Buffalo River Watershed Alliance
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EPA study of CAFO emissions grinds on with no end in sight U.S. EPA's nine-year effort to document air pollution at livestock operations is likely still many years from completion and unlikely to be as useful as industry and environmental groups had hoped. Still incomplete is what EPA promised to do under a 2005 deal cut with livestock producers to identify air emissions for different types of concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs. The agency has said little about when the work will be done or when it will start three related regulatory tasks, according to sources outside EPA who track the issue closely. The long wait for results is excruciating and frustrating for stakeholders. "We just want them to come up with something," said Michael Formica, environmental counsel at the National Pork Producers Council. CAFOs for dairy cattle, swine, poultry and other food animals hold thousands of large animals or hundreds of thousands of smaller animals. Most of the regulatory focus has been on CAFOs' water pollution. But the CAFOs' barns, feedlots and manure storage areas also foul the air with ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, particulate matter, volatile organic compounds and other contaminants. Animal waste accounts for about half of total natural and man-made ammonia in the United States, according to a 2003 National Research Council report. Those emissions are associated with health effects that range from throat irritation to major cardiovascular diseases and increased rates of morbidity. Many are also precursors to other air quality problems, such as smog and acid rain. Environmentalists have long called on EPA to put in place Clean Air Act requirements subjecting CAFOs to the same air standards that apply to coal-fired power plants and other big industrial emitters. "Without question they are a stationary source, they emit a lot of pollutants, and they should be getting permits," said Brent Newell, general counsel at the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment, a California nonprofit that has battled the livestock industry over pollution in court in California. But livestock producers say agricultural operations are more complicated than smokestack industries and more difficult to regulate. And even those pressing for strict CAFO regulation acknowledge that measuring exactly how much pollution is being caused by an individual operation and how that is affecting neighboring communities is a difficult task. "One piece of why it's so difficult to regulate them is that they don't fit neatly into the boxes of the statutes that apply to other industrial sectors, like the Clean Air Act or the Clean Water Act," Earthjustice attorney Eve Gartner said. "There's not a smokestack you can measure, they're not a pipe where you can see what kind of water is being discharged." EPA has historically approached the regulation of CAFO air emissions through right-to-know laws that require the public reporting of potentially harmful air emissions but that don't punish facilities for exceeding limits. To help make it easier for livestock industries to comply with those laws, EPA announced an unprecedented agreement in 2005 with pork, dairy and egg producers in which the agency agreed not to sue CAFO operators for violating air pollution laws in exchange for the CAFOs funding a two-year air emissions study. ...
http://www.nwaonline.com/news/2014/jun/21/epa-finds-no-issues-at-c-h-hog-farms-20/
EPA finds no issues at C&H Hog Farms Mount Judea operation, area tested By Ryan McGeeney A recent report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said inspectors found no areas of concern on or around C&H Hog Farms, the concentrated animal feeding operation raising swine in Newton County. The report, signed June 12, is based on an unannounced three-day inspection of the facility conducted April 15-17. The inspection was conducted by EPA Region 6 inspectors Carl Wills and Chris Lister. EPA Region 6 is headquartered in Dallas.
C&H Hog Farms, located in Mount Judea, holds the state's first and only Regulation 6 general permit for animal liquid waste. The farm is permitted to house approximately 2,500 sows and as many as 4,000 piglets at one time. The production facility where the piglets are birthed and weened sits on a 40-acre parcel, and is surrounded by an additional 630 acres of grassland upon which the farm's owners are permitted to spread an estimated 2 million gallons of manure generated annually by the hogs. Several of the fields associated with the farm abut Big Creek, about six miles from the stream's confluence with the Buffalo National River.
The farm's owners, Jason Henson and his cousins Richard and Philip Campbell, are contract growers for Cargill Inc.
Water samples were collected from more than a dozen sites in the area and were tested for nutrients as well as E. coli and other pathogens. E. coli levels ranged from 18 to 500 colonies per 100 milliliters of water, according to the report. Acceptable limits of E. coli in "extraordinary resource waters" such as the Buffalo National River are set at 298 colonies per 100 milliliters of water, according to the commission's Regulation 2, which governs water quality standards in Arkansas.
Evan Teague, environmental regulation specialist coordinator for the Arkansas Farm Bureau, said elevated levels of E. coli in single-instance "grab samples" like those used in the EPA inspection are not unusual. "You're always going to have some numbers that are higher than others; that's just the nature of E. coli in the environment," Teague sad. "Even in completely natural settings, you'll have high numbers that exceed water quality standards; that's just the nature of natural watersheds, particularly when you have wildlife in them."
Katherine Benenati, a spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, said that EPA inspections of sites aren't unusual, even on sites that have been repeatedly visited by state inspectors. She also said that results of the recent inspection wouldn't necessarily change the department's posture regarding its own inspections of C&H Hog Farms. "The EPA inspection wouldn't automatically have a bearing on the frequency of our own inspections," Benenati said in an email Friday. "Keep in mind, we do respond to all complaints and would follow up on any involving the facility."
The chief concern voiced by Bob Cross, president of the Ozark Society, and others has consistently been the potential pollution of both surface and ground water from the farm's hog waste. The waste is held in two outdoor lagoons that have a combined operational capacity of about 3.5 million gallons, with additional capacity to prevent spillage in the event of severe, sustained rainfall.
Because the underlying geology of Newton County is karst limestone, a failure of lagoons' clay liners could send millions of gallons of hog waste into rapidly moving ground water, Cross has warned.
According to the April EPA inspection, the lagoons appeared to be in good order, as were other aspects of the production facility.
Cross and others have also cautioned that because of the farm's proximity to Big Creek, even normal amounts of rainfall could wash freshly applied manure into an open waterway and on to the Buffalo National River. Hog waste is both nutrient-rich, with phosphorous and nitrogen, and a common carrier of pathogens including E. coli.
Cross said that although inspections of C&H Hog Farm have not detected any major problems with the facility, he was still concerned about potential hazards posed by the farm's proximity to the Buffalo National River. "While I don't see any red flags in the report, it does nothing to lessen my concerns about the farm," Cross said.
NW News on 06/21/2014
Note: The EPA Inspection Report may be found on the BRWA Documents page, immediately following the ADEQ Inspection Reports.
Eureka Springs Independent
Summary judgment sought in hog factory lawsuit Becky Gillette Wednesday, June 18, 2014 Earthjustice recently filed an 89-page document in support of a summary judgment in the lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture Farm Service Agency (FSA) and the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) for providing $3.4 million in loan guarantees for C&H Hog Farm, a pig factory located on the Big Creek tributary of the Buffalo National River (BNR), the country’s first national river. Earthjustice is a non-profit environmental firm representing the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance (BRWA), the Ozark Society and the National Parks Conservation Association in the lawsuit. “The rubber-stamping of the requested loan guarantees, the inadequate review of the environmental consequences, and the failure to notify the local community and consult with sister agencies as required, makes a mockery of the law and puts a national treasure in harm’s way,” said Hannah Chang, an attorney with Earthjustice. C&H Hog Farms received a loan, 90 percent of it guaranteed by the FSA, for the purchase of 23.43 acres of land in Mount Judea and construction of two barns. The barns have the capacity for 6,500 pigs, making the operation by far the largest of six existing swine farms in the Buffalo River Watershed. C&H Hog Farms is under contract with Cargill, an agribusiness giant that operates in 66 countries. Plans are to spread about two million gallons of waste produced by the C&H facility on 17 fields totaling 630 acres. Eleven fields are adjacent to Big Creek. The C&H facility’s loan and guarantee were issued in the summer and fall of 2012. Earthjustice said in its recent filing that because of a failure to notify residents, the community in and around Mount Judea did not find out about the facility’s construction until it was nearly complete. “The lack of adequate public notice is just one of a number of egregious failures on the part of the state and federal government to ensure that this facility will not have detrimental impacts on the exceptional natural resources of the Buffalo River watershed,” Earthjustice said. Lin Welford of Green Forest, who is active with area watershed protection groups, said that in the recent filing, Earthjustice presents a strong picture of negligence, and attempts to cover up the lack of due diligence on the part of all parties being sued in the lawsuit. The recent filing asks the court to set aside existing loan guarantees until such time as the defendants comply with the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Buffalo National River Enabling act, and their own regulations in reviewing and authorizing loan guarantees for C&H. “Under the Administrative Policy Act (APA), this court is authorized to ‘hold unlawful and set aside agency action, findings, and conclusions that are arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law,” the filing states. Earthjustice said as a result of violations of notice requirements, a large amount of federal financial assistance was provided to the first-ever large Confined Animal feeding Operation (CAFO) in the leaky karst terrain of the Buffalo River watershed. The National Park Service was never given the opportunity to comment on the project that has potential to significantly impact public safety and the environment. The lawsuit seeks an injunction to serve the public by protecting the environment from any threat of permanent damage. C&H is not named in the lawsuit, but could be affected by the ruling. C&H owners have said they are in compliance with state laws. They received a permit after the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) changed regulations to allow permitting of CAFOs without notifying local residents. ADEQ adopted a CAFO General Permit that supporters of the BNR say allows fast tracking of permit approvals, is scientifically inadequate, and strongly favors special interests. Karst geologist Dr. John Van Brahana is currently conducting monitoring in the watershed to determine if hog waste is entering the BNR. Brahana said that producing pork in the leaky, karst hydrogeologic area rich with springs, caves and underground rivers is “horribly risky.” He said the secretive nature of the project completely disregarded the concerns of legitimate stakeholders such as the National Park Service and local tourism operations, and ADEQ did not adequately review the permit; the head of ADEQ didn’t even know the permit had been issued until after the fact. “The review was pitiful,” Brahana said, a University of Arkansas professor emeritus. “An environmental firm from South Dakota came up with the waste management plan which is completely inadequate in a karst area like this. The owner says they were just following the rules, but the rules are inadequate to protect the environment.” The National Park Service has already found elevated levels of fecal coliform – an indicator of animal waste pathogens – in Big Creek. Area resident Pam Fowler said when she and relatives recently visited the old Sexton Cemetery in Mt. Judea on Memorial Day, odors from the pig factory were disgusting. “We stepped out of the car to a horrendous and overwhelming stench of hog manure and, I guess, burning hogs – distinct singed-hair smell – and the nightmarish sound of shrieking hogs,” Fowler said. “A horror film couldn’t have had more unnerving sounds. I had to tie a scarf over my face to breathe as we worked quickly to escape back into our car.” Fowler, whose family has lived in the area for generations, said it appears their concerns about the hog factory have become a reality. “This Memorial Day, I mourned not only our loved ones who have passed on, but also I mourned our loss of enjoyment of traditional outdoor activities – which is a loss of life as we’ve known it in our little valley.”
Cargill to end gestation crate use for sows
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story Donnelle Eller, deller@dmreg.com 12:21 a.m. CDT June 10, 2014 _ Cargill says all the sow barns the Minneapolis-based company owns will move to group housing by year-end 2015, moving away from gestation crates that animal welfare groups have opposed. The company said contract farms that contain Cargill-owned sows will all transition to group housing by year-end 2017. Paul Shapiro, a vice president at the Humane Society of the United States, said the move is the right one. "Cargill's decision brings us closer to the day when gestation crates will be relics of the past in the pork industry," he said. "Americans simply don't support locking animals in cages barely larger than their bodies." Cargill is one of more than 60 companies that have made similar moves, including McDonald's and Costco, the Humane Society said. Cargill has no sow farms in Iowa, either owned or under contract, the company said. It does work with up to 360 Iowa farmers to fatten pigs for market after they've been weaned. About 30 percent of the pigs harvested at Cargill pork processing plants in Ottumwa, Ia., and Beardstown, Ill., come from Cargill-owned sows, the company said. Half of Cargill's sow operations have maintained group housing over the past several years. Cargill said it has invested $60 million to buy and modernize a 22,000-acre idled hog farm in Dalhart, Texas, to enable it to move to 100 percent group housing for gestating sows. The company's work includes building sow barns containing group housing and converting existing sow housing from stalls or crates. Industry leaders have said gestation crates help protect the sows and piglets. Cargill acknowledged changing customer needs. "While Cargill was a pioneer in the use of group housing for gestating sows dating back more than a decade, in the past few years growing public interest in the welfare related to animals raised for food has been expressed to our customers and the pork industry," said Mike Luker, president of Wichita-based Cargill Pork. "While an industry change of this magnitude is challenging and costly, we believe it is the right thing to do for the long-term future of pork production in the U.S., and our customers agree with us and support our decision," Luker said.
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