BY EMILY CRANE LINN ON 4/12/16 AT 1:32 PM
“Let me give you a sketch of the neighborhood,” Leroy Patton said as he put his car in Park on the side of Lawson Road. He took his toothpick out of his mouth and used it to point to an empty house, an abandoned doll lying facedown in the weeds in front of the hollow structure. The Lawson couple used to live here, Patton says; the street was named for them. “They’re dead from cancer and stroke.”
He pointed to another property. “Down here is Pat. Her parents died from cancer back there, and now her husband sick too.” He turned to a long driveway lined with trees and junk cars. “And this here is my place. Ain’t nobody but me and my old lady left. Everybody dead in my family but me. All of ’em from cancer.”
The Patton family has lived on Lawson Road in Crossett, Arkansas, for three generations. Like most of the town, the Pattons earned their living from the nearby lumber and paper mill. In 1962, when Patton was 20, Georgia-Pacific, a fast-growing lumber and paper products company, bought the mill and turned it into a paper, chemical and plywood plant. Production soared. Patton watched the mill prosper and bring prosperity to his town—1,200 jobs, $6.7 million in annual tax revenue, a zoo, a 3-D printer for the library. But he also watched, one by one, his parents, neighbors and high school friends die.
Less than a mile away, Penn Road tells a similar story. In 15 homes, 11 people have died from cancer. “Look there,” Patton said as he stood on Penn Road, pointing to the permanent cloud that hangs above the Georgia-Pacific plant. “Look how close to the plant you are here.” The plant runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and emits upwards of 1.5 million pounds of toxic chemicals every year, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Toxic Release Inventory, which is based on self-reported calculations from emitting facilities. In the case of the Georgia-Pacific plant, these emissions include known carcinogens such as formaldehyde, dioxin, acetaldehyde and chloroform.
The plant also emits a steady stream of another toxin, hydrogen sulfide, both in the air and in the effluent streams of its water treatment system. One of these streams, which residents call “Stink Creek,” runs through the back of Patton’s land. When the wind is blowing the wrong way, it brings a harsh, metallic smell into the homes of nearby residents. A strong whiff stings the nose and burns the throat and lungs.
Residents began complaining about emissions back in the 1990s. In addition to the worrisome odors, there were the chemicals eating through air-conditioning units and copper wiring. Georgia-Pacific responded by going door to door, doling out checks in exchange for signed release forms absolving the company of any responsibility for damages to the residents’ property—or their health. “There was this man who was coming around talking to different people about the damages on their houses, coming around analyzing the property,” Patton said. “He came out with a checkbook, said he was gonna write a check. I ran him off.”
Others signed: Marion and Lila Thurman from Thurman Road received $158,000. David and Barbara Bouie from Penn Road received $34,000. In exchange, they agreed to absolve Georgia-Pacific of “any and all past, present, or future, known and unknown, foreseen and unforeseen bodily and personal injuries or death.”
Asked about these release forms, Georgia-Pacific says they were issued in response to allegations of property damage. The wording about personal injuries and death was nothing more than “standard legal practice” and did not reflect the possibility that the plant might be responsible for residents’ illnesses.
The Ouachita River begins at Lake Ouachita in central Arkansas, where it is a vibrant blue. But by the time it reaches Monroe, Louisiana, about 50 miles after it passes by the Georgia-Pacific plant, it’s a dark coffee color. “Most of the people in Monroe and West Monroe do not know that the river is the wrong color, because it’s the only color they’ve ever seen,” says Cheryl Slavant. “But it is. It’s the wrong color. I can remember when our river was blue and beautiful.”
Slavant can also remember sitting on the levee as a child and watching the water-ski shows on the river. Her husband recalls fishing there and frying up his catch for supper. But in the late 1950s, the river began to change. It’s not just that the water turned brown. The local department of health warned residents to limit the quantities of fish from the river that they were eating because of high levels of mercury. There are no more water-skiing contests because residents are afraid to swim in that water. On some days, residents say, the river puts off a foul stench.
In 2007, Slavant launched Ouachita Riverkeeper, a group working to clean and protect the Ouachita River through community organizing. Slavant and her volunteer river patrolmen had just begun investigating the cause of the pollution in 2009 when she received a call from Crossett. Residents there had heard about her work on the local news. They said they knew what was turning the river brown and believed it was making them all sick. So Slavant met with a group of residents, among them Patton and the Bouies, and helped them form an organization, the Crossett Concerned Citizens for Environmental Justice, which grew rapidly. At one point, Slavant counted over 700 members—over 10 percent of the town’s population. At their meetings, she heard stories about Stink Creek and how it carried discharge from the plant, through the town, to the treatment basins and, eventually, into the Ouachita River.
Georgia-Pacific says its water treatment system is thorough, carefully monitored and in full compliance with the law according to parameters laid out in the permit given to it by the Arkansas Department for Environmental Quality (ADEQ). The company also says the body of water residents call Stink Creek is a lawful, necessary part of that process. Barry Sulkin, an environmental scientist with the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER, disagrees. Stink Creek, he says, is not supposed to be a water treatment canal. It’s actually a stream called Coffee Creek, a naturally occurring body of water that predates the plant—and is protected by the federal Clean Water Act.
The United States Geological Survey has been mapping the region since 1934, three years before the plant started producing paper and decades before Georgia-Pacific acquired the mill. The earliest maps show Coffee Creek beginning inside where the Georgia-Pacific complex would eventually stand and running down into Mossy Lake before continuing on into the Ouachita River; later maps show the creek beginning inside the complex. The Clean Water Act, passed in 1972, requires that any pollutants discharged into bodies of water be clean enough so as to not disrupt the activities in those waters, such as fishing, drinking and supporting animal life. The law gives state regulators, such as ADEQ, the power to determine what those activities are and what the limits on pollutants should be. In this case, ADEQ determined that Coffee Creek and the lake through which it flows, Mossy Lake, do not have any “fishable/swimmable or domestic water supply uses.”
But in a 2007 Use Attainability Analysis (UAA) published by the EPA, the agency found that, “aside from the fish and macroinvertebrate communities using Coffee Creek and Mossy Lake, other wildlife live in or frequently contact the [Georgia-Pacific] effluent. Muskrat, beaver, nutria, turtles and ducks are known to use Coffee Creek and Mossy Lake, sometimes in very large numbers.” Most important, it concluded that “the waters of Coffee Creek and Mossy Lake have the potential to support aquatic life indicative of streams in the ecoregion.”
Those findings might have seriously affected the parameters of Georgia-Pacific’s permit—had ADEQ been required to consider them. But the company sent a letter to the EPA (cc’ing several Arkansas and Louisiana congressmen and senators) in which it accused the regulatory agency of acting without its knowledge and demanding the opportunity to redo the study using a contractor of its choosing. The EPA agreed, the 2007 UAA was set aside, and Georgia-Pacific’s effluent flowed on. Meanwhile, Georgia-Pacific hired the environmental engineering company Aquaeter to conduct a study. It completed a draft UAA in 2013 but has not yet finalized or published any findings.
Slavant says it all comes down to politics. The EPA gets its funding from Congress, and members of Congress get their funding from businesses. Members of Congress also answer to their constituents, and those constituents want jobs. Georgia-Pacific provides southern Arkansas with 1,200 of them, and no one—not the state of Arkansas, nor its representatives, nor the residents of Crossett—can afford to put those jobs in jeopardy.
For Tim Toler, president of the Crossett Chamber of Commerce, those jobs are more than just jobs; they’re Crossett’s lifeblood. “Those jobs provide an excellent standard of living in our town, they provide retirement for people...and they provide health care for employees,” he says. “And, of course, those jobs provide an income that allows people to shop in our town, eat in our restaurants and purchase services and goods. Our town would not exist [without the mill].” Which is why, while many citizens are deeply concerned that the plant’s emissions might be making them sick, the townsfolk are far from sharpening their pitchforks. On the contrary, most residents are fiercely protective of the plant and quick to shoot down the possibility that it could be harming them.
Ben Walsh, a Crossett family practitioner, rejects claims that Crossett suffers from any abnormal health problems. “We have to look at the science, and the science says there’s no increased rate of cancer in Ashley County,” Walsh says. He’s right. The Arkansas Department of Health cancer registry shows the rate of cancer deaths in the county to be slightly belowthe state average. So what does Walsh make of places like Penn or Lawson Road? “You would want to look at all the variables, such as whether these people smoked or were obese,” he says.
Or you might want to look at how close they are to the wastewater stream, Slavant says. The numbers of affected people clustered in the area are just too improbable for her to consider any other possible cause. And it’s hard for her to get Georgia-Pacific’s release forms out of her mind, with the wording “past, present, or future...personal injuries or death.”
Chemist and environmental consultant Wilma Subra is certain emissions are to blame for the town’s many respiratory illnesses. In 2012, the Louisiana Environmental Action Network commissioned Subra to set up air-monitoring stations all around town to sample levels of hydrogen sulfide. At the same time, she asked resident to fill out symptom reports recording instances of dizziness, headaches, coughing or eye irritation. She found that hydrogen sulfide levels were highest nearest the stream and that higher levels corresponded with greater and more severe symptoms among residents.
In addition to the chemicals Georgia-Pacific reports, there could be any number of unreported chemicals leaching into the atmosphere “off the books.” On an inspection last year, the EPA observed several defective pieces of equipment that were allowing unidentified gases to escape into the atmosphere. It also observed filtrate tanks and storage tanks that were knowingly being vented into the atmosphere rather than through a controlled system, as required by the Clean Air Act. Altogether, the EPA found 33 areas where Georgia-Pacific was noncompliant with federal laws and dozens of other “areas of concern.”
Georgia-Pacific is working on addressing the EPA’s concerns, says Jennifer King, a public affairs manager with Georgia-Pacific. In the meantime, however, the plant continues to operate around the clock.
Georgia-Pacific’s permit is up for renewal, and if enough concerned citizens submit comments to ADEQ, it could be pressured to modify the permit this time around. “The state has to open the draft permit up for public comment,” says Corinne Van Dalen, Ouachita Riverkeeper’s lead attorney. “And if there are enough public comments, they will have to hold a hearing to discuss the permit…. After that, even if the permit is approved, anyone can appeal a permit decision to the permit appeals board and from there to the state court.”
Slavant isn’t looking for Georgia-Pacific to close up shop; she only wants to see regulatory agencies hold the plant to the standards of the law. “There needs to be a GP plant here, but it needs to be updated, it needs to be fixed,” she says. “And it can be done.”
KUAF Radio, Ozarks At Large
Interview with Dr. Van Brahana
By Jacqueline Froelich
Scientists studying the environment around a new controversial swine breeding industrial farm on the Buffalo National River Watershed presented their latest findings to the Arkansas Academy of Science April 2nd.
We talk with independent hydrogeologist Dr. Van Brahana. Several key public meetings are also scheduled this week, one regarding Arkansas's general CAFO permit regulation, another on expanding the swine farm's sewage waste spraying to more farm fields--both hosted by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality in Jasper.
By Mike Masterson
Posted: April 12, 2016 at 2:31 a.m.
Dear Governor Hutchinson: Having known you and our gracious state's first lady Susan for years, you realize I wouldn't write this unless my heartfelt convictions were firmly behind these words.
I know you, having served in the same 3rd District congressional seat my uncle, the late John Paul Hammerschmidt, held for 26 years, understand better than most the trials of public responsibility and how close the Buffalo River was to his heart and conscience. That's why he acted in the face of strong local resistance to ensure this precious resource was preserved for generations to come.
His willingness to do what he and some Arkansas colleagues in Congress knew deep inside was the right thing to do resulted in the Buffalo being named our country's first national river in 1972. How wonderful for our state.
Of his many achievements in the career of public service he so honored and cherished, I believe his efforts to ensure the Buffalo River remained protected were the ones in which he took most pride.
So I write to sincerely ask you, on behalf of myself and untold thousands of concerned Arkansans and others who've enjoyed the experience of the magnificent Buffalo National River, to do whatever's necessary to stop the likely contamination of our precious Buffalo National River from raw hog waste.
Good-ol'-boy arm-twisting politics, self-interested lobbyists and campaign contributors be damned; we ask you to act as the elected governor of Arkansas to ensure this natural treasure is never polluted by what geoscience experts believe is the inevitable contamination from swine waste continuously dumped into the Buffalo watershed through rapid, steady subsurface seepage, as well as into its primary tributaries, including Big Creek.
No lesser authorities than the National Park Service and the U.S. Geological Survey, as well as nationally respected former UA geosciences professor John Van Brahana, have conducted studies that strongly agree, indicating such pollution already is affecting the watershed through increased E. coli counts and/or low dissolved oxygen levels.
Warning lights are on. Yet your state agency solely responsible for ensuring our Buffalo is never contaminated, the very one that wrongly allowed this travesty into the karst-laden region more than two years ago, stands by idly, even making hollow excuses why it can do nothing due to "policies."
Above all words and excuses, Mr. Governor, common sense tells every Arkansan that one cannot continually spray raw feces and urine in amounts larger than are created by the nearby city of Harrison onto overly saturated fields bordering Big Creek without those millions of gallons causing pollution. Water does flow downhill to the Buffalo.
Yes, I realize your predecessor Mike Beebe formed a five-year survey called the Big Creek Research and Extension Team from the UA's Department of Agriculture. That group not only costs the taxpayers at least $300,000 to perform its responsibilities, but there is widespread skepticism as to its making impartial assessments when it comes to policing C&H Hog Farms at Mount Judea and its 6,500 confined swine.
After all, we have state agricultural academics using state funds to investigate the credibility of the state's Department of Environmental Quality that wrongheadedly permitted this place, with its former director saying she didn't even realize her agency had done so. Neither did the governor, the Park Service or even Environmental Quality's local staffers.
Those who embrace the hog factory staying put in this precious and sensitive environmental location claim to support farming and the farmer, as well as the pork-producing industry. I say this type of corporately financed concentrated animal feeding operation obviously diminishes and even eliminates genuine family farms who can't compete. In this instance, a misplaced factory seriously endangers a $54 million-a-year recreation and tourism gemstone in one of Arkansas' poorest regions.
Finally, in my appeal to do the right thing and take meaningful action with the Pollution Control and Ecology Commission you appoint, and the seemingly neutered and politicized Department of Environmental Quality, I refer to previous Gov. Mike Beebe's biggest confessed regret being that he was unaware this factory was being permitted.
Beebe was quoted by a fellow columnist saying: "I wish it was never there. I've stopped all future ones. ... If I had it to do over, it wouldn't happen."
Today, Governor Hutchinson, the people of Arkansas are closely watching how you choose to step up to resolve this most significant matter. I'm truly hoping you choose to follow John Paul's sense of integrity and do the obvious proper and honorable thing by our only national river.
Rather than regret, closing this misplaced factory before it irreparably contaminates our national river could become among your finest achievements in office.
------------v------------
Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at mmasterson@arkansasonline.com.
Editorial on 04/12/2016
How new tests prove hog, poultry pollution of NC waters See link at bottom of article to USGS report.
Democrat Gazette
Letter to Editor
The next battleground
Is clean water our next battleground? Without oil, we may have to walk, but without water, no one and nothing can survive.
These days the news is full of water woes. Flint, Mich., may be just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to cities with poisoned drinking water. Algal blooms are making reservoirs unusable in some parts of the country, while mining waste, abandoned chemicals, and tons of excess nutrients imperil our country's water systems everywhere you look.
At the same time, there are powerful special-interest groups in our state and elsewhere ranting, along with their hand-picked politicians, that efforts to protect this most precious of all our shared resources is "government overreach." All the while, they are busy exploiting both ground and surface water resources for their own private profit.
Now that's "overreach." Nobody wants the government to interfere--until they need a bailout!
Next time one of these folks tries to tell you that the government is trying to steal your property rights away by seeking to protect the quality of rivers and the tributaries that create those vital waterways, ask yourself what anyone's property will be worth when our planet's finite supply of clean water has been squandered. We can stand together now to preserve the environment that sustains us all, or we will bequeath a broken world to our children and their children.
LIN WELLFORD
Green Forest
http://www.nwaonline.com/news/2016/apr/04/letters-to-the-editor-20160404/?opinion
Posted: April 4, 2016 at 5:40 p.m.
State response on
Buffalo River inadequate
I attended a special meeting of the Arkansas Joint House and Senate Committee on Agriculture, Forestry and Economic Development on March 29 in Little Rock.
Despite the statement at that meeting by Director Becky Keogh of the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality that collaborative efforts are "planned" to protect the Buffalo River, cooperation did not show its face in this meeting.
After three hours of presentations by the ADEQ and others invited by ADEQ, the National Park Service and the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance were allowed to speak. Listed last on the meeting agenda, neither the park service nor the alliance had been extended the courtesy of notification of this meeting. Both learned of the meeting indirectly and only learned of being on the agenda when the alliance requested a copy of the meeting agenda.
If any true collaboration regarding protection of the Buffalo National River is to ensue, the data and recommendations from the following credible sources need to be included and given more priority than ADEQ appears to be willing to give. Those sources include the United States Geological Survey, National Park Service, Arkansas Fish and Game Commission and the Karst Hydrogeology of the Buffalo National River Study. The study's dye testing studies have demonstrated the highly unpredictable ways water can flow in the Buffalo River watershed. Stakeholders such as the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance and the Buffalo River Coalition needed to be well included as public representatives. Thus far, this collaborative effort Keogh spoke of is nonexistent.
The fact remains that sufficient and robust data from credible sources such as the National Park Service show that three tributaries of the Buffalo River are impaired. Significant and frequent high levels of E.coli in big Creek, where the 6,500-hog factory farm sits, have been found by not only the Park Service but by the publicly funded Big Creek Research Extension Team. The environmental quality agency and that research extension team stated in the March 29 meeting they want to wait and see if these levels of elevated E.coli just go away, despite the millions of gallons of hog waste being applied to fields adjacent to Big Creek.
Both the Park Service and the Arkansas Game and Fish requested that state agency list Big Creek on its impaired waters list due to low dissolved oxygen levels. Aquatic life such as the small-mouth bass require dissolved oxygen for adequate growth.
The Park Service also requested Buffalo River tributaries Mill Creek and Bear Creek be declared impaired.
The Department of Environmental Quality has a duty to list these three streams on the the list of impaired streams. They have not provided plausible reasons for not doing so.
The Buffalo River is not fine when its tributaries are impaired.
Ginny Masullo
Fayetteville
On Tue, Apr 5, 2016
Rhetoric over science? By Mike Masterson Imagine my relief to hear Becky Keogh, director of the state agency that wrongheadedly permitted that controversial hog factory in our treasured Buffalo National River watershed, assure legislators her staff is hard at work protecting the "healthy" river and its tributaries. Anyone buying that in light of recent official findings that water quality in three of those tributaries is impaired? Anyone believe this agency has a reason to save face since it approved unleashing millions of gallons of raw swine waste into the watershed? It didn't seem to matter to Keogh, of the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (cough), that her statement sharply contradicts recent water-quality studies by the National Park Service and U.S. Geological Survey, as well as by professor emeritus John Van Brahana. All show three tributaries are impaired either by low dissolved-oxygen levels that damage aquatic life, or high E. coli content. Keogh stood the other day to address a room of spectators and politicos with agendas (lobbyists too, imagine!), some of whom want fewer regulations when it comes to protecting our magnificent Buffalo. Darn near impossible to fathom, isn't it? Keogh assured members of the Agriculture, Forestry and Economic Development Joint Interim Committee of what good health the Buffalo is in and that there's simply no need to list the tributaries on the biennial list of impaired waterbodies required by the federal Environmental Protection Agency. This, despite studies that prompted the park service and others to request Mill Creek, Bear Creek and Big Creek be included on the Department of Environmental Quality's latest list. The negative findings documented in those streams were dismissed by the department as having been conducted during a "freaky year." Its vigilant environmental watchdogs (now that's freaky) need a longer period of study, the agency claims, perhaps even five years of data. Hmmm. Well, Chuck Bitting, natural resource program manager for the National Park Service at the country's first national river, said his office has been steadily supplying the state agency with data for decades. He said E. coli bacteria was detected in Big Creek, which flows along waste-spreading fields for C&H Hog Farms, in a full third of tests during in 2014. Bitting told reporter Emily Walkenhorst that the park service is obligated to monitor water quality in the park, which annually attracts well over a million visitors who leave over $56 million to boost the economy of the region. "We want to see the river protected by all means necessary and whatever means are appropriate," Bitting told the reporter, continuing: "We're not here to shut agriculture down, and we're not here to shut industry down." The park service collected weekly water samples in Mill Creek, the Buffalo's largest tributary, for more than a year and periodic samples for more than 30 years. Bitting said park service data during 2015 from the creek showed elevated levels of E. coli--high enough to place warning signs for those seeking recreation along the creek and downstream on the Buffalo River. At Big Creek at Carver, the park service used U.S. Geological Survey data to determine that the stream's dissolved-oxygen level is too low. Similar findings exist at Bear Creek near Silver Hill, the fourth-largest Buffalo tributary. Gordon Watkins, who heads the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, told me he believes there is legitimate concern for worry about the Buffalo's health. "[The Department of Environmental Quality] wants to fall back on technicalities to avoid including Buffalo's tributaries on the impaired list, while [the park service], one of its most trusted partners for over 30 years when monitoring the Buffalo's water quality, is alerting [the state agency] to imminent threats, " he said. "There was a clear desire by agencies, the legislature, and Farm Bureau (their national president "Zippy" Duvall was the hearing's headliner) to avoid EPA oversight but no suggestion the state turn away millions in EPA grant funds. "Most disturbing was the amount of effort made to explain away ... concerns. It was obvious [Environmental Quality] wanted to avoid listing Big Creek as impaired because that would require them to identify the sources of the problems and act to correct them. And we know where that would lead," he said, adding he still doesn't know how this meeting came about or who called it. His alliance was on the agenda, but he learned about it only by chance last Friday because he'd not been invited. P-47s, then jets Retired Col. David Fitton of Harrison flew a P-47 fighter during World War II, followed by piloting jets in Korea. We didn't have jets in combat in World War II, even though I wrote last week the decorated pilot flew them then. Just keeping the record straight. ------------v------------ Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at mmasterson@arkansasonline.com. Editorial on 04/02/2016
Arkansasonline
By Emily Walkenhorst
Posted: March 30, 2016 at 3:10 a.m.
The Buffalo National River is in good health, Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality officials told the Agriculture, Forestry, and Economic Development Joint Interim Committee on Tuesday.
The standards for the river's tributaries are working to adequately protect the river from pollution, department Director Becky Keogh said, despite recent arguments from National Park Service officials concerned that three tributaries to the river are polluted because of E. coli and low oxygen levels.
National Park Service officials have asked the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality to list three tributaries to the Buffalo National River on the department's biennial list of polluted water bodies in Arkansas in light of data going back to 2013, but so far the department has declined, given the number of years over which the samples were collected.
The park service has asked to add Mill Creek, Bear Creek and Big Creek, but the department has argued that the data obtained during the "period of record" -- before April 1, 2015 -- don't show that the waterways are polluted.
A portion of Big Creek is where C&H Hog Farms is located. C&H Hog Farms, which is permitted to hold up to 2,503 sows and 4,000 piglets at a time, has been the target of many environmental advocates who believe that the farm has had a negative effect on the river and that the pig manure poses a threat to the water during flooding.
Instead of classifying the streams as polluted, Keogh said the tributaries should be placed on a middle-ground category that would say data is insufficient to classify the tributaries and would prompt the department to consult with other states over new ways of monitoring the tributaries and assessing the results.
"Our preliminary review indicates these three tributaries should be listed as category 3," said Julie Chapman, senior associate director of the department's office of law and policy.
Chapman said data from 2014 showed several times when water quality standards were exceeded but that water samples taken since have shown much better results, including 8 percent of samples showing E. coli issues in 2015, well below the threshold for action of 25 percent.
"It could be that 2014 was just a freaky year," she said.
Looking at the data over a span of five years would allow the department to account for statistical anomalies, she said.
Chuck Bitting, natural resource program manager for the National Park Service at the Buffalo National River, emphasized the number of times E. coli was detected at Big Creek in 2014, which according to the park service was 33 percent of the time.
At the same time, Bitting noted, more than 1.3 million people visited the Buffalo River in 2014 and spent about $56.5 million at area businesses.
"The National Park Service has an obligation to monitor the water quality in the park," he said, adding that the park service has supplied data to the department for decades.
The state has funded a five-year study by the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture that research team leader Andrew Sharpley told legislators Tuesday did not yet show significant trends in its first 2½ years. Sharpley is a professor of soils and water quality at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.
A five-year ban on new medium or large hog farms in the Buffalo River's watershed is in place until 2019, when the study will be finished. That ban was supported by environmental groups; Gov. Asa Hutchinson's office, which negotiated the temporary ban in lieu of a permanent ban; and legislators.
The department uses five years of data from in-house and several other sources to determine pollution or lack of pollution in water bodies in creating a list of polluted waters. The list is the 303(d) list, which is required under the federal Clean Water Act and is overseen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Placement on the list -- if the list is approved by the EPA -- can require studies to determine appropriate limits for cities, businesses or others seeking permits to discharge wastewater into a particular body of water.
The EPA has not approved an Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality list since 2008, citing disagreements with the department on how the department assesses water quality. But if the department recommended a stream be placed on the 2016 list and the EPA did not approve that list, the department could still require additional water monitoring on those waterways when issuing wastewater discharge permits to new facilities or renewing existing permits.
Several legislators expressed an interest in avoiding more regulation, if possible, and asked department officials if water quality standards generally can be achieved without extra regulation. Keogh and Arkansas Natural Resources Commission Executive Director Randy Young said they could. Young testified before the committee about water programs for farmers that have, among other things, reduced water runoff from farms.
In the future, Keogh said she hopes to work with the National Park Service and other agencies in Arkansas to develop the "Beautiful Buffalo Collaborative," which would establish methods of protecting the river and simultaneously help the department avoid going through the traditional, drawn-out process of creating a Total Maximum Daily Load study and enforcement process like it would with other streams placed on the list.
The collaborative would produce more of an Arkansas approach to the river than one that must go through the EPA, Keogh said.
"We want to see the river protected by all means necessary and whatever means are appropriate," Bitting said. "We're not here to shut agriculture down, and we're not here to shut industry down."
The National Park Service collected weekly water samples in Mill Creek, which is the largest tributary to the Buffalo River, for more than a year and has collected periodic samples for more than 30 years, Bitting has said. Based on the National Park Service's data from 2015, the creek has elevated levels of E. coli. The National Park Service has placed signs along Mill Creek and downstream on the Buffalo River warning people of elevated levels of E. coli.
Downstream of the Buffalo River where it meets Mill Creek is Big Creek at Carver, where the National Park Service used U.S. Geological Survey data to determine that the amount of dissolved oxygen in the stream is too low, leaving it less hospitable to aquatic species. The National Park Service has made a similar determination at Bear Creek near Silver Hill, which is the fourth-largest tributary of the Buffalo River and is downstream of where the Buffalo meets Big Creek.
Metro on 03/30/2016
By David Guest | Friday, March 25, 2016
The environmental news this Florida tourist season continues to get more horrific.
We reported earlier this month about the polluted water spewing onto Florida’s east and west coasts from Lake Okeechobee, turning blue waters brown and disgusting.
Now, dead fish of all varieties are floating belly-up in the waters of the Indian River Lagoon and the Banana River on Florida’s upper southeast coast. The culprit is a brown algae outbreak sparked by fertilizer, manure, and sewage pollution.
The algae explosion robs the water of oxygen, and everything in the water dies. We at the Earthjustice Florida office have spent years trying to get meaningful regulations to restrict this type of pollution, and we’ve had to battle the nation’s largest polluters—and their politician friends—every step of the way.
Now, this failure to regulate pollution has come home to roost in the form of this massive fish kill, stretching for miles on waterways between the Space Coast towns of Titusville and Palm Bay. Tourists arriving in sunny Florida to embark on cruise ships out of Port Canaveral have been met by a nauseating stench and a disgusting sight. Local officials have hurriedly installed dumpsters at boat ramps and waterfront parks so that residents can scoop up the fish and dispose of them.
Long-time fishing columnist Ed Killer, who writes for Treasure Coast-Palm Coast newspapers, put it best:
“I'm sick of this,” he wrote.
“I'm sick of writing about fish kills.
I'm sick of writing about algae blooms. And discharges. And brown tides, and red tides and toxic bacteria.
I'm sick of writing about barren flats because the sea grass no longer grows there.
I'm sick of writing about politicians who can tell us with a wink they're working to fix Florida's water problems. I'm sick of the back hallways where those same elected officials make secret handshakes and accept cash from special interest groups.
I'm sick of the status quo those special interest groups ensure that pollutes, diverts, abuses, misuses and exploits what once were pristine waters.
I'm sick of receiving press releases from leaders and agencies whose salaries we pay and whom we entrust to protect our waterways, instead telling us to mind our business, keep our mouths shut and stop being activists. I'm sick of those agencies issuing permits to violate laws of common sense, and then turning their back on clear violations of environmental laws and policies.”
We couldn’t agree more. Our hearts go out to the anglers, the paddle boarders, the boaters and the families along the Indian River Lagoon and the Banana River. We’re doing all we can to get meaningful regulations to stop tragedies like this from continuing to ruin our beautiful Florida. This type of pollution and devastation is preventable, but we need to insist that our leaders stand up and prevent it.