By Ryan McGeeney
Posted: March 26, 2014 at 5 a.m.

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/RYAN MCGEENEY 

Photo: John Bailey (from left), head of the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality’s water division permits branch, discusses technical aspects of the nutrient management plan designed by C&H Hog Farms in Mount Judea with Gordon Watkins of Parthenon and Dane Shumacher of Huntsville on Monday night in the Jasper Public Schools cafetorium. The department held a public hearing for a proposed modification to the permit.

 
About 90 people attended a public hearing Monday for a proposed modification to the permit for a controversial Newton County hog farm.

The farm, C&H Hog Farms in Mount Judea, is the first and only operation in Arkansas to receive a general permit of its kind under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System program. The farm has received intense public scrutiny since early 2013, when Buffalo National River Superintendent Kevin Cheri complained that an environmental assessment performed by the Farm Service Agency was “woefully inadequate.”

The farm, which is permitted to house approximately 2,500 sows and as many as 4,000 piglets at a time, is located adjacent to Big Creek, about 6 miles from its confluence with the Buffalo National River.

The farm’s owners have land-use agreements for approximately 630 acres of grasslands surrounding the main production facility, divided into 17 fields. Monday’s public hearing focused on a proposed modification to the farm’s permit that would allow operators to use a vacuum tanker truck to spray manure on three of the 17 fields. The permit currently allows the operators to use only a sprinkler system to spreadmanure on those fields.

Karl VanDevender, a professor of biological and agricultural engineering at the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture in Little Rock, said there is typically no difference in outcome between the two methods of manure application. He said the farm owners’ request was likely a matter of practicality.

“They don’t have sprinklers installed in that field yet,” VanDevender said. “There’s also a reality perspective; for irrigation to work, you’ve got to be able to pump water to a field from your waste pond. As the distance to the field increases, cost for maintaining linesgoes up. It’s an economic, practical issue.”

Jason Henson, one of the farm’s co-owners, said Monday that he had requested the modification simply to give himself and his fellow operators more options for applying the manure to the fields.

The fields in question, fields 7, 8 and 9, represent about 140 acres of land, much of which directly abuts Big Creek. Although the permit establishes “setbacks,” which forbid operators from applying manure within 100 feet of the stream banks, many critics of the farm worry that heavy rains on fields already saturated with phosphorus will lead to “run-off” in which large amounts of nutrients will be swept into area waters, potentially polluting both Big Creek and the Buffalo National River.

By Monday afternoon, official public comments from about 30 people and entities had been made available through the Environmental Quality Department’s permit database. Many of the public comments exceeded the scope of the modification request, questioning the soundness of granting the permit in the first place.

Ginny Masullo, a Fayetteville resident who has been involved in efforts to get the farm’s operational permit revoked since early 2013, saidthe proposed modification was of relatively little consequence compared with the potential environmental damage posed by the farm itself.

“It’s very confusing to me why we’re having a public hearing for this one modification, when there’s more serious things to be considered about the original permit,” Masullo said, although she agreed to “respect the limitations” of the forum.

Masullo said that in addition to the high levels of phosphorus already present in field 7, according to soil test results included in the farm owners’ nutrient management plan, possible air pollution from the farm’s two large waste storage tanks was also cause for concern.

The accumulated waste from hogs inside the C&H Hog Farm facility is held in two open air lagoons, capable of holding several million gallons of waste, before being applied to the surrounding grasslands. Hydrogen sulfide and ammonia, both of which are known byproducts of hog manure, are classified as neurotoxins by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Because much of Mount Judea, including its schools, sits directly downwind of the farm’s production facility, several people attending Monday voiced concern over not only the potential smell, but the potential health hazards of the farm, and asked that the Environmental Quality Department begin monitoringthe air quality in Mount Judea.

“My understanding is that Arkansas doesn’t use air monitoring for agriculture,” Masullo said. “This isn’t agriculture. This is industrialized factory farming.”

Katherine Benenati, a spokesman for the Environmental Quality Department, said Tuesday the department is considering whether to adopt air quality monitoring standards for agricultural operations.

“At this point, we’re evaluating the possibility of a plan for air monitoring,” Benenati said. “We don’t currently have the equipment necessary to do such monitoring. We’re also evaluating the state’s air pollution law. There’s an exemption for agricultural processes and we’re researching the law to see how it’s been interpreted in the past.”

Some commenters asked if there were other concentrated animal feeding operations thathave secretly applied for permits with the Environmental Quality Department. Agency Director Teresa Marks denied that there were any “secret” applications.

There have been no other applicants for the general concentrated animal feeding operation permit after C&H Hog Farms, although Marks said there are about a half-dozen applications for individual permits under the state’s Regulation 5, which has been in use since 1992. According to the department’s online database, there are more than 260concentrated animal feeding operations with active Regulation 5 permits throughout the state, about three-quarters of which are hog operations.

One of the few commenters to speak in favor of the proposed modification, and of the farm in general, was Jerry Masters. Masters, who is executive vice president of the Arkansas Pork Producers Association, has been a frequent defender of C&H Hog Farms, appearing at many of the public discussions about the facility to speak on behalf of the farm and its owners.

“[The farm owners] followed every bit of the regulation for their [concentrated animal feeding operation] permit,” Masters said. “You may not agree with how the permit is done, but this hog farm followed every part of that regulation, and they went over and beyond.”

Masters said that there is “zero scientific proof ”that land-applying fertilizer through a vacuum tank truck is any more dangerous than using a sprinkler system, and asked that the Environmental Quality Department approve the proposed modification to the permit.

Benenati said that comments will now be reviewed by the department’s staff, and any comments and questions relevant to the proposed modification will be directly addressed and answered. Benenati said she could not provide a completion date for the comment review.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 03/26/2014