In a state where opposing Hogs can make you a pariah, many Arkansans are nonetheless investing themselves in a battle against them. Well, not the athletic kind based in Fayetteville. This is a fight involving the sloppy non-sports variety.
The clash is not with hogs themselves. All they do is eat, sleep, procreate, pee, poop and taste good when cooked up right. The conflict is with landowners and unbelievably tin-eared state agencies who cannot grasp the utter shock over their decision to put a 6,500-animal hog farm within the watershed of the Buffalo River.
Yes, as in Buffalo National River, the one U.S.
Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas floated in 1962. “You cannot let this river die,” Douglas said.
“The Buffalo River is a national treasure worth fighting to the death to preserve.”
Yes, the one that’s served for decades as a centerpiece for the state’s efforts to draw tourists.
The one that is so beautiful and integral to Arkansas’ very identity that it defies logic anyone would suggest a 670-acre hog farm so near a waterway that feeds into the scenic river.
What’s next, storing nuclear rods in Blanchard Springs Caverns? Dumping household garbage in Lake Ouachita?
OK, perhaps we’re overselling the cognitive dissonance we associate with pairing a huge hog farm with the nation’s first national river, but the hyperbole likely understates the dismay arising from the discovery of a permit issued to C&H Hog Farms Inc. of Mount Judea.
We say “discovery” because few in the state were aware of the possibility until all the important decision-making was done. That might be slightly comprehensible, as people don’t always pay close attention. But when the National Park Service superintendent of the Buffalo National River himself is shocked by the decision, something’s wrong.
The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality on Aug. 3 granted a permit to C&H Farms after a process that ran more silent than Clark Gable’s submarine. The operation also received a loan from the U.S. Farm Services Agency, which was responsible for producing an environmental assessment and a “finding of no significant impact.”
It was the Farm Services Agency that listed the National Park Service as a “cooperating agency” in its environmental assessment. Kevin Cheri, superintendent of the Buffalo, rightly wonders how his agency could have cooperated when it was not told about the hog farm plan.
Cheri’s staff evaluated the Farm Services assessment and found it “very weak from an environmental point of view.” Among the many deficiencies he identified, the agency termed the hog farm project as not highly controversial, which things tend to be as long as nobody knows about them.
The Department of Environmental Quality has asked its director to develop a plan for improved public notification, but stands by its decision to allow the hog farm. The director has said it’s likely public comment would have not changed the agency’s finding, which begs the question: What’s the point of public comment if she can be so sure?
Our state deserves better. Why risk this? It is an outrage Arkansas regulations and laws are so inadequate near a national and state treasure. We’re told to trust the engineering that’s supposedly going to protect the Buffalo. But part of smart engineering is avoiding a clash between incompatible uses. While we might be able to safely engineer it, we still don’t put our toilets in our kitchens.
The governor, state lawmakers and our U.S.
Congress delegation need to get involved and off er assured protection for the Buffalo National River.
Opinion, Pages 5 on 04/03/2013