Ozarks brouhahas

Hmm. Would it be the ugly, wide swaths, or all those messy swine?

It’s difficult to say which issue lately has generated more statewide disenchantment over corporations flexing their influence through the Ozarks.

Was it the Save the Ozarks folks at the recent Public Service Commission hearing on allowing SWEPCO’s proposed high-voltage transmission line across pristine forestland?

Or is it the thousands upset over the state’s approval of $340,000 of tax money that allows the University of Arkansas to perform limited monitoring of the enormous waste emitted from the controversial hog factory into the Buffalo National River watershed?

Either way, emotional storms of skepticism are raging.

At the Public Service Commission hearing, relevant debate centered around whether SWEPCO’s parent company, American Electric Power, would be allowed to carve a powerline across part of a proposed expansion of the historic Pea Ridge National Military Park. The proposed 345-kilovolt line stretches across 50 miles from Benton County to a station near the Kings River in Carroll County.

However, the U.S.

Department of the Interior has written the commission to say SWEPCO’s “preferred route” for its line would profoundly affect plans Interior has for possibly expanding the battlefield to better correspond with the historic realities of that battle.

SWEPCO basically contends its proposal wouldn’t cause a problem since it would take an act of Congress to change the park’s boundaries. Believe I’ll ponder a spell on that response.

During the hearing, a commission attorney cited the Organic Act of 1916 as relevant to the debate. That law was enacted by Congress to lay groundwork for establishing national parks to conserve the scenery, natural and historic objects and wildlife while providing unimpaired enjoyment for the people. And the National Park Service can determine what constitutes impairments.

I’m no policy wonk (just a plain wonk), but that sounds to me like a valid concern when it comes to the popular battlefield.

It also appears that SWEPCO will have to comply with established federal environmental standards when it comes to its proposed transmission line crossing established waterways such as the White River. Those requirements could easily become a sticky wicket in themselves.

Mistrust is equally abundant in the wake of the legislative decision to approve Gov. Mike Beebe’s funding request to cover the costs of monitoring the water quality around C&H Hog Farms at Mount Judea. While the governor deserve kudos for pushing some kind of monitoring plan, this one understandably invites criticism. After all, it involves the state’s governor asking the Legislature to use our state’s tax money to fund a multi-year water-quality study to see whether the state’s Department of Environmental Quality mistakenly permitted a hog factory whose waste may contaminate the Buffalo National River.

One observer put this way: Would a dictator appoint a government panel to determine if his government had allowed chemical warfare on his own people? It’s by no means a legitimate comparison in this case. Still the point is made.

A lot of folks rightly wonder why, since the state permitted the hog factory, an independent group wasn’t selected to monitor any discharges into the watershed. Others believe the monitoring plan already is fatally flawed because it won’t involve thorough subsurface geologic testing to determine how the runoff from this 600-acre venture with Cargill Inc. is expected to flow through the karst-riddled ground.

This is the kind of exacting flow study our stateshould have required before ever permitting the hog factory in such a sensitive location. Yet we are asked to simply accept that this kind of thorough testing isn’t included, even for what likely will swell to nearly a million tax dollars in years ahead?

Ed Brocksmith in Oklahoma, an officer with Save the Illinois River, is well familiar with the years of legal dispute between our states over poultry waste contamination of the Illinois River we share, and summarized how many feel: “I remain skeptical of any plan this costly that is not technically or adequately comprehensive, nor one that omits the critical geological study of the topography surrounding the C&H Hog Farm. It’s noteworthy that C&H [owners] want testing to be done. Dr. John Van Brahana has been testing wells, springs and other waters in and around Mount Judea since July free of charge to anyone who requests that service.”

Brahana, a retired UA professor and renowned hydrologist, to his credit also offered to perform adequate testing for $69,000. But the state oddly has ignored him. Is that because his findings would be independent of state control or anyone else’s? Lots of people believe that’s the case.

The SWEPCO and hog-factory flaps actually have much in common. Each involves not nearly enough listening to the arguments of the people who make valid points both in the public interest and responsible stewardship over our precious Ozarks.

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