Harrison Daily Times
Marion County JPS table resolution supporting hog farm
By GEORGE HOLCOMB news@harrisondaily.com
YELLVILLE — The Marion County Quorum Court discussed a resolution supporting C&H Hog Farm in Newton County. The justices decided to table the question for further study, and will revisit the issue in April.
The court considered a resolution pledging their support for the hog farm, six miles up a tributary of the Buffalo River. The resolution was referred from the Newton County Quorum Court, which adopted it in February.
C&H has a troubled history. In August 2012, the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) issued a permit for C&H to house and feed up to 2,500 sows and 4,000 piglets at its property near Mt. Judea. In October 2016 that permit expired, six months after C&H applied for a new, updated permit.
The new permit application was pending for nearly two years before ADEQ denied it, citing a lack of critical supporting documentation, such as “the requisite geological, geotechnical, groundwater, soils, structural, and testing information.” The expiration of the old permit and denial of the new one left C&H in a vulnerable spot, operating under the Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission’s decision not to shut them down until their appeal has been decided.
Representatives of at least half a dozen environmental watchdog groups were there to argue against the resolution. They said:
• It was being sought in order to help pressure state government to subvert the ADEQ ruling.
• It was only a matter of time before a failure in the farm’s pollution control mechanisms creates a disaster on the Buffalo.
• Some scientific data indicate an already existing level of failure that imperils the Buffalo even without a catastrophe.
• The multinational corporation that owns the pigs are raising them here for consumption in China, leaving area residents to deal with the mess.
• The language of the resolution itself contained errors and gratuitous attacks on both state and federal government, and called for “cessation of the unwarranted federal and state governmental interference with the C&H Hog Farm.”
After these points had been argued, Marion County Judge Terry Ott offered the operators of C&H equal time to respond. Jason Henson, one of the partners in the business, rose and offered these points in rebuttal:
• The farm’s operators have taken on huge debt (nearly $4 million) to make this venture work.
• They have done everything they were required to do and provided all the documentation they were asked to provide.
• The farm has been operating four years without being cited for a violation. In fact, Henson said after the Environmental Protection Agency studied the operation for three days in 2015, they said it was the best operation of its type they had seen.
MORE FROM THIS SE
• It is a family farm. Of the nine people who work there, eight are family members.
• All the data offered by their opponents is suspect and cherry-picked; pigs don’t produce nearly as much waste as they say, most of the pigs on the place are juveniles, nitrate concentrations are always greater the farther downstream you go.
“If they can jerk a properly obtained permit out from under our compliant operation,” Henson concluded, “they can do the same thing to you.”
Justices Brady Madden, Joyce McCalla and Carl McBee all expressed the opinion that this was not really something the Marion County Quorum Court should be addressing.
“I am not comfortable with this resolution,” said McBee. “Maybe this is not our place.”
McBee suggested scheduling a public hearing, once the JPs have had time to review and understand the data, and tabling the resolution for later consideration.
The motion to table passed with Justices Mike Scrima, Nicholas Nugent, Gregg Alexander, McBee, Wesley Shipman, and McCalla in favor and Raymond Mayo, Madden, and Claudia Brigham against.