Citizens concerned about pollution regarding the C&H Hog Farm near Big Creek in Mt. Judea, Ark., have a little more time to raise their concerns about the recent environmental assessment by two federal agencies of the facility.
The Buffalo River Coalition claim the Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) assessment fails to consider the C&H hog facility’s impacts on water resources, air emissions, and on the public health and quality of life of the Mt. Judea community and the nearby Buffalo National River. However, the hog facility has been approved for all necessary permits by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) to operate.
The deadline has been extended to Jan. 29 for the public to send their comments by mail to: C&H Hog Farms EA, c/o Cardno, Inc., 501 Butler Farm Road, Suite H, Hampton, VA 23666, and by email at: CHHogFarmComments@cardno-gs.com.
“From our viewpoint, we’re stunned at some of the things they found in environmental assessment and determination of FONSI is really unbelievable,” said Dane Shumacher, a board member of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance. “It’s important for people to weigh in because at this stage in the game they can still be influenced and hopefully take the road of doing further investigation.”
The hog facility, five miles from the edge of the Buffalo River and nearby to the Mt. Judea school, was approved by the ADEQ in 2011 to house 6,503 pigs in 2,500 pens. An animal facility of that size is called a Confined Animal Feeding Operation or CAFO. The facility was built in 2013, and many residents nearby were unaware it was being built until it was nearly complete. Laws have since been improved to provide better notice to nearby residents of such facilities.
The manure beneath the pig pens is transferred to a waste lagoon that’s rated to hold about 2 million gallons of raw sewage annually, or about the amount of waste a city of 30,000 people creates. From there, trucks pump the waste into holding tanks and drive out to 600 acres of pasture to spray the waste out into the fields as a fertilizing method, called a Nutrient Management Plan (NMP) as allowed by state permit. However, half of the field lies nearby in the floodplain of Big Creek, which is a river that empties into the Buffalo River. Airborne waste emissions polluting the air nearby Mt. Judea inhabitants breathe in are also a concern.
The fields that are used to spray the waste to fertilize the fields are believed to be located atop karst geology — which means the land has a thin topsoil above very porous rocky (in this case limestone) ground — and would be unable to handle the amount of nutrient spray to properly filter the toxic bacteria from the manure in the soil. In a karst environment, ground water moves rapidly alongside surface water, and can be difficult to predict how and where it flows. So, there is concern that the waste being sprayed near Big Creek could seep into the ground water and pollute the Buffalo River, which is a federally preserved river.
In the FONSI environmental assessment, the two agencies that conducted it, the Small Business Association and Farm Service Agency, denied that the hog farm and its NMP fields sit atop karst geology.
John Van Brahana, a retired University of Arkansas geology professor and karst expert, explained in a letter to the ADEQ that they only considered surface water in their first environmental assessment. In a karst environment, often times surface and ground water run together because of the porous nature of the underground limestone.
“I know of no active karst consultant who recommends that a CAFO be sited on karstified limestone, particularly upgradient from so sensitive a natural resource as the Buffalo National River, with its direct-contact use by canoeists, fishermen, and swimmers,” Brahana wrote in the letter.
Brahana is currently conducting dye studies to observe the flow of water near the C&H spray fields.
Additionally, more than 70 scientific studies and papers have documented the health dangers to human life and the environment around CAFO facilities. Most notably, a 2008 study by Pew Institute — a non-partisan think tank — compiled data on health CAFOs regarding public health, environment and animal welfare and concluded that such operations need to be phased out due to their adverse effects.
“This is a travesty, it should never have been permitted. There’s a lot of stuff being put to light, but right now people need to make their comments for the record,” said Ginny Masullo, a member of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance. “We have to as citizens. Our governmental bodies aren’t doing the protections we need. If we don’t make them do it, it’s not going to get done.”
The Buffalo River’s water is regarded as pristine. The river flows for over 150 uninterrupted miles through the Ozarks. On March 1, 1972, Arkansas’s Buffalo River was named the first national river in the United States. It was slated to be dammed up back in the 1960s. After years of work by conservationists like Neil Compton and Ken Smith, it is now one of the few free-flowing rivers in the continental U.S.
In 2014, the National Park Service reported that 1.3 million visitors annually spend $56.6 million in the gateway communities surrounding the national park.
Upcoming Buffalo River Events
Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette
January 12, 2016
NWA LETTERS
Posted: January 12, 2016 at 1 a.m.
·
Hog farm assessment raises questions
The latest environmental assessment, or EA, regarding the 6,500-hog factory in the Buffalo River’s watershed generates more questions than answers.
The EA states: “Application of wastes to fields would have no effects to geology. The geotechnical investigation did not encounter karst features beneath the C&H Hog Farm facilities. There would be no direct and indirect impacts to geology since disruption of underlying bedrock would not occur from farm operations.”
No effects to geology? The concern is how the karst terrain coupled with spraying thousands of gallons of untreated hog waste onto fields may effect groundwater. This EA’s statement illustrates a remarkable negligence in understanding the concerns of renowned geologists regarding karst. Karst systems are vulnerable to ground water pollution due to the relatively rapid rate of water flow and the lack of a natural filtration system
The EA’s statement that “geotechnical investigation did not encounter karst features beneath the C&H Hog Farms facilities” is full of holes. The geotechnical investigation is not an actual karst survey. Additionally, Big Creek Research Extension Team, the taxpayer-funded study through the University of Arkansas, is characterized as the “best available science.” It is limited in scope, at best, but even this EA’s “go-to” source employed an Electrical Resistivity Imaging study done by Oklahoma State University. That “possibility of hog manure electrical signatures present on Field 12.”
Big Creek itself is a losing stream, which is a karst feature. Strange this EA disagrees, saying more data is needed. Are we to believe C&H sits in a karst-free bubble when karst geologists and the ERI tests say otherwise?
Impairment of the Buffalo River and its feeding streams occurs over time. Big Creek may already be impaired. The National Park Service has requested our Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality to look at data regarding low dissolved oxygen levels. Dissolved oxygen is vital for aquatic animals and plants. Couple that with the Extension Team report of elevated E.coli levels in the house well of C&H and in interceptor trenches around the facility. Does it not make sense that the untreated waste from 6,500 hogs held in open pits and then spread on fields nearby could further impair the quality of the water?
C&H farm has applied to truck untreated hog waste away to other locations miles from C&H but still in the watershed. Why apply if there is not concern about impairment/contamination? This facility should never have been permitted. This so called final EA uses ambiguous language to obscure the facts. If there is inconclusive evidence how can the EA conclude there is no significant impact?
C&H Hog factory and this EA generate too many questions and not enough answers. We, the people, will make the difference as to whether this facility and others like it can proliferate in the watershed of the crown jewel of Arkansas.
The public comment period has been extended to Jan. 29. Written comments will be accepted by mail at: C&H Hog Farms EA, c/o Cardno Inc., 501 Butler Farm Road, Suite H, Hampton, VA 23666; and by email at: CHHog-FarmComments@cardno-gs.com.
GINNY MASULLO
Fayetteville
letters@nwadg.com
By Mike Masterson
Posted: January 2, 2016 at 2:06 a.m.
It made my heart race even faster when I heard that the controversial hog factory our state so wrongheadedly misplaced in the Buffalo National River watershed is testing revolutionary swine-waste-vaporizing equipment.
Just maybe, instead of regularly dumping millions of gallons of the potent raw hog waste on fields around Big Creek, a major tributary of the Buffalo, where it can seep into the subsurface karst terrain, now all that poop might just amazingly poof into thin air.
How glorious is that? Waste in, clean, refreshing air out. Sounds like something we might see out of street magician David Blaine, or munching popcorn with wide eyes in a Las Vegas theater of prestidigitation, don't you think?
Imagine the excitement as a couple of stage hands, to the tune of "Happy Days Are Here Again," roll large wheelbarrows filled with the stuff hogs naturally create and dump it into a whirring metallic machine. Then a magician waves his wands, turns up the heat and presto-chango! Only pleasantly scented breezes flow from a pipe on the opposite side.
That's, in effect, pretty much what the Plasma Energy Group from Port Richey, Fla., insists will happen using "plasma arc pyrolysis" that vaporizes potent waste within a closed-loop system.
The group says its technology was tested in October at Sandy River Farm in Conway County. The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality had people on site during those tests and apparently has received data from Plasma Energy from earlier testing in Florida.
The department says it's still processing the results to determine if C&H Hog Farms will have to obtain an air-quality permit to fire up the super-duper poop-poofer at Mount Judea, according to reporter Emily Walkenhorst. Plasma Energy Group had applied for such a permit in September before the Conway County test.
I'm still a tad unclear about where things stand with all the red tape since the Department of Environmental Quality said it hadn't received all the data from Conway County yet. Yet the equipment apparently already has arrived at C&H for additional testing there. Any information beyond that, well, was pretty much like trying to interview thin air.
Here is what Walkenhorst, who has closely followed the C&H story, reported the other day: "Attempts to reach Plasma Energy Group representatives over the past two weeks have been unsuccessful. The group's website could no longer be found, and the company's phone number was disconnected sometime between Dec. 18 and Dec. 22. However, Florida Department of State Division of Corporations records accessed Dec. 22 indicate the company is still active.
"Jason Henson, co-owner of C&H Hog Farms, did not return voice mails asking about the vaporizing technology or the results of any testing. The equipment was not in use at C&H Farms as of Dec. 18, Department of Environmental Quality Director Becky Keogh said in a letter to the Arkansas Canoe Club, the Ozark Society, the National Parks Conservation Association and the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance--four groups who have fought C&H Hog Farms' operation in Mount Judea."
Those groups seem less than impressed with the state's approach, as well as the emerging vaporizing technology.
For instance, Gordon Watkins, who heads the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, said his group knew of the testing at the Sandy River Farm in Conway County Farm before Keogh sent her letter.
But Watkins and others believe the state should not allow testing to go forward in such an environmentally sensitive and valuable area without fully understanding any and all emissions such technology produces. "We found it just unacceptable that ADEQ is letting such an experimental process go forward," he told Walkenhorst.
My thoughts about this hog factory being so grossly misplaced in our state's national treasure in God's Country haven't changed.
So many across our state and even nationally continue to wonder why our agency supposedly dedicated to preserving environmental quality would ever have allowed such a place to set up in the Buffalo National River watershed to begin with.
Randall Mathis, who passed away Monday, told me that during his tenure with what was then the Department of Pollution Control and Ecology, he acted to protect and preserve the Buffalo with a moratorium on allowing animal factories (and the enormous contamination they invariably produce) into that sacred watershed.
But somewhere, sometime, and by someone else's decisions after Mathis departed, that moratorium simply evaporated. I detect the stench of politics, don't you?
No one can explain to public satisfaction why our state has invested hundreds of thousands of our tax dollars and contorted itself into a warm pretzel to protect this factory that so many believe shouldn't be in this location. Why not say "our bad," make the politically connected family than owns it financially whole, then shut it down? What is it that makes the state's investment and the serious risks to the river and environment worthwhile to preserve for the common good?
That includes the need for an astounding, super-duper pig-poop poofer.
------------v------------
Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at mikemasterson10@hotmail.com.
Editorial on 01/02/
By Emily Walkenhorst
This article was published today at 3:18 a.m
Equipment to vaporize pig manure has made its way to C&H Hog Farms after being tested at a hog operation in Conway County.
To ease fears that hog waste could pollute the Buffalo National River, C&H Hog Farms owners opted to work with Plasma Energy Group, based in Port Richey, Fla., which specializes in the technology called plasma arc pyrolysis. The technology essentially vaporizes materials in a closed loop.
After more than a year of saying that the technology would soon be used at C&H Farms, Plasma Energy Group tested it Oct. 9 at Sandy River Farm in Conway County, according to the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality. Cargill Inc., which owned Sandy River Farm at the time, offered that farm for the testing site. (In November, JBS USA Pork completed the purchase of Cargill's pork division.)
The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality had personnel present for the Sandy River Farm testing and received additional data from testing on hog waste in Florida in September.
The department has yet to determine whether the company will need a state air permit to operate the waste-disposal method.
"We are still evaluating that," spokesman Katherine Benenati said in an email.
Air permits are required if emissions are expected to exceed certain levels.
Plasma Energy Group applied for an air permit on Sept. 18, 2014.
The department does not yet have the data from the Sandy River Farm testing and so has not formed an assessment, but the plasma arc pyrolysis equipment has been moved to C&H Hog Farms for additional testing.
Attempts to reach Plasma Energy Group representatives over the past two weeks have been unsuccessful. The group's website could no longer be found, and the company's phone number was disconnected sometime between Dec. 18 and Dec. 22. However, Florida Department of State Division of Corporations records accessed Dec. 22 indicate that the company is still active.
Jason Henson, co-owner of C&H Hog Farms, did not return voice mails asking about the vaporizing technology or the results of any testing.
The equipment was not in use at C&H Farms as of Dec. 18, Department of Environmental Quality Director Becky Keogh said in a letter to representatives of the Arkansas Canoe Club, the Ozark Society, the National Parks Conservation Association and the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance -- four groups that have fought C&H Hog Farms' operation in Mount Judea.
"Once the unit is ready to commence operations at the C&H location, ADEQ compliance staff members will again be present to monitor and observe the unit," Keogh wrote in the Dec. 18 letter. "Subsequently, ADEQ staff will remain available to observe the unit throughout the refined testing process as well as when the unit becomes operational."
Gordon Watkins, president of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, said his group was aware of the testing at Sandy River Farm before Keogh's letter. He said his group maintains that the Department of Environmental Quality should not let the testing go forward in an environmentally sensitive area without more data on any emissions the technology produces.
"We found it just unacceptable that ADEQ is letting such an experimental process go forward," he said.
C&H Hog Farms sits on Big Creek, 6.8 miles from where the creek flows into the Buffalo National River. The farm is the first large-scale hog operation in the watershed -- the area that drains into the river. The farm, which opened in May 2013, is permitted to have 2,503 sows and 4,000 piglets.
In 2014, the Buffalo National River -- the nation's first national river -- had more than 1.3 million visitors, who spent about $56.5 million at area businesses, according to National Park Service data.
Plasma arc pyrolysis is one of two waste-disposal methods that C&H Hog Farms has proposed using to address concerns about hog waste polluting the watershed.
The other method would add liners to some waste lagoons and place a cover on another lagoon that would capture gas emissions, send them through a pipe and incinerate them. A proposed modification to the hog farm's state permit that would let the farm use this method of waste disposal is before the Department of Environmental Quality.
Last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Farm Services Agency and the U.S. Small Business Administration released a final reassessment on the environmental impact of the farm, concluding that the farm likely would have "no significant impact" on the watershed.
Metro on 12/27/2015
Print Headline: Hog farm gets vaporizing system
When it comes to protecting the Buffalo National River from raw waste generated by that controversial hog factory at Mount Judea, it will be interesting to see if the U.S. Farm Service Agency and the Small Business Administration have yet again fallen short after their second draft attempt to produce a credible court-ordered Environmental Assessment. The agencies' original assessment, deemed unacceptable last year by U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall, led earlier this year to their offering an initial draft revision that drew 1,858 public comments. That reaction prompted them to request until March 2016 to complete this most recent draft. And somehow, they managed to complete and release it more than three months early and just before Christmas. How does one spell politically calculated? The environmental assessment is a required segment of the federal loan guarantees the factory received from both agencies before it began operating in 2012 with the blessings of our state's Department of Environmental Quality (waaaait for it ... cough). Yet again, as they had in their initially discredited draft and subsequent revision, the agencies in their final draft determined "no significant impact" to the watershed from the factory. In other words, all smells just great. Initiated and supplied for two years by Cargill Inc., the factory confines 6,500 swine and continually spreads their raw waste across fields near Big Creek, a major tributary of the Buffalo flowing 6.8 miles downstream. The latest draft findings failed to include the two years of in-depth studies and voluntary contributions of UA Professor Emeritus John Van Brahana and his team. He's a nationally respected expert of geosciences and the type of fractured karst terrain that underlies the Buffalo watershed. A news account by reporter Emily Walkenhorst summarized the latest effort to justify support for the factory loan by saying the agencies cited current data and the restrictions placed on the factory's state permit to justify their draft conclusion. This final draft version cites material gathered during a five-year study by the state-funded Big Creek Research and Extension Team from the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture and the National Park Service to argue there's no evidence of any impairment to the river or environment. Not surprisingly, Gordon Watkins, director of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, said he was unimpressed with this latest attempt. As of last week, Watkins, Brahana and others involved in the federal lawsuit that originally contested the inadequate assessment in Marshall's courtroom were closely examining the contents. The early signals I was getting said they had a lot of problems. I'm sure I'll have lots more to say about that when they address specific matters within this latest draft. As Judge Marshall has rightly assessed, this matter is far too critical for our state and nation to settle for a "you'll do" when it comes to protecting the country's first national river. It's a rare asset that records show routinely draws over one million visitors and 55 million tourism and recreational dollars to an economically deprived Ozarks region each year. The hog factory employs nine and pays about $7,000 in property taxes, the news story also reads. In the latest story, I suppose I was most appalled that the state agency responsible for maintaining and ensuring environmental quality doesn't have numeric standards for nutrients in our streams and waters. "To date, ADEQ does not have sufficient data to assess for nutrient impairment on Big Creek or the Buffalo River," is how Ellen Carpenter, chief of the agency's water division, explained it. Suppose water-quality data assessment might be an ability that would serve our state well? The capacities necessary for the Department of Environmental Quality to be able to accurately assess the level of purity and contamination in our streams and lakes sounds reasonable enough to this layman. Anything less sounds like a hollow (perhaps politicized) excuse. Meanwhile, everyone who reveres this national river as much as we do has until Jan. 18 to send along even more than 1,858 comments, opinions or suggestions about this latest draft assessment to CHHogFarmcomments@cardnogs.com or C&H Hog Farm Comments, c/o Cardno, 501 Butler Farm Road, Suite H, Hampton, Va. 23666. The draft is available online at the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance website. I'm buying my stamps today. I'd suggest mentioning the credible work of Dr. John Van Brahana, who was the first on the scene to begin taking baseline measurements and has since been measuring water quality and subsurface water flow that transports rainfall from waste-laden spray fields through the many limestone openings that lead into Big Creek. Any report that purposefully ignores these relevant findings in my view can't possibly be credible. ------------v------------
When it comes to protecting the Buffalo National River from raw waste generated by that controversial hog factory at Mount Judea, it will be interesting to see if the U.S. Farm Service Agency and the Small Business Administration have yet again fallen short after their second draft attempt to produce a credible court-ordered Environmental Assessment.
The agencies' original assessment, deemed unacceptable last year by U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall, led earlier this year to their offering an initial draft revision that drew 1,858 public comments. That reaction prompted them to request until March 2016 to complete this most recent draft. And somehow, they managed to complete and release it more than three months early and just before Christmas. How does one spell politically calculated?
The environmental assessment is a required segment of the federal loan guarantees the factory received from both agencies before it began operating in 2012 with the blessings of our state's Department of Environmental Quality (waaaait for it ... cough).
Yet again, as they had in their initially discredited draft and subsequent revision, the agencies in their final draft determined "no significant impact" to the watershed from the factory. In other words, all smells just great.
Initiated and supplied for two years by Cargill Inc., the factory confines 6,500 swine and continually spreads their raw waste across fields near Big Creek, a major tributary of the Buffalo flowing 6.8 miles downstream.
The latest draft findings failed to include the two years of in-depth studies and voluntary contributions of UA Professor Emeritus John Van Brahana and his team. He's a nationally respected expert of geosciences and the type of fractured karst terrain that underlies the Buffalo watershed.
A news account by reporter Emily Walkenhorst summarized the latest effort to justify support for the factory loan by saying the agencies cited current data and the restrictions placed on the factory's state permit to justify their draft conclusion.
This final draft version cites material gathered during a five-year study by the state-funded Big Creek Research and Extension Team from the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture and the National Park Service to argue there's no evidence of any impairment to the river or environment.
Not surprisingly, Gordon Watkins, director of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, said he was unimpressed with this latest attempt. As of last week, Watkins, Brahana and others involved in the federal lawsuit that originally contested the inadequate assessment in Marshall's courtroom were closely examining the contents. The early signals I was getting said they had a lot of problems. I'm sure I'll have lots more to say about that when they address specific matters within this latest draft.
As Judge Marshall has rightly assessed, this matter is far too critical for our state and nation to settle for a "you'll do" when it comes to protecting the country's first national river. It's a rare asset that records show routinely draws over one million visitors and 55 million tourism and recreational dollars to an economically deprived Ozarks region each year. The hog factory employs nine and pays about $7,000 in property taxes, the news story also reads.
In the latest story, I suppose I was most appalled that the state agency responsible for maintaining and ensuring environmental quality doesn't have numeric standards for nutrients in our streams and waters.
"To date, ADEQ does not have sufficient data to assess for nutrient impairment on Big Creek or the Buffalo River," is how Ellen Carpenter, chief of the agency's water division, explained it.
Suppose water-quality data assessment might be an ability that would serve our state well? The capacities necessary for the Department of Environmental Quality to be able to accurately assess the level of purity and contamination in our streams and lakes sounds reasonable enough to this layman. Anything less sounds like a hollow (perhaps politicized) excuse.
Meanwhile, everyone who reveres this national river as much as we do has until Jan. 18 to send along even more than 1,858 comments, opinions or suggestions about this latest draft assessment to CHHogFarmcomments@cardnogs.com or C&H Hog Farm Comments, c/o Cardno, 501 Butler Farm Road, Suite H, Hampton, Va. 23666. The draft is available online at the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance website.
I'm buying my stamps today. I'd suggest mentioning the credible work of Dr. John Van Brahana, who was the first on the scene to begin taking baseline measurements and has since been measuring water quality and subsurface water flow that transports rainfall from waste-laden spray fields through the many limestone openings that lead into Big Creek.
Any report that purposefully ignores these relevant findings in my view can't possibly be credible.
This article was published today at 4:04 a.m.
Two federal agencies again issued a finding of "no significant impact" for a Mount Judea hog farm near the Buffalo National River.
The farm sits along Big Creek, 6.8 miles from where it flows into the Buffalo National River. It is the first large-scale hog farm in the watershed -- the area that drains into the river.
C&H Hog Farms is permitted to have 2,500 sows and 4,000 piglets. It has been criticized by nearby residents and environmental groups upset about the perceived risk of pollution from hog waste.
In a report released last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Farm Services Agency and the U.S. Small Business Administration cited current data and the restrictions of C&H Hog Farms' permit as reasons why the farm would have no significant impact on the surrounding natural area.
People interested in the matter have until Jan. 18 to comment on the final study. Comments can be sent to CHHogFarmComments@cardnogs.com or to C&H Hog Farm Comments c/o Cardno, 501 Butler Farm Road, Suite H, Hampton, Va., 23666.
In September, the agencies requested that their Dec. 2 deadline for issuing a final assessment be extended to March 1. They cited an "unexpectedly high volume" of comments to respond to: 1,858.
A spokesman for the Farm Services Agency did not get back to an Arkansas Democrat-Gazettereporter Friday about why the assessment was released so much earlier than March 1.
On Dec. 2, 2014, U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. ordered the final assessment shortly after finding fault with the original assessment done by the agencies. Marshall ordered a new study that would take the National Environmental Policy Act and Endangered Species Act into account and would work with other relevant agencies.
That order stemmed from a lawsuit filed by the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, the Arkansas Canoe Club, the National Parks Conservation Association and the Ozark Society over loan guarantees that the agencies made that allowed C&H Hog Farms to secure loans from Farm Credit Services of Western Arkansas and go into operation in the spring of 2013.
Gordon Watkins, president of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, said his group was not anticipating a final assessment until much closer to March 1, and he was surprised to see it issued just before Christmas.
Watkins' alliance was created in response to the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality's approval of C&H's permit for operating in late 2012.
He said the alliance didn't have an official comment yet about the final assessment but would issue one opposing it before the Jan. 18 deadline.
"We're really disappointed in the environmental assessment," he said Friday.
Jason Henson, co-owner of C&H Hog Farms, did not respond to a voice mail left for him Friday.
Officials with the agencies have declined to release public comments submitted on the assessment. An official with the Farm Services Agency told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that the agencies would attach public comments received as an appendix to the final environmental assessment when it is completed.
In the final assessment, released Wednesday, the agency summarized some comments, without specifying their sources, and then responded to them.
The newspaper obtained copies of the comments on the draft assessment, released in August, made by the plaintiffs and the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality.
In a three-page comment, Ellen Carpenter -- chief of the Water Division of the Environmental Quality Department -- offered mostly clarifications on the environmental assessment, which included pointing out that the department does not have numeric standards for nutrients in streams and rivers.
"To date, ADEQ does not have sufficient data to assess for nutrient impairment on Big Creek or the Buffalo River," Carpenter wrote.
In the plaintiffs' 40-page comment, they again argued that the assessment was incomplete. The comment also includes research and opinions from science professors at universities in the South that raise concerns.
The plaintiffs' comment also argues that the assessment is inaccurate about whether C&H is located on karst terrain, doesn't include relevant data being collected by various researchers and ignores findings of impairment in Big Creek, among other things.
They argue that the federal agencies did not consider the socioeconomic costs of the farm, given the potential harm to property owners and tourism in poorer-than-average Newton County. In 2014, the Buffalo National River -- the country's first national river -- had more than 1.3 million visitors who spent about $56.5 million at area businesses, according to National Park Service data.
In the final assessment released last week, the agencies incorporated National Park Service data to go with the previously used Big Creek Research and Extension Team data. The Big Creek team is conducting a five-year study by the University of Arkansas System's Division of Agriculture. Previous comments had lamented that the draft assessment did not take into consideration the National Park Service's data or other research that has been conducted in the area.
The agencies argued that the data used from the National Park Service indicated that the levels of nitrates in the water around the farm were acceptable.No increases in nitrate levels had been perceptibly measured since the farm started operating, the report said.
Additionally, the agencies said, "There would be no disproportionate effects to low-income populations because the operation of C&H Hog Farms [is] within the terms of its NPDES [National Pollution Discharge Elimination System] General Permit and other environmental regulations to protect public health and welfare effectively prevent significant impacts."
Further, they said, C&H Hog Farms has a "relatively small beneficial socioeconomic effect to the region," consisting of nine jobs and $7,000 in property taxes.
The agencies also studied the potential impact on several bat species found in Newton County.
"Significant changes in water quality could adversely affect macroinvertebrate populations occurring in Big Creek, which indirectly could affect bat species through a reduction in prey base. However, no measureable [sic] adverse impacts to surface water quality in Big Creek have been identified based on the BCRET [Big Creek Research and Extension Team] and NPS [National Park System] water quality monitoring data," the report reads.
Metro on 12/20/2015
Posted: December 13, 2015 at 2:10 a.m.
Gordon Watkins, the persistent and knowledgeable president of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, says he sees red flags surrounding the controversial hog factory at Mount Judea.
Most of Arkansas and many across America know by now it's the place our state's Department of Environmental Quality (cough) permitted to become ensconced in the treasured Buffalo National River watershed back in 2012.
Watkins and his group are among several societies and associations actively opposing this factory housing up to 6,500 swine (and its millions of gallons of raw waste being openly spread on fields).
He bases his concerns over potential environmental damage to the river that studies already are reflecting. Among them are data being collected over five years by the University of Arkansas Agricultural Division's so-called Big Creek Research and Extension Team.
This state-funded team investigating the state's role was the result of former Gov. Mike Beebe's order to accurately and objectively determine the transport and fate of swine waste in such a misplaced location.
In short, they are to determine how much raw waste and resulting pathogens might be draining into Big Creek, a major tributary of the Buffalo six miles downstream, and flowing through the fractured karst subsurface that permeates the region.
By objectively I mean free from influences of groups who financially and politically support big agriculture. You know, a thorough, honest assessment that lets the chips fall where they do regardless of juicy campaign contributions and/or arm twisting to gain specific favorable results.
Not that this sort of unsavory practice that perverts truth and integrity ever occurs in Arkansas, of course.
Significant to Watkins from the findings thus far are the high nitrate-N levels discovered at the team's downstream sampling station, and high E. coli levels in the monitoring trenches and stream immediately below the factory's waste ponds. "Most concerning to me is the level reported in the house well which supplies drinking water for the swine and for the employees."
He said the Arkansas Department of Health considers any detectable amount of E. coli to be unsafe to drink. Records show the team took 23 well samples between March and August. In only two samples was E. coli at the threshold considered safe. Yes, I wrote two. All other samples were well above safe levels, some very high. "To be clear, [the Department of Health] does not have jurisdiction over private wells and so does not have the authority to enforce safe drinking water standards at C&H. If this was a public water supply, it would be shut down until the contamination source was eliminated."
In our discussion, I got the distinct impression there are several things Watkins would insist upon were he supervising the research and testing, or had a team of his very own.
For instance, rather than continually minimizing obvious red flags by attributing the contamination his imaginary team discovers to possible sources other than C&H, he'd find out with pinpoint certainty. His common-sense meter and a regard for the obvious would be moving him to action.
He said his team of experts and scientists would do far better than speculate by hopefully borrowing sophisticated source-tracking technologies from the University of Arkansas designed just for that purpose.
His imaginary team (I'll call it Gordon's Apolitical Research Team, or GART) could indeed determine with this borrowed technology (perhaps they could rent it if necessary) whether leaky waste ponds or waste runoff from the fields were the contaminant sources.
He'd also have personnel with expertise in the "application of stable isotopes and other geochemical indicators in determining the movement and behavior of contaminates in groundwater systems." He'd also have the university's specialized equipment.
"I'm no scientist but my understanding of stable isotopes is that they can provide a 'fingerprint' of a contaminant such as swine waste from waste containment ponds, for example," Watkins said. His team would then have a fingerprint to compare with the same contaminates discovered in the wells, stream, trenches, and Big Creek (also groundwater). For instance, "If a match was determined, it would be known the swine waste was the source."
Gordon said his team might even go so far as to perhaps borrow another source-tracking method also available from UA resources. This is a DNA analysis of E. coli.
The one thing Gordon's team would not do, he says, is obfuscate and misattribute the problem when a likely source lies squarely beneath their noses. His group would not be "scientifically weak or negligent in carrying out the work the governor had demanded of them. That specifically includes monitoring the fate and transport of nutrients and bacteria" at C&H.
If his imaginary team could, they'd get to the bottom of it by using the tools made for that very job, he said. You know, valued readers, somehow I believe the man would do just that.
Editorial on 12/13/2015
By Mariana Lo | Friday, December 11, 2015
This fall, many North Carolinians found a cheery recording left on their answering machines:
Hi, this is Nannette Sutton, a North Carolina hog farmer calling on behalf of the North Carolina Pork Council with a message about hog farming in our state. I’m proud to be part of an industry that’s responsible for thousands of well-paid jobs. More than 46,000 North Carolinians rely on the pork industry for their livelihood, with an average annual wage of nearly $40,000. Please visit www.ncpork.org to learn how hog farmers are strengthening North Carolina communities and helping our local economy. This is paid for by the North Carolina Pork Council.
You might think this is just the voicemail equivalent of an infomercial. Perhaps it conjures up the image of a friendly local farmer watching over a herd of happy pigs or a bustling farmers’ market where customers pay top dollar for locally raised pork.
If you live next to a typical modern-day hog farm, though, you know that’s not what reality looks like. There are about 2,100 hog farms in North Carolina raising just under 10 million hogs per year. That’s an average of 5,000 hogs per farm. These are industrial operations, not bucolic barnyards. Such large-scale hog farms produce a lot of pork, but they also produce huge amounts of hog urine and feces.
For many years, the standard way of dealing with that hog waste has been to store it in massive, open-air cesspools and then spray it onto nearby fields. This leads to dangerous contamination of nearby waterways with fecal bacteria, nitrates, phosphorus and parasites, not to mention unimaginable odors. Neighbors have no choice but to endure the stench, pollution and health impacts, such as respiratory problems, burning eyes, headaches and high blood pressure.
The Pork Council’s voicemail doesn’t mention any of those problems, preferring to focus on jobs and wages instead. But even there, the message rings hollow. In Duplin County, North Carolina, where there are more pigs per capita than anywhere else in the country, median household income is only about $34,000 (that’s household income, not individuals’ wages), and more than a quarter of the population lives in poverty. Meanwhile, the handful of corporations that control U.S. pork production are raking in billions of dollars in revenue every year. You can bet that that money isn’t staying in the local economy—especially since Smithfield Foods, which runs the world’s largest slaughterhouse in Tar Heel, North Carolina, was purchased by a Chinese holding company in 2013.
The consolidation of the pork industry hasn’t been good for the family farm. As is true in most of the country, the number of farms and farmers in North Carolina has been steadily decreasing, while the average size of farms has gotten larger and larger. The number of North Carolinians employed by hog farming makes up less than one half of one percent of the state’s population (9.94 million people as of the 2014 census).
In part, the decline is occurring because it’s harder and harder to make a decent living as a farmer, thanks to the dominance of big agribusinesses. These days, most hog farmers don’t own the hogs they raise. Rather, the farmer is under contract with a multinational corporation, which owns the hogs from conception to slaughter and dictates exactly how the farmer must raise them. In this scheme, the farmer does most of the work and bears most of the costs and risks, but the corporation gets most of the profits.
The North Carolina Pork Council probably wouldn’t be paying for thousands of robo-calls if they weren’t desperate to make a bad industry sound better than it is. Don’t believe the hype—North Carolinians deserve better. That’s why Earthjustice is partnering with state and local organizations to stand up for clean air, clean water and accountability from these so-called “integrator companies” that own the hogs “from squeal to meal.” We’re also taking on the hog industry on civil rights grounds for the impact hog feces and urine have on nearby low-income communities of color. Join us in sending the pork industry’s propaganda out to pasture.
Posted: December 11, 2015 at 1 a.m.
Action needed
to preserve Buffalo River
Fall is my favorite time of year for hiking and floating on the Buffalo National River. The kids are back in school and the Razorback fans are at a tailgate party. The Buffalo is left to those who want to take a slow, quiet float, watch the herons, and camp undisturbed on a limestone gravel bar.
Last month, six of us ranging in age from 54 to almost 84 floated 13.5 miles from the Spring Creek campground to Rush. Each and every one of us had floated the Buffalo many, many times at different seasons of the year and on all sections of the river. Yet we had never the seen the river so inundated with algae at every turn and pool. The algae plumes covered the bottom of the river an estimated 70 percent of our trip down the river. While we had the pick of the gravel bars for camping, we searched for a campsite that was algae free. None were to be had, at least when the time came for us to stop for the night. Algae blooms in rivers and lakes typically mean there are dangerous amounts of chemicals, pollutants and toxins harming the quality of the water. Algae covered the bottom of the river and created a green border along the shore. I passed on swimming in such green slime. It was disgusting and depressing.
Is this is the new normal for a trip down the once beautiful Buffalo River? Has contamination from hog manure and other sources destroyed our state treasure? Unfortunately, this is a national trend. Despite the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and passage of the Clean Water Act in the 1970’s, our rivers are becoming more and more polluted in part due to waste and runoff from industrial operations. Look no further than the Illinois River in western Arkansas degraded by chicken litter run-off and more recently, the Dan River in North Carolina, where a large pipe full of coal ash spilled more than 27 million gallons of contaminated water into the river.
While all rivers are important to our ecology, neither of these streams were national parks or rivers. But the Buffalo River is a national river, in fact, the first national river in our country. The National Park Service owns only 11 percent of the watershed. It is up to all of us, especially those who own land that borders the park and those who use the park, to be good stewards of the land. The Buffalo is also an economic engine for our communities by attracting visitors from around the world who shop in our stores, stay in our cabins and eat at our restaurants. These are important jobs for so many of us and it would be economically disastrous for the Buffalo River to continue to be mistreated.
That’s why it’s time for all of us to speak up. Let’s urge our elected officials in Little Rock and Congress to clean up our Buffalo National River and support implementing the new Clean Water Act rules.
MARGARET KONERT
Posted: December 8, 2015 at 3:34 a.m.
Meanwhile, back at that hog factory, which thanks to the accommodations of our state's Department of Environmental Quality (cough), landed squarely in our Buffalo National River watershed.
I doubt many across our state have forgotten C&H Hog Farms is still there regularly spreading tons of raw swine waste across fields with runoff into the Big Creek, a major tributary of the country's first national river six miles downstream.
For an update, I naturally turned to Dr. John Van Brahana, the Fayetteville geosciences professor emeritus at the University of Arkansas who has voluntarily spent almost three years with his team examining the effects and after-effects of our state allowing the factory into this treasured watershed. He has abundant credibility in my mind because no one is paying him to conduct his testing. He does it simply because he cares deeply for the well-being of the Buffalo River and all it means to this state.
He said he has several observations and findings to share of all that has been transpiring at Mount Judea where the factory is situated.
First, Brahana says he believes "lobbyists and well-compensated special-interest salespeople continue to present inaccurate and misleading statements to generate fear among those who've not had the chance to fully study this highly emotional, political and economic controversy."
The amiable professor then addressed the past year of data collection that reflects the hydrology of Big Creek in the vicinity of this factory by his group and three separate agencies, as well as local, long-term residents and farmers who live along that stream. And all the findings "continue to convince me this agricultural factory is negatively impacting the ground and surface water of Big Creek."
Brahana says he bases his conclusions based on a number of factual findings, which include that during warm-weather months, the dissolved oxygen concentrations in Big Creek dropped below the Environmental Protection Agency's classification limit of "impaired" multiple times.
"Dissolved oxygen is necessary for fish and the ecology of other organisms in the stream and reflects the overall health of this drainage. A sampling of trace metals, which are chemicals in very low concentrations (measured in parts per billion) provide a fingerprint of where groundwater has flowed and the substances it has picked up," he said.
"Our recently initiated trace-metal sampling of springs, wells and streams in Big Creek Valley indicate from 10 to 100 times the background concentrations of trace metals that are components of pig feed are highest near the waste-spreading fields. Nitrate-N concentration in Big Creek [downstream] from the factory continue to be higher than than those measured at a stream study site upstream. Concentrations measured thus far are below EPA limits," he said, adding: "If we wait until EPA limits are exceeded--which appears to be the position of the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality--before action is taken, the Buffalo will be imperiled."
The professor said farmers and long-term residents have noted and reported much greater growth of algal mat and biofilms on the bottom of Big Creek since the operation of the CAFO began. "Although this isn't proof of an impact from the CAFO, it is consistent with the other increases we are observing in our analyses. Algal mats and biofilm have an impact upon dissolved oxygen and degrade water health."
Brahana continued with findings that he says should place everyone who cares about the health of the river on alert: "Springs and creeks show highly variable concentrations of microbial organisms such as E. coli and fecal coliform, which is to be expected with rainfall pulses that cause greater flow and greater scouring of sediments on the stream bottom where organisms have been deposited ... the complexity of measuring these [during and after rainfalls] makes it difficult to determine if they show a long-term increase, although current measured values at high stream flow are at levels that can cause illness."
His team's earliest measurements of water quality in the Big Creek Valley conducted in the summer of 2013 when fewer than 1,000 of the factory's 6,500 allotted swine were housed there showed the valley was already near the uppermost limit limits of animal waste it could accommodate.
"Because this represents the earliest and most complete 'preconditions' of the water quality, the addition of thousands of more pigs close to the confluence of Big Creek with the Buffalo National River is consistent with some of the increases we are seeing."
He said dye testing shows groundwater moves through the porous limestone karst subsurface from the area of the waste-spreading fields to many sites within the within the Buffalo at a flow rate of about half a mile each day. This means there is a "remarkably close interaction of surface and groundwater."
He closed by saying the factory's permit is up for renewal soon and that those with an opinion should make their voices heard.
Editorial on 12/08/2015