NW Democrat Gazette
Buffalo National River deserves better from lawmakers
February 11, 2025 at 1:00 a.m.
by Fran Alexander
"No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session."
-- Gideon John Tucker
American lawyer, newspaper editor, 1866
It's likely readers familiar with Arkansas' environmental challenges are sick and tired of the whiplashing threats to the state's best-known natural wonder, the Buffalo River. The issues seem constant, and perhaps that's part of a wearing-down effort by those opposed to the Buffalo's role as a river instead of a sewer.
For review on today's docket of the Arkansas Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, & Forestry is Senate Bill 84 to "prohibit a moratorium on the issuance of permits in watersheds and other bodies of water." Its sponsors are Sens. Blake Johnson of Corning and DeAnn Vaught of Horatio, both listed as farmers.
Creation of a permanent moratorium on permitting large- or medium-sized swine farms in the Buffalo River watershed has been an ongoing effort of environmental organizations and individuals. Their exhausting seven-year battle to close a concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) finally succeeded in 2019, but no permanent protection has been enacted. SB84 is the backlash to counter a permanent protection effort.
What most Arkansawyers probably don't know is what goes on, or doesn't, behind the scenes in the sausage making of legislation. The toll and toil extracted from citizens trying to stay informed, to show up in numbers and to have input is enormous. Traveling to Little Rock to attend meetings with the hope of speaking (if allowed) on bills can take distant attendees seven or more driving hours in a day or cost an overnight stay, plus meals, gas, parking and time away from work.
Today might be the fourth or fifth time the SB84 sponsor has not shown up to run his bill, which places it on the committee's deferred list. If opponents give up and finally stop showing up, the bill might appear to have no opposition. It's easy for a legislator to find out if there are many attendees from the public in the room where his bill is scheduled and find an excuse not to appear.
The Rules Committee also did what seemed like a bait-and-switch routine a couple of times on this issue in late 2024 and never reviewed it. However, opponents spent hours contacting people, urging comments be made, notifying media what was afoot and some traveled to Little Rock. All these volunteer efforts were costly and futile.
Individuals and organizations have worked since the early 1960s to secure protections for this spectacular waterway, which carves a path through part of the Ozarks. The Ozark Society was founded in 1962 by Dr. Neil Compton of Bentonville to protect this river. After 10 years of effort to prevent the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from damming one of the few remaining free-flowing rivers in the country, activists secured its federal recognition as the Buffalo National River, the nation's first, in 1972.
There were issues over the years, of course, but perhaps the most threatening was the discovery in 2013 that a feeding operation for hogs had been permitted and built in the river's watershed. That intensified concerns that run-off of manure from fields and its leaching through the karst limestone underground might be feeding nutrients into the watershed of the Buffalo.
Among the consequences of poop washing into a watershed is the growth of algae, which has the potential to produce cyanotoxins. Those can be harmful to humans and animals, and such warnings discouraged swimming in the middle and lower parts of the river. This is not an appealing feature for tourism, a multi-million dollar industry. Yet still the Buffalo remains at risk.
Knowing that doing the same things in the watershed and expecting different results would not be smart, river protectors promoted the moratorium as a solution. Farming interests have opposed this as somehow interfering with their right to farm. Surely that does not -- and should not -- include a right to pollute.
After a total of 63 years of free labor by hundreds of volunteers through multiple generations, our legislators and governor owe the people of Arkansas explanations. Why are you continuing to risk one of the state's greatest assets? What do you want that's more important? Which of these risks do you not understand or want to ignore? How will you fix the river once it's poisoned? Can you ever fix it? What do you expect of us? What will you do if people ever quit their Save the Buffalo efforts?
Inquiring Arkies deserve to know.
Arkansasonline
January 22, 2025 at 6:39 p.m.
A bill that would eliminate an existing moratorium on swine farms in the Buffalo River watershed and prohibit future watershed-specific permit moratoriums without legislative council approval was filed Tuesday in the Arkansas Senate -- something one advocacy organization called an "obvious effort" to circumvent the rulemaking process.
The filing comes after the Division of Environmental Quality moved last year to make a temporary swine farm moratorium in the watershed permanent. The rulemaking the moratorium is contained in, Regulation 6, received hundreds of public comments from supporters and opponents. It was set to be heard by the rules subcommittee of the Arkansas Legislative Council for approval in December, before it was abruptly pulled from the agenda the day before by the agencies, who cited procedural issues that necessitated the removal.
Senate Bill 84, if passed, would prohibit state agencies from instituting "a moratorium on the issuance of permits in a watershed, including without limitation the Buffalo River Watershed, or any other body of water" unless it gets approval from the Arkansas Legislative Council first.
Additionally, SB84 would render existing moratoriums -- such as the one on medium- and large-size concentrated animal-feeding operations in the Buffalo River watershed -- "unenforceable." The bill was referred to the Senate Agriculture, Forestry and Economic Development Committee.
Farm interests were staunchly opposed to the moratorium. Sen. Blake Johnson, R-Corning, who introduced the bill, did not respond to a request for comment. Johnson is a farmer, as is the House sponsor Rep. DeAnn Vaught, R-Horatio.
It is unclear whether the legislation, if passed, would result in any meaningful difference in current procedures. The current, temporary moratorium is part of the Division of Environmental Quality's rules, which already require Legislative Council review and approval for any changes.
[LEGISLATIVE CALENDAR: Catch up on this week's meetings » arkleg.state.ar.us/]
The most obvious impact would be the end of the animal-feeding operation moratorium in the Buffalo River watershed, which has been in place for the better part of 10 years after outcry over the issuance of permits to C&H Hog Farms.
The Division of Environmental Quality's predecessor began the process of instituting the moratorium in 2014, in response to the controversy with the C&H Hog Farm in the watershed. That moratorium, however, was temporary, with language that it had to be made permanent in five years or deleted from the rule.
The Division of Environmental Quality, which proposed the rule amendment, tried to make the moratorium permanent in 2020 in accordance with the temporary moratorium's language. It made it through the administrative process but was ultimately shot down during legislative review in the face of opposition from agricultural interests and skepticism from lawmakers.
The division brought it back to the commission last year as part of a group of amendments to Regulation 6, which governs the state's administration of the federal National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System program, with the stated purpose of preserving the status quo in the watershed.
The Arkansas Farm Bureau, in public comments last year, said the moratorium wasn't supported by science and that it could lead to further restrictions on agricultural activity within the watershed. Department of Environmental Quality staff disagreed, saying that the impact of swine farms on the Buffalo River had been "an ongoing concern in Arkansas."
Watershed advocates were against SB84, with Gordon Watkins, the president of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, saying his organization was disappointed but not surprised by the bill, and that removing the protections against concentrated animal-feeding operations in the watershed was "a recipe for a repeat" of the C&H Hog Farms "debacle."
"It's an obvious effort to circumvent those rule makings," Watkins said. He called the idea that the moratorium was a "slippery slope" to further agricultural prohibitions in the watershed a red herring, noting that the moratorium has been in place for nearly 10 years. "We haven't seen any efforts to expand that to other types of agriculture or to other parts of the state. ... I don't think anyone is interested in trying to stop agriculture in the state of Arkansas, that's just ridiculous."
Meanwhile, Ozark Society President Brian Thompson called the potential removal of the moratorium "a betrayal" after the millions of dollars the state of Arkansas spent to shut down C&H Hog Farms. He urged Arkansans to write to their representatives about the matter.
The Arkansas Farm Bureau Federation said it was monitoring the bill.
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Arkansas Times
by Phillip PowellJanuary 22, 2025 1:55 pm
Two state lawmakers filed a bill Tuesday that would prevent the state from banning hog farming in the Buffalo River watershed or other Arkansas waterways without specific clearance from a legislative panel.
Senate Bill 84 is sponsored by state Rep. DeAnn Vaught (R-Horatio) and state Sen. Blake Johnson (R-Corning), who are both farmers. Vaught’s biography on the House of Representatives website says she is a member of the Arkansas Farm Bureau and the Arkansas Pork Producers Association.
The bill targets a pair of proposed rules from the state Department of Agriculture and the Department of Energy and Environment that would make permanent a temporary moratorium on hog farming in the Buffalo River watershed. Environmental groups have been pushing for such a ban for years, sparked by the state’s 2013 approval of a hog farm in the Buffalo area that has since closed down. A legislative committee held a hearing on the proposed rules in November but did not make a decision; in December, the state agencies said they wanted more time to work on the rules and take public input into consideration.
But the bill from Vaught and Johnson would go beyond the Buffalo River, and prevent state agencies from placing a moratorium on permits for farming in any watershed or other body of water in the state unless they first obtained approval from the Arkansas Legislative Council.
Vaught and Johnson could not be reached for comment on Wednesday.
The Farm Bureau, an industry group, strongly opposes the Department of Agriculture’s proposed moratorium, saying it violates the “right to farm.”
As one of the United States’ only national rivers, the Buffalo River draws millions of tourists every year and is seen as one of the natural treasurers of Arkansas. There’s been recent talk from a group connected to the Walton family of upgrading its status to a national park preserve. Local environmental groups such as The Ozark Society, The Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, Audubon Delta, and chapters of the Sierra Club have led public campaigns against farming in the watershed for years.
Those groups are particularly concerned about concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) — industrial-scale farms which produce an immense amount of liquid animal waste that can pollute waterways with excess nitrogen, phosphorus, and other materials and chemicals. CAFOs confine large numbers of animals in a controlled environment to efficiently produce meat, dairy, or eggs. The controversy over hog farming in the Buffalo River area began with the granting of a permit to C&H Hog Farm in 2013, which caused public outrage and eventually led to then-Gov. Asa Hutchinson to place a temporary moratorium on CAFOs in the watershed in 2020. The moratorium language still stands today, making it government policy not to approve permits in the watershed, though the Legislature has not yet approved that language.
CAFOs must receive waste disposal permits to operate. The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (which is now part of the Department of Energy and Environment) used to issue those permits to farms, until a 2023 law transferredpermitting authority to the Department of Agriculture. That legislation, which was seen as a win for agriculture interests, was also sponsored by Vaught.
The new proposed rule by the Department of Agriculture would place a permanent moratorium on “swine Confined Animal Operations” in the Buffalo River Watershed. But it would also limit public notice of new permit applications elsewhere in the state, effectively removing Arkansans’ ability to object to proposed CAFOs coming to their area. That has led environmentalists to oppose the rule and file dozens of public comments expressing their concern.
The Department of Agriculture dismissed those concerns, saying in a reply to public comment that “the notice process provided within the rule is sufficient.”
The rule proposed by the Department of Energy and Environment would also place a moratorium on swine CAFOs in the Buffalo River watershed, but it would apply to farms seeking a different type of waste disposal permit that regulates pollution sent directly into waterways. According to the most recent Environmental Protection Agency data, none of Arkansas’s 776 CAFOs have this type of permit.
The Bitter Southerner
Click the link above to read the full article by Boyce Upholt with outstanding photographs by Rory Boyle.
Boyce Upholt is a “nature critic” whose writing probes the relationship between humans and the rest of the natural world, especially in the U.S. South. His work has been published in The Atlantic, National Geographic, Oxford American, and Virginia Quarterly Review, among other publications. He was awarded the 2019 James Beard Award for investigative journalism. His stories have been noted in the The Best American Science & Nature Writing and The Best American Nonrequired Reading series. He lives in New Orleans. Rory Doyle is a working photographer based in Cleveland, Mississippi, in the rural Mississippi Delta. Born and raised in Maine, Doyle studied journalism at St. Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont. In 2009, he moved to Mississippi to pursue a master’s degree at Delta State University. Doyle has remained committed to photographing Mississippi and the South, with a particular focus on sharing stories from the Delta.
Boyce Upholt is a “nature critic” whose writing probes the relationship between humans and the rest of the natural world, especially in the U.S. South. His work has been published in The Atlantic, National Geographic, Oxford American, and Virginia Quarterly Review, among other publications. He was awarded the 2019 James Beard Award for investigative journalism. His stories have been noted in the The Best American Science & Nature Writing and The Best American Nonrequired Reading series. He lives in New Orleans.
Rory Doyle is a working photographer based in Cleveland, Mississippi, in the rural Mississippi Delta. Born and raised in Maine, Doyle studied journalism at St. Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont. In 2009, he moved to Mississippi to pursue a master’s degree at Delta State University. Doyle has remained committed to photographing Mississippi and the South, with a particular focus on sharing stories from the Delta.
The Madison County Record
Proposed rule changes regarding a moratorium for hog farms in the Buffalo National River watershed and the skirting of public notice requirements are set to be addressed in December by a subcommittee of the legislative council.
Posted Wednesday, November 20, 2024 9:45 am
By Ellen Kreth, Record Publisher
Decisions on whether to continue a moratorium on Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, known as CAFOs, in the Buffalo National River watershed and to change public notice requirements pertaining to hog farms was postponed until December after the Arkansas Legislative Council’s Administrative Rules Subcommittee refused to suspend the rules to take action at its meeting on Nov. 14.
The required materials were not placed on the committee’s agenda by Oct. 15, forcing it to either vote to suspend the rules or take no action.
Sen. Missy Irvin, R-Mountain View, made a motion to suspend the rules, but the motion failed to get a second.
Two regulations affecting hog farms in the watershed and the rules requiring public notice are being rewritten by the Arkansas Department of Agriculture and the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ).
One rule would make permanent a moratorium on hog farms in the watershed while the other removes a majority of public notice requirements.
“We were surprised that it even showed up on that agenda because it took some finagling to bend the rules because they missed the normal deadline,” said Gordon Watkins of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance.
Watkins thinks legislators would like this issue decided before the Regular General Assembly of 2025 convenes in January, he said.
“But I think that, and this is just my supposition, they realized this could be a political football and they wanted to get it resolved before the session began so it wouldn’t be a distraction,” he said.
“We believe that there was almost certainly coordination to not introduce the rule, though we don’t know why,” said Brian Thompson, President of the Ozark Society.
“Perhaps it was because of the increasing level of public concern in regard to removing all public notification for super-sized hog farms. Whether it is a noisy data center, a prison, or a 10,000 head hog CAFO, all citizens in our beautiful state deserve the respect of appropriate public notification.”
The committee heard testimony concerning the proposed changes even though no action was taken. When called on by the chair, others in the committee room said they preferred to wait to speak until the committee takes up action on the proposed rules in December.
Notice requirements and the moratorium have been debated and discussed for years after C&H Hog Farms began operating a CAFO in the watershed in 2012. Many neighbors in the watershed near the farm complained of lack of notice about the farm.
In 2019, the state paid $6.2 million in a settlement agreement to close C&H Farms and give the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission, a part of the Division of Arkansas Heritage, a conservation easement to the property, which is near Big Creek, 6.6 miles from where it flows into the Buffalo National River.
In addition, then-Gov. Asa Hutchinson issued a moratorium banning large-scale swine operations in the watershed.
During the Regular General Assembly in 2023, the Arkansas Legislature passed a bill that transferred the permitting process from ADEQ to the Arkansas Department of Agriculture, which was tasked with reviewing and promulgating rules for liquid animal waste permits.
That bill, along with a companion bill exempting information about nutrient management plans or poultry litter management plans from the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act, were sponsored by DeAnn Vaught, R-Horatio, a hog farmer.
One regulation would take public notices out of newspapers as well as doing away with the requirement of sending notices via certified mail to adjoining landowners, county judges, school superintendents and mayors.
The proposed regulation would require notices to be posted on the department of agriculture’s website.
Critics of the proposed rule testified before the committee that merely posting on a website is inadequate because it forces people to check the website everyday in order to make sure they don’t miss any applications.
A lack of broad public notice limits community engagement and input, they contend.
Bill Rector, Real Estate broker and former co-owner of the Daily Record, a legal publication, spoke against the proposed changes to the proposed CAFO public notice requirements.
The prime example of the effectiveness of public notice, Rector said, is C&H Hog Farms, “Where no notice was published anywhere but the DEQ website.”
The lack of notice cost millions of dollars in legal fees and millions to buy the land in addition “years of consternation,” he said.
“I will guarantee you that there’s been more money spent on that pig farm than there will be spent on public notices during the next 10 years by the State of Arkansas,” Rector told the rules committee members.
He said the issue could have been solved by putting a $50 ad in the newspaper in Newton County, where C&H Farms operated.
“Fifty dollars would have saved millions. Public notice is important,” Rector said.
Watkins said he would have liked to have been a fly on the wall when the decision was made to dilute the public notice requirements “from what it was even before the C&H thing.”
“As you know the legislature stepped in in 2014 and improved those notice requirements after the C&H controversy. They recognized that was a weak link and they stepped in,” Watkins said.
“So for the legislature to now step in and approve the bill that has really diluted notice requirements doesn’t make sense,” Watkins said.
Others testified that a continuing implementation of the current moratorium is needed to preserve the Buffalo National River water quality.
Former president of the Ozark Society David Peterson testified that studies show CAFOs damage the river and its water quality.
Arkansas Farm Bureau Federation is against a moratorium in the watershed. Representatives from Farm Bureau attended the committee meeting to speak against it but opted to offer comments at the December hearing.
“We’ll see what happens in December,” the bureau’s spokesperson Steve Eddington told The Record. “The committee acts at its own discretion. We remain opposed to the permanent moratorium.”
Watkins said even though the items are scheduled to be heard in December, the committee could choose to not take action.
“My hope is that it will come back to the committee in December and they’ll hear it and make a decision at that point. It needs to be resolved,” Watkins said.
Democrat Gazette
November 14, 2024 at 7:56 p.m.
by Ainsley Platt
A motion to suspend procedure so members of the Arkansas Legislative Council's rules subcommittee could make a decision on changes to a Pollution Control and Ecology Commission rule making a prohibition on swine farms in the Buffalo River watershed permanent failed to receive a second, preventing the subcommittee from taking action on it this month.
The lack of a second also meant that a rule regarding liquid animal waste from the Department of Agriculture, which also contained language making the moratorium permanent, couldn't be considered by subcommittee members. That rule generated separate oppositions from environmental advocates after certain public notice requirements that were formerly required in state law were removed, despite their support for other parts of the rule relating to the swine farm moratorium.
The suspension of procedure was required because rules proposed to be considered by the subcommittee have to be submitted by a specific deadline in order to make it on the agenda. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette previously reported that the request to suspend procedure from both departments came after two still-unnamed legislators asked department staff to make the request, after the deadline for November's meeting had passed.
A letter sent by both departments said that the sped-up timeline would be "beneficial" to facilities the permits apply to "because it would provide clarity on pending permitting matters." The letter did not provide information about what those pending matters were.
The hearing room was full at the start of the subcommittee meeting, with many audience members having travelled long distances in order to make comment on both rules.
Sen. Missy Irvin made the motion to suspend procedure, but no one seconded it.
Since the motion failed to get a second, no vote was taken on the rules themselves, which means they can be taken up at next month's rules subcommittee meeting.
With the failed motion, there was a brief debate between legislators over whether members of the public could give comment on something that was, technically, not being considered by the subcommittee.
Ultimately, some ended up making their comments, while others stated that they would make their planned statements at December's rule subcommittee meeting.
One of the people who reserved their comments for next month was Gordon Watkins, the president of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, who had previously been vocal both in his support of the permanent moratorium and in his opposition to the removal of certain public notice requirements from the liquid animal waste rule.
He said in an interview afterward that the lack of a motion gives his organization more time to prepare the comments it will give before the subcommittee.
"We knew coming in that anything could happen," Watkins said. "I had hoped that they would (take the vote) just to keep it rolling, but it was a surprise to us that it was even on this month's agenda. ... We were scrambling to get prepared, so this gives us a little more time to prepare our comments."
Watkins said that while it was "disappointing" that the proposed rules weren't considered despite the large number of people who drove to give public comments, he believed there might be even more who show up for December's meeting.
David Peterson, who is a former president of the Ozark Society, expressed surprise.
"I'm mystified by the whole process of this legislature," Peterson said. "I was surprised that the suspension of (procedure) was missing."
Peterson said that the result was that it was "less likely that we'll have a full discussion of the issue."
The failure of the motion is the latest in a decade long saga that started with the opening of the C&H Hog Farms within the Buffalo River watershed, unbenownst to the farm's neighbors due to what many said was insufficient public notice. That started a years-long effort to both improve public notice requirements and shut down the farm, which advocates said posed a massive environmental risk to the watershed and groundwater.
After the public backlash to the farm, state environmental regulators adopted a temporary moratorium on medium- and large swine farms in the watershed. That temporary moratorium had language mandating that the moratorium be made permanent, or removed from Regulation 6 after five years.
Years of back-and-forth between the Department of Environmental Quality, now called the Division of Environmental Quality, and the farm ended with a state buyout of the farm in 2019, but the moratorium faced scrutiny by legislators when the division attempted to make the moratorium for the watershed permanent in 2020. The permanent moratorium was ultimately rejected, but a loophole in the language of the temporary moratorium kept it on the books.
The division introduced a rule change this past summer to once again try to make the moratorium permanent, this time alongside other, unrelated changes to Regulation 6 as a whole that staff said were required to comply with federal environmental regulations.
Meanwhile, the Department of Agriculture was working on its own version of liquid animal waste rules, which fell under the division's authority until a 2023 law change shifted the responsibility for those permits to the agriculture department.
That law enabled the department to exclude notification requirements from the rule by striking language passed into state law in 2017 that required regulators to give notice within 120 days of its proposed actions when it received an application or modification for a liquid animal waste permit.
Act 824 of 2023, which transferred the authority over liquid animal waste permits from the Division of Environmental Quality to the Department of Agriculture, removed that language from state law.
The lead sponsor for the act was Rep. DeAnn Vaught, who is a hog, dairy and chicken farmer and vice chair of the rules subcommittee.
The Division of Environmental Quality, when it was in charge of liquid animal waste permitting, required that local governments receive notice and that permit applications make reasonable efforts to inform landowners adjacent to an area where the permit would be in effect of the application. Under the Department of Agriculture's rule, public notice would only be required to be posted on its website.
Arkansas Advocate
Arkansas lawmakers deferred action on two proposed rules regarding large livestock farms from Thursday to next month.
The Arkansas Legislative Council’s Administrative Rules subcommittee heard public comment from several individuals who criticized a state Department of Agriculture rule that would limit public notice of new permit applications for livestock and poultry farms to the department’s website.
The department promulgated the rule as part of the enactment of Act 824 of 2023, which gave the agency regulatory authority over large livestock farms, often known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) previously held this authority.
Environmental advocates told the Arkansas Times in September that ADEQ’s transparency policy regarding livestock farming permits included notifying local news outlets, elected officials and school districts.
This level of transparency is the “minimum” a community deserves if a business seeks to start a CAFO nearby, said Allan Mueller, a wildlife biologist who spoke to the Rules subcommittee on behalf of the Arkansas Audubon Society.
Rules subcommittee members did not second a motion to suspend its rules, which was necessary in order to take up the proposed rule because the Agriculture Department submitted it two days after the subcommittee’s Oct. 15 agenda deadline.
Rep. DeAnn Vaught, R-Horatio, said after the meeting that she could not predict whether the lack of action on the rule would lead to any changes before the December meeting. Vaught is a Southwest Arkansas livestock farmer, the House vice chair of the Rules subcommittee and a sponsor of Act 824.
The subcommittee also did not vote on a rule from the Department of Energy and Environment that would place a moratorium on CAFOs in North Arkansas’ Buffalo River watershed, a move that environmental advocates have praised.
The energy department’s rule is a response to Act 46 of 2023, which exempted property owners’ associations from certain permit actions related to water pollution.
Brian Thompson, president of the conservation group The Ozark Society, pointed out to the Rules subcommittee that the energy and environment department’s rule requires applicants for CAFO permits to notify property owners adjacent to the proposed farm site, as well as city and county leaders and school district superintendents. He said the agriculture department’s rule should have the same criteria.
“Everyone deserves the respect of appropriate public notification,” Thompson said, mentioning recent public outcry from Franklin County residents about the state’s $2.95 million purchase of 815 acres to build a new prison.
Mueller noted that CAFOs often cause pollution, odors and excessive noise.
“The technical requirements prepared by the Department of Agriculture address many of these issues, but they do not create confidence that these regulations by themselves are enough to avoid damages to surrounding communities and property values,” Mueller said.
Residents of an area where a CAFO is proposed can “identify characteristics and issues that otherwise would not be considered in the application process,” he added, and communication between locals, businesses and the state can “result in an operation that meets the needs of the agricultural community and local interests.”
People who want to be aware of the existence or progress of CAFO applications would have to check the Agriculture Department’s website every day and instead should rely on the department to contact them directly, Mueller said.
The third voice in opposition to the rule was Bill Rector, former publisher of the Daily Record, a Little Rock law and business news outlet that publishes public notices.
Gordon Watkins, president of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, said he would save his comments for the subcommittee’s Dec. 19 meeting. Thompson also said he would be back next month.
Thompson said after the meeting that he hoped the lack of a vote on the Agriculture Department’s rule meant it would be amended.
State legislative committee pushes decision on Buffalo River hog farming rules to December
by Phillip Powell November 14, 2024
A state legislative committee made no decision Thursday on controversial regulations that would impact the future of hog farming in the Buffalo National River watershed, instead punting a possible decision as an agenda item for its next meeting in December.
One rule, submitted by the state Department of Agriculture, would not require Arkansas farmers to notify nearby residents, businesses or schools about new concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, a type of commercial operation where livestock is raised in confined spaces, resulting in animal waste byproducts that are harmful to the environment.
The second rule, proposed by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, would permanently ban hog farming in the Buffalo River watershed. (There is currently a temporary moratorium for pig farms in the protected Buffalo National River area.)
The Administrative Rules Subcommittee of the Arkansas Legislative Council did not consider the pair of regulations because the rules were given to the committee late.
“For members of the audience that are here, we are going to let you come to speak because we are recognizing the time you invested in coming here even though we are not going to take action on it today,” Sen. Kim Hammer (R-Benton), chair of the committee, said of the proposed rules. “And you are welcome to come back next month as well when we will take action, and the reason it is not being considered today is because we would’ve had to have a suspension of the rules. The rules did not get to us in the required time in order to be placed on the agenda like all the other items.”
About a dozen representatives from organizations opposed to pig farming on the Buffalo River as well as members of the public attended the meeting to express their support for the permanent hog farming ban and opposition to the Department of Agriculture’s rule that would make the permitting process for commercial livestock operations less transparent.
Hog farming in the Buffalo River watershed has long been a hot button issue after the opening of an industrial pig farm there in 2013 caused widespread public outrage. In 2020, the state closed a deal to buy the farm’s land while also placing a temporary moratorium on swine operations in the watershed.
“I’m president of the Ozark Society and I represent about 1,000 members,” Brian Thompson said. “My comments are in regard to the removal of public notification language in this rule. Everyone deserves the respect of appropriate public notification. And regarding this rule, there were 670 public comments, about 500 of which expressed concerns around these issues.”
Representatives from the Audubon Delta and the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance also attended.
All in all, the groups have submitted hundreds of comments in favor of a moratorium on hog farms in the Buffalo River watershed, but highly critical of Department of Agriculture efforts to curtail public notice of new hog farms.
A new state law, passed in 2023, transferred regulatory authority of liquid animal waste disposal systems from ADEQ to the Department of Agriculture. Concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, use those liquid animal waste systems to dispose of copious amounts of waste from hogs or dairy cows, and that waste can pollute waterways with excessive nitrogen and phosphorous runoff.
Now the Department of Agriculture with their new regulatory authority is proposing that farmers wishing to permit new CAFOs would not have to notify nearby neighbors, schools, governments, and newspapers of the permit. The department would also impose a permanent moratorium on hog farms in the Buffalo River Watershed, something environmental groups have long desired to prevent waste pollution in the river.
The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality followed the Department of Agriculture in proposing a moratorium on hog farms in the Buffalo River Watershed in October. But the ADEQ rule is not used to permit new CAFOs.
According to data from the Environmental Protection Agency, Arkansas has 776 concentrated animal feeding operations permitted in the state. All of those CAFOs were not permitted under a federal permitting system that the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality administers in the state. Rather, those permits were provided to those farming operations through the Rule 5 regulations on liquid animal waste that the Department of Agriculture now has authority over.
Sen. Greg Leding (D-Fayetteville) told the Arkansas Times after Thursday’s meeting that the Arkansas Legislative Council could not remove any language from the proposed rules. Either the council would accept and approve the rule, or send it back to the agency.
Thompson, the president of The Ozark Society, said that in its current state, he hopes the legislature will reject the new Department of Agriculture rule at the December hearing.
Arkansas Farm Bureau, as opposed to the environmental groups, has taken a strong stance against a moratorium on hog farms in the Buffalo River Watershed. And they have been silent on the weakened public notice requirements proposed by the Department of Agriculture.
It's dragon slaying time!
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Arkansas Democrat Gazette
November 3, 2024 at 8:00 a.m.
by Bob Robinson
Editor's Note: This article is the first in a series commemorating the 40th anniversary of the signing of federal legislation to create nine new federal wilderness areas in Arkansas. The series will focus on the history of the legislation, as well as highlight the natural qualities of each area.
On Oct. 19, 1984, President Ronald Reagan signed Public Law 98-508, guaranteeing the protection of 91,100 acres in Arkansas' Ozark and Ouachita National Forests. This was the largest share of wilderness land Congress had approved for any state east of the Rockies.
The purpose of the act was to designate certain national forest lands as components of the National Wilderness Preservation System to promote, perpetuate and preserve the wilderness character of the land. In addition, it would protect watersheds and wildlife habitats, preserve scenic/historic resources and promote scientific research. It also provides recreation, solitude, physical/mental challenges and inspiration for the benefit of all Americans to a greater extent than is possible in the absence of wilderness designation.
The areas included in the legislation were:
◼️ 7,568 acres of the Ouachita National Forest, titled "Black Fork Mountain Wilderness"
◼️ 6,310 acres of the Ouachita National Forest, titled "Dry Creek Wilderness"
◼️ 10,884 acres of the Ouachita National Forest, titled "Poteau Mountain Wilderness"
◼️ 10,105 acres of the Ouachita National Forest, titled "Flatside Wilderness"
◼️ 1,504 acres of the Ozark-Saint Francis National Forest, titled "Upper Buffalo Wilderness"
◼️ 15,177 acres of the Ozark-Saint Francis National Forest, titled "Hurricane Creek Wilderness"
◼️ 11,822 acres of the Ozark-Saint Francis National Forest, titled "Richland Creek Wilderness"
◼️ 10,777 acres of the Ozark-Saint Francis National Forest, titled "East Fork Wilderness"
◼️ 16,956 acres of the Ozark-Saint Francis National Forest, titled "Leatherwood Wilderness."
These nine areas joined Caney Creek Wilderness, the main section of the Upper Buffalo Wilderness and Big Lake Wilderness, which were already protected under other legislation.
Saving the stories
For the bill to reach Reagan's desk and be signed, Arkansas legislators had to deal with pressures from business interests who opposed it. U.S. Sens. Dale Bumpers and David Pryor, both D-Ark., along with U.S. Rep. Beryl Anthony, D-Ark., U.S. Rep. Ed Bethune, R-Ark., and Texas Republican Sen. John Tower, worked together in a bipartisan manner to advance the bill for the president's approval.
Stewart Noland, former president of the Ozark Society, says the unknown heroes and everyday citizens who toiled with the grunt work and grassroots effort required to garner both political and public support for the bill, also played vital roles in the legislation's passage.
In 2023, on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the passing of the act, Noland was concerned that their stories had never been told. He realized that some of the players involved in the effort were no longer alive and worried that further delays could result in their chapters being lost.
He approached his longtime friend Scott Lunsford, who worked at the David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History in Fayetteville, about preserving this valuable history for future posterity. The Pryor Center acknowledged the importance of this history and agreed to work on the project. It was an ideal joint venture, combining the Pryor Center's audio and office resources with the Ozark Society's historical knowledge.
Noland and Tom McClure set out to record the stories of 31 key players involved in preserving Arkansas' wilderness areas. These recordings, along with documentation contributed by many people related to the program, will be stored at the University of Arkansas Libraries Special Collections and made available to the public at a later date.
A coalition is formed
The preservation of Arkansas' wilderness areas has deep roots. It can be traced to 1948 when Congress first began exploring the concept of developing a Federal wilderness system. American environmental activist Howard Zahniser began formulating the Wilderness Act in 1956. After more than 60 drafts and eight years of work, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed Zahniser's final version into law on Sept. 3, 1964.
Zahniser's poetic definition of a wilderness guided him through the process, stating, "A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain."
This was followed in 1967 by the U.S. Forest Service's review of areas suitable for wilderness designation titled "Roadless Area Review and Evaluation" or "RARE I." The study's recommendations were abandoned after courts ruled the agency had not sufficiently complied with the regulations of the National Environmental Policy Act. A second roadless inventory, RARE II, was initiated in 1977.
From 1977 to 1979, the Forest Service, with public comment, inventoried the nation's lands for areas possessing wilderness potential and then submitted their recommendations to Congress.
An organization called the Arkansas Conservation Coalition, which included representatives from the Sierra Club, Ozark Society, Arkansas Audubon Society, Arkansas Wildlife Federation and other environmentalists, was directly involved in surveying and categorizing Arkansas' national forests during the early stages of RARE II. ACC member Bill Coleman, manager for environmental affairs for then-Arkansas Power & Light Co. (now Entergy Arkansas Inc.), volunteered to lead groups of scientists, naturalists and other experienced environmentalists into Arkansas' forests to inventory and advocate for wilderness areas in both the Ouachita and Ozark National Forests. ACC dispatched 11 teams on foot to survey 400,000 acres in the two forests possessing "wilderness" designation potential.
The coalition submitted about 200 pages summarizing its fieldwork and recommendations to the Forest Service to be included in the RARE II study. It represented over 7,000 man-hours of work by 40 to 50 individuals.
With this enormous commitment by the ACC members, their disappointment was understandable when the Forest Service designated only four of the 25 areas that had been inventoried to be slated for "instant wilderness." These results reinforced ACC's claims that having the Forest Service conduct the RARE II study was like having a corporation audit itself.
The coalition realized early in the process that the path to preserving Arkansas' natural areas would be a rocky one.
The Path to Preservation
ACC was acutely aware of the opposition present in the private sector. Wilderness designation opponents had circulated information that rural Arkansas wilderness designation would close the land to hunting and access to cemeteries within the area. Leaflets were distributed, claiming bordering lands would be condemned and appended to the wilderness areas.
ACC knew it would require a full-court press to combat this misinformation. Their efforts included talking to politicians, writing letters, taking potential supporters on forest outings to witness the natural grandeur, developing convincing data, testifying at public hearings, writing newspaper articles and doing anything else they could to solicit sponsorship for legislation to protect wilderness areas.
ACC members Lissa Thompon and Ed White prepared an 11-minute slide program that many speakers showed at meetings across the state. It addressed issues of concern for locals and reassured them the bill would not block people from using the land and would protect it for their children and future generations. It proved very effective.
These ACC volunteers often faced heated opposition when traveling to town hall gatherings to speak on behalf of the wilderness.
In his recorded interview, Sierra Club member Tom McKinney recounted a "lively" encounter at a town hall meeting in one small community. He explained the benefits of wilderness areas and attempted to dispel what he said were falsehoods being circulated about resulting restrictions. His claims were not well received.
En route to his vehicle after the meeting, he was confronted by a guy who threatened him. McKinney punched the man and promptly proceeded to his truck. As he pulled out of the parking lot, one of the men put a bullet through his fender.
This experience was more of an exception than the rule for most gatherings. ACC member Tom McClure shared stories of community meetings where locals discovered they shared a common objective.
When McClure questioned groups about their goals for forests, many responded they wanted to preserve them so their children and future generations could enjoy the same outdoor activities they had as children. They were tired of the timber industry's clear-cut policy.
McClure explained these were also the objectives of the Wilderness Act. He added that by including an area in the bill, forest preservation would be protected by law.
The political process
While groups like the Forest Service and Arkansas Conservation Coalition may make recommendations for wilderness proposals, only Congress can officially designate wilderness areas.
Bethune was an early supporter of the Wilderness Act. He stepped forward in a big way, suggesting various avenues on how to present a plan for legislation. He contacted Bumpers, asking the state's senior senator to join him. Bumpers agreed.
By this time, the actions to promote the bill had advanced from the forests of Arkansas to the halls of Washington. As luck would have it, Coleman was transferred to the nation's capital for an internship. While there, he provided a place to stay for Arkansans traveling to Washington to testify before Congress.
Bumpers and Pryor co-sponsored the Arkansas Wilderness Bill in the Senate, while Bethune and Anthony introduced the bill in the House. As they say, the rest is history.
With the passage of the act, future generations may now echo Aldo Leopold's sentiment, "I am glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in."
October 31, 2024 at 9:48 p.m. | Updated November 1, 2024 at 9:36 a.m.
Environmental organizations, the city of Fayetteville and the Beaver Water District sounded the alarm on the removal of public notification requirements for liquid animal waste permits by the Arkansas Department of Agriculture -- the same requirements that were put in place after the C&H Hog Farms controversy -- without an official explanation for why they were being removed.
The outcry from both local government and environmental advocacy organizations such as the Ozark Society and the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance came as the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette learned, via an Arkansas Freedom of Information Act request, that two unnamed state lawmakers asked both the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Energy and Environment to request that the Arkansas Legislative Council suspend its rules to allow it to hear the changes to the Department of Energy and Environment’s Regulation 6 -- which will make the swine farm moratorium in the Buffalo River watershed permanent -- and to hear the agriculture department’s rule making on liquid animal waste permits, which also contain language relating to the moratorium.
A letter sent by both departments said that the sped-up timeline would be "beneficial" to facilities the permits apply to "because it would provide clarity on pending permitting matters."
The letter did not provide information about what those pending matters were.
A law passed in 2023 enabled the department to exclude notification requirements from the rule by striking language passed into state law in 2017 that required regulators to give notice within 120 days of its proposed actions when it received an application or modification for a liquid animal waste permit.
The lead sponsor for the act was Rep. DeAnn Vaught, R-Horatio, who is a hog, dairy and chicken farmer and vice chair of the subcommittee that will consider whether to approve both the Regulation 6 and the liquid animal waste rule makings.
Liquid animal waste permits are required for swine farm operations such as the one that prompted the swine farm moratorium in the Buffalo River watershed, in dairy operations and other agricultural facilities involving animal waste, said Gordon Watkins, the president of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance.
The Division of Environmental Quality, which previously regulated the liquid animal waste permits prior to the 2023 legislation, required that public notice for new permit applications or permit modifications be provided to local governments, and required permit applicants to "make a reasonable effort to notify all adjacent land owners" of the application at the time that the application was submitted to the division.
Those notice requirements were axed in the Department of Agriculture's version of the liquid animal waste rule. The only notice requirement in the Agriculture Department rule making was that the department must post notices somewhere on its website.
Meanwhile, another act that Vaught was the lead sponsor for in 2023 also made some of the documents required for those permits no longer subject to Arkansas' public records law.
The removal of the notification requirements was met with massive opposition during the public comment period, with hundreds of comments being submitted to the state's agriculture department -- but only after the time to comment was extended. According to Watkins and Thompson, their organizations didn't even know the rule making was in the public comment period until days before it was set to end.
"We didn't find out about it until four days before the end of the comment period," Thompson said.
The Department of Agriculture was well aware of the organizations' interest in the rule making, both presidents said, yet they were not told about the public comment period despite specifically asking to be informed, Watkins said.
"They knew of our interest," Watkins said. "They were not forthcoming with us, knowing that we were interested, knowing that and having told us that they would keep us informed on these. Both ADEQ and (the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission) told us multiple times that they would keep us in the loop and they would let us know if one of these regulations came up for rule making."
A public hearing held prior to the organizations being made aware of the public comment period was attended by agricultural interests such as the Arkansas Farm Bureau and the Arkansas Pork Producers Association, however, said Thompson.
"That tells you something right there," Thompson said. "They knew about it. We were not notified."
The Arkansas Farm Bureau did not respond to a request for comment.
The organizations were able to get the public comment period extended, and according to records obtained by the Democrat-Gazette, at least 570 public comments were ultimately received by the Department of Agriculture, both for and against the liquid animal waste rule.
While comments from the agricultural interests and right-to-farm supporters generally focused on opposition to language mirroring the swine farm moratorium in ADEE's Regulation 6, those in favor of the swine farm moratorium also came out in droves to oppose the removal of notification requirements.
Amongst those who submitted public comments were the mayor of Fayetteville and the Beaver Water District, both of which solely addressed the lack of notification requirements in their comments and conveyed deep concerns about the consequences of removing the notifications.
"One of our city council members, Teresa Turk, brought this to our attention," said Susan Norton, the mayor's chief of staff who was speaking on the city's behalf. "She pointed out to us that, in fact, in order to be made aware of the general permit then we would have to hunt ... on the Department of Agriculture website" rather than notice being distributed to local governments directly.
"That's why we made the comment that we did and we feel that is for the sake of general transparency and public notification," she said.
The "geological sensitivity" of the Northwest Arkansas region as a whole made it even more important that the city of Fayetteville is kept aware of those kind of permit developments, said Norton.
Meanwhile, James McCarty, the Beaver Water District's environmental quality manager, said that the removal of the notification requirements strikes at the heart of the ability for water utilities like it to engage with state regulators on actions that could potentially impact drinking water resources.
They were not aware of the public comment period for the rule making until the Ozark Society informed them, he said.
Despite several hundred comments expressing opposition to the removal of notification requirements, the department did not state why they had been removed in any of its responses, writing in its responses that "The notice process provided within the rule is sufficient."
The responses to comments concerning the notification requirement removal also said that "If it is determined that the operation may result in a discharge into the waters of the state, the operation must obtain" a Regulation 6 NPDES permit through the Division of Environmental Quality, which "includes the increased notice as requested in the comment."
The change to state law was not noted in responses to comments about notification requirements, although it did cite the change in state law regarding Freedom of Information Act applicability when commenters mentioned the public records changes.
A Department of Agriculture spokesperson was contacted with multiple questions regarding the rulemaking and the last-minute request to bring the rule making before the ALC in November. Shaelyn Sowers, the Department of Agriculture's spokesperson, said she would "check into this" in response to the emailed questions. She did not respond with answers to the Democrat-Gazette's questions.
The combination of the records exclusion from the Freedom of Information Act and the removal of public notifications was concerning to both Watkins and Thompson, they said, because of the potential for substantial environmental consequences in Northwest Arkansas specifically if more liquid animal waste facilities set up shop there. They said the region was especially vulnerable to the kinds of pollution liquid animal waste operations can create, regardless of if it discharges to surface water, due to the underlying geology.
While the proposed regulations would safeguard the Buffalo River watershed, Watkins said the state's other watersheds -- including the ones that provide drinking water -- aren't afforded the same protections. The lack of notifications would mean that those impacted may be none the wiser if liquid animal waste operations wanted to open up in their areas, they both said.
"Unless you are monitoring that website on a daily basis, to my knowledge there's no means for signing up for a notification list of any sort," Watkins said. "It really inhibits the public's ability to gain access to that information."
Removing the notification language is critical, Thompson and Watkins said, because if a landowner who would otherwise oppose a liquid animal waste facility near their property didn't submit a public comment, they would not have any "legal recourse," as submitting a comment is how legal standing is established, they said.
"The only way that you have public standing to object is if you comment," Thompson said.
Both agencies submitted letters to the Bureau of Legislative Research requesting the suspension of the rules on Oct. 17, according to records. That is despite changes to Regulation 6 not being adopted until Oct. 25. Neither Thompson nor Watkins were aware that Regulation 6 would potentially be heard in November instead of December.
The documents included in the record for the Regulation 6 adoption stated that the ALC hearing on the changes would take place in December. Michael McAlister, managing attorney for ADEE, who presented the regulation to the Pollution Control and Ecology Commission, did not say that the date on those documents was no longer accurate or had the potential to no longer be accurate.
When contacted with multiple questions regarding the timing of the ALC hearing, department spokesperson Carol Booth provided a copy of the letter sent to the Bureau of Legislative Research requesting the suspension of the rules. Answers to the questions were not provided.
The change to when lawmakers would consider approval for the rules, and the removal of the public notification requirements for liquid animal waste permits, was part of a larger issue with transparency, said Watkins and Thompson.
Both warned that there are large interests that want to expand hog farming in the northwest region -- and that they don't want the eyes of the public on them.
"They're going to let everything sit quietly for maybe three or four years and then all of a sudden we're gonna see these things start popping up (in Northwest Arkansas)," Thompson said. "Our feeling is that there are interests that want to greatly expand hog farming and the best way to do it is to avoid having to deal with the public."