo is threatened by the continued operation of a large-scale hog farm operating on one of the river’s main tributaries, the river-advocacy group states.


“The (Buffalo’s) clean water, recreation opportunities and fish and wildlife are threatened by a nearby concentrated animal feeding operation generating waste equivalent to that of 30,000 people,” American Rivers writes in its 2019 report on the Buffalo.

That operation, a 6,500-head hog farm operated by C&H Hog Farms of Vendor, opened in 2012 along Big Creek, about 7 miles from where the creek flows into the river. Liquid waste from the hogs is retained in two large waste ponds and is sprayed across 600 acres of adjacent farmland as fertilizer.


Conservation groups have opposed the operation of the hog farm within the river’s watershed, arguing that the hog manure produced by the farm increases the risks of polluting the river.


In 2017, the hog farm’s original five-year operating permit expired and its application for a second operating permit was declined by state. The hog farm has continued to operate since that decision as the farm’s owners, cousins Jason Henson, Phillip Campbell and Richard Campbell, have appealed the state’s decision.


The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality listed Big Creek and the Buffalo River as “impaired” in 2018 because of elevated E. coli levels and diminished dissolved oxygen levels in parts of the two bodies of water. An “impaired” tag means at least one of several negative elements in the water exceeds water-quality standards.


A 14-mile stretch in the middle of the Buffalo contained excessive amounts of E. coli, but the remainder of the river was not impaired, according to data collected through early 2017. About 15 of the 19 miles of Big Creek were also impaired because of E. coli, and the final 3.7 miles of the creek before it flows into the Buffalo was listed as impaired due to low dissolved oxygen levels.


Volunteers have recently begun documenting the growth of large algal blooms downstream of the hog farm, with measurements being used to as baseline to compare future growth. 


Jessie Green, executive director of the White River Waterkeeper nonprofit organization, told The Bulletin last year that the river’s algae has been increasing in recent years, but could not specifically say why.


“We’re not sure why its growing. It could be weather patterns, it could be hydrology,” she said. “Nutrients are a key player, no doubt — you can’t have growth without the nutrients — but it’s not something that we know right now.”


No research has directly linked the farm’s operation with the Buffalo River watershed’s water-quality problems. Big Creek has less E. coli contamination downstream of the hog farm than it does upstream, the Arkansas Farm Bureau has noted in defense of the hog farm.


In its “What must be done” section of its 2019 report about the Buffalo, American Rivers calls upon Gov. Asa Hutchinson to demand that the hog farm be closed.

“Hutchinson faces pressure from agricultural lobbyists who want to frame this as a ‘right to farm’ issue … Gov. Hutchinson needs to know that he will be supported by public opinion if he stands up for the river,” the nonprofit group writes in its report. “The Buffalo National River flows in Arkansas, but it belongs to every citizen of our country.”


Other endangered rivers identified in the 2019 report include the New Mexico’s Gila River; the Hudson River in New York; the Upper Missouri River in Illinois, Iowa and Missouri; Washington’s Green-Duwamish River; Alaska’s Chilkat River; the South Fork Salmon River in Idaho; Ohio’s Big Darby Creek and Alaska’s Stikine River.


Visit www.AmericanRivers.org/EndangeredRivers to view the 2019 Most Endangered Rivers report.

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