Arkansas Advocate
Bill amended to protect existing Buffalo River watershed moratorium
Legislation would provide approval process for new moratoriums, while leaving existing ones in place
New amendments to a bill that environmental advocates feared would endanger a moratorium on large animal farms in the Buffalo River watershed helped the legislation advance from a House committee on Thursday.
In a reversal, the secretaries of the Arkansas Department of Energy and Environment and the Department of Agriculture said negotiations with Senate Bill 290’s House sponsor and the governor’s office yielded amendments they said will protect the existing moratorium.
SB 290 is sponsored by Rep. DeAnn Vaught, R-Horatio, and Sen. Blake Johnson, R-Corning.
The watershed moratorium, which has been in place for 10 years, quickly emerged at the beginning of the legislative session as a flashpoint between the environmentalists who fought for the ban in the first place and agricultural interests who said it infringed on private property rights.
“It’s going to preserve the existing ones that are there,” Vaught said of the newly amended legislation. “The moratoriums going from this point forward, it establishes a clear process and procedure for our adoption of any implemented new moratoriums in the state of Arkansas.”
Energy and Environment Sec. Shane Khoury told the House Agriculture, Forestry and Economic Development Committee Thursday there were three things everyone could agree on: the importance of agriculture to the state’s economy, that tourism is also a large economic driver, and that the Buffalo River deserves “heightened protection.”
“I’ve always believed that these things are not mutually exclusive, that we can do all things we need to do at the same time. We can recognize the significance of agriculture, we can encourage tourism, and we can protect the Buffalo, all at the same time,” Khoury said. “In fact, I think we’ve been doing that for the past ten years; this amendment allows us to continue to do all of these things.”
SB 290 was introduced at the end of February and finally passed the Senate last week. When it was heard in the House Agriculture, Forestry and Economic Development Committee Tuesday, members pushed it to the full House by a narrow margin, before Vaught pulled it from the floor in order to make it more “palatable” Wednesday night.
Vaught said she didn’t have much involvement with the form the legislation took when it was moving through the Senate, but said she participated in negotiations once it reached the House.
“Yesterday, we had a meeting where we spoke with the governor for a good while,” Vaught said after the House committee voted to move the amended bill back to the House floor without audible opposition. “I got to give her my concerns about farmers that are already existing within the Buffalo River, and I want those farmers to be protected … and then she wanted to be able to protect the Buffalo River.”
Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has said repeatedly that she does not support legislation that does not protect the watershed.
“This revised bill is the result of our valuable partnership with Senator Johnson and Representative Vaught and achieves our goal of both protecting the Buffalo National River and supporting Arkansas farmers, whose success is critical to our state,” said Sam Dubke, Sanders’ spokesperson, in a written statement.
The amendments add language exempting existing moratoriums from the proposed legislation — keeping the existing moratoriums for the Buffalo River watershed and the Lake Maumelle watershed in place, while making the Legislature a bigger part of the process if another moratorium becomes necessary in the future by keeping in place language for approval of future moratoriums that was introduced while it was in a Senate committee.
“With the new version, we’re definitely going to keep it [the existing moratorium] in place, so I don’t foresee there being any future looks at the Buffalo River,” Vaught said, describing the changes as “a great compromise.”
“We should want to protect something that’s so pristine,” Vaught added.
Previous versions of SB 290 sparked strong opposition from environmental groups, who feared those versions, if passed, would end up eliminating the permit moratorium, and again allow another facility like C&H Hog Farms to open up shop in the watershed, endangering the Buffalo National River. The state of Arkansas spent $6.2 million to buy out the farm and shut it down in 2019, after years of efforts led by groups such as the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance.
The president of the Ozark Society, another environmental group that has been opposed to SB290, declined to comment on Thursday’s passage, saying it was too early to do so.
Multiple people spoke against the bill before the committee last week, urging lawmakers to protect “the jewel” of the state of Arkansas.
Richard Johnson, of Little Rock, said the moratorium needed to remain in place, citing pollution hazards posed by swine CAFOs, or concentrated animal feed operations.
“They tend to pollute way beyond their footprint,” Johnson said.
The moratorium was first put in place a decade ago by the Department of Energy and Environment’s Division of Environmental Protection’s (DEQ) predecessor, in response to public outcry over the C&H Hog Farms in the watershed. Environmental advocates said the runoff from the operation was polluting the watershed, which contains the nation’s first, and Arkansas’ only, national river — although advocates for farmers like Vaught and Arkansas Farm Bureau said that was not true.