On the river

Subject of concern

While the Farm Service Agency was guaranteeing the federal loan to C&H Hog Farms and concluding the farm posed no significant environmental impact to the Buffalo National River, the state’s Department of Health was expressing concerns over polluting the river with dangerous pathogens from swine waste, according to a letter dated March 21, 2013.

The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality issued a permit to the farm in August 2012, saying its owners had met all the state’s conditions to operate on 630 acres surrounding Mount Judea in Newton County. That permit was news to many folks, including the National Park Service, whose Buffalo River director openly wondered why no public meetings on this bad idea were ever held in Jasper, seat of Newton County government, or in nearby Harrison where the Park Service Buffalo National River office is.

Even Environmental Quality director Teresa Marks said she didn’t know about the C&H permit allowing up to 6,500 swine until her office had approved it because that sort of routine business was, well, below her pay grade. So somehow, this highly controversial farm quietly flowed through what seems to me to be a stunningly inadequate gate keeping process at every level.

However, a state Health Department letter signed by J. Terry Paul, the branch chief of environmental health, stated that its staff was concerned the enormous amount of waste to be generated by this contained animal feeding operation might threaten the purity of the Buffalo National River 5.7 miles downstream along Big Creek, a major tributary flowing alongside the C&H application fields.

“A staff review has been made of the information received on the referenced project,” Paul writes. “While the proposed land application sites are not within source water protection areas for any public water sources we have concerns that water-borne pathogens-including E. coli and Cryptosporidium-from the proposed land application sites may pose a risk for body contact on the Buffalo National River, a popular recreational destination.”

So I’m naturally wondering how the Farm Service Agency, in the required environmental-assessment report on the federal loan it approved, could possibly have reached its conclusion, apparently without even speaking with the Department of Health or the National Park Service.

Did the person who supervised the environmental assessment perhaps intuit that there were no potential environmental problems? Didn’t he have access to an Internet search engine to see what other well-intentioned hog-CAFO owners in states such as Missouri, Illinois, North Carolina and Iowa have experienced? I had no problems finding an Internet overflowing with horror stories.

In 2011 an industrial hog farm in Illinois accidentally lost 200,000 gallons from a waste lagoon into a nearby creek, killing many thousands of fish. In the summer of 1995 alone, North Carolina endured six animal-waste spills, including a lagoon that spilled many millions of gallons of waste into New River, reportedly killing fish for 19 miles downstream. The other night in Fayetteville, a Missouri farmer talked about a hog-waste lagoon spill adjacent to his property not long ago that killed fish and wildlife for 11 miles along a stream that bordered that CAFO.

So despite any hog farmers’ best efforts and noble intentions, please don’t tell me such accidents, mistakes and catastrophic acts of nature at hog CAFOs don’t happen. The clear fact is they have and unfortunately will occur, and always with severe consequences to surrounding environments.

And when these disastrous spills happen in environmentally fragile areas, it’s too late to do anything but watch and weep and ask who’s responsible. That’s as everyone involved points fingers at a lagoon-builder, or tragic mistake, or abnormal rainfall, while retaining attorneys and ducking for cover.

Ialso read with interest the impressively written guest commentary by one of C&H Hog Farms’ owners in Saturday’s paper. He insists he and his family over eight generations have done a fine job of raising hogs in Newton County without any violations from the state. No “clamor” over their “history of stewardship” from me. I’ve always seen these folks as experienced and concerned about the environment.

I disagree with his characterization that what they are creating today is only a “small family-owned farm, not the ‘corporate farm’ others have portrayed us to be.” As I understand, since 2003, the EPA has defined such an operation with more than 2,500 swine as a large CAFO.

Meanwhile, the Newton County Times reports that Sam Dye, principal of the Mount Judea school, will not renew his contract. Who knows why? I can’t say I blame him, simply because of the school’s proximity to this CAFO and what likely lies ahead for that community of good folks. I believe whoever replaces Dye invariably will wind up amid the conflicted emotions over this industrial farm. Community dissension, sadly, has become a predictable byproduct of hog CAFOs.

Mike Masterson’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at mikemastersonsmessenger.com.

Editorial, Pages 15 on 05/14/2013

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