Hog farm foes: Map flawed, redo permit

A coalition of environmentalists and lawyers is asking the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality to reopen the permitting process for a Newton County hog farm because of discrepancies in the farm’s original permit application.

In a Feb. 12 letter to the department, lawyers with Earthjustice, a nonprofit litigation firm, claim the owners of C&H Hog Farms in Mount Judea intentionally misrepresented the location and available acreage of several grassland fields on which they plan to spread manure.

The hog farm, a large-scale concentrated animal feeding operation, is permitted to house approximately 2,500 adult sows and as many as 4,000 piglets at one time. According to the farm’s nutrient management plan, which outlines how its operators will handle the estimated 2 million gallons of waste annually, the owners lease or own approximately 630 acres of grassland in Mount Judea, separated into 17 fields.

The farm abuts Big Creek, 6 miles upstream from its confluence with the Buffalo National River.

According to the let-ter, the farm owners falsely claimed that they had a land use agreement with the owner of an area labeled “Field 5,” an approximately 24-acre tract belonging to Tommie Wheeler of Vendor, according to Newton County deed records cited by Earthjustice.

The farm’s nutrient-management plan includes signed land-use agreements with several landowners, using both narrative descriptions and latitude and longitude coordinates to identify the fields. Although the contract that identifies “Field 5” includes coordinates that describe Wheeler’s property, it is signed by Shawn Ricketts. Jason Henson, who co-owns C&H Hog Farms with two of his cousins, Richard and Philip Campbell, said Ricketts is a nephew of Richard and Philip Campbell.

“It was a typographical error,” Henson said. “I have the land-use agreements and the soil sample from the actual land, but when the engineers drew up the maps, the fields were misprinted on the map sheet.”

Attempts to reach Wheeler and Ricketts for comment were unsuccessful.

In their letter to the Environmental Quality Department, Earthjustice lawyers also cite discrepancies in portions of two other tracts, fields 12 and 16, which account for more than 100 acres. While the farm’s land-use agreements for those fields are signed by Barbara Hufley, approximately 34 acres within those fields are owned by other landowners with whom the hog farm owners do not have land-use contracts.

During a Jan. 23 compliance inspection of the hog farm, a department inspector noted the discrepancy in fields 12 and 16. In a Feb. 6 reply to the department, Henson acknowledged the discrepancy, writing that a certified nutrient management planner was revising the maps for fields 12 and 16, and the corrected maps would be submitted by March 30. The discrepancies in the two fields account for about 34 acres, or about 5 percent,of the 630 acres.

Robert Cross, president of the Ozark Society and a signatory to the Earthjustice letter, said that regardless of the revisions the farm owners are now making, the fact that the department granted a permit based on inaccurate information means the permitting process should be revisited.

“We think the whole permit should be reopened,” Cross said, noting that when Henson and his partners first applied for the general permit, they largely avoided public scrutiny because it was the first of its kind in the state. “In August 2012, there was a public comment period, which no one commented on, because no one knew anything about it.”

Teresa Marks, director of the Environmental Quality Department, said she and her staff had reviewed the letter from Earthjustice, as well as documentation associated with C&H Hog Farms. She said that while the total acreage available for spreading manure would need to be recalculated, there still appeared to be sufficient acreage on which to spread the farm’s manure. Additionally, Marks said the farm operators had not applied manure to any of the areas in dispute and so were not in violation of the terms of their permit.

Earthjustice lawyers also asserted that the inaccuracies in the farm’s mapping have led to a waste of taxpayer money. In September, the state Legislature appropriated about $340,000 from the Arkansas Rainy Day Fund to pay for a longitudinal study of the water and soil in the area surrounding the hog farm. The proposed study came in response to widespread concern that nutrients from the farm’s hog waste could pollute both groundwater and surface water in the area and reach the Buffalo National River.

Shortly after the study funds were appropriated, University of Arkansas professor of soils and water quality Andrew Sharpley and his research team began contacting landowners in Mount Judea, asking for permission to gather soil and water samples on land that is scheduled to receive manure from the hog farm.

Sharpley and his team settled on three sites to conduct their research, fields 1, 5 and 12, which include two of the three fields identified by department inspectors as being incorrectly mapped on the farm’s nutrient-management plan.

In a Feb. 8 letter to Sharpley, the owners of the three properties in question, fields 5, 12 and 16, emphasized that they do not have land-use agreements with C&H Hog Farms and have not granted permission to Sharpley to enter their property or conduct research there. The letter is signed by Wheeler, Ronnie Campbell and Samuel Dye.

Campbell’s wife, Judy Campbell, confirmed byphone that she and her husband had been approached by representatives of C&H Hog Farms about the possible use of their land for application of hog waste and that they had declined. Attempts to reach Dye were unsuccessful.

Sharpley said he had been aware of the mapping discrepancies for some time, and neither he nor members of his research team had trespassed on any of the fields in question.

On Feb. 7, the Big Creek Research Team released its first quarterly report, outlining its research methods and plans for future research. The report includes a map of the 630 acres identified in the hog farm’s nutrient-management plan, with fields 1, 5 and 12 highlighted. Although the “Field 5” highlighted in the report’s map is Wheeler’s property, Sharpley said his researchers were working on the adjacent Ricketts property, for which Henson has a land-use agreement.

“I elected to use the old maps in the permit for the quarterly report. That’s where the misunderstanding originated,” Sharpley said. “The fact is, we haven’t been on those fields mentioned in the letter. We’ll never be on any property we don’t have prior, expressed permission to be on.”

Sharpley said that in the early stages of his research, he realized that the existing map in the nutrient-management plan - the same map that eventually appeared in his team’s quarterly report - was incorrect, but he felt it was outside the scope of his responsibilities to publicly call attention to the discrepancy.

“I chose at that time not to raise the issue,” Sharpley said. “I’m there to do the science. I felt [the map] was somebody else’s issue. I continued to talk about what we were actually doing and the science in the report. In hindsight, it would’ve been better to redo the report with the correct map.”

Monica Reimer, a Florida-based lawyer with Earthjustice, said even if Sharpley is gathering water and soil samples on the Ricketts field, the research is a waste of time because C&H Hog Farms will likely never spread manure there.

“The whole point of spending the taxpayers’ money was to determine the risk of pollution or environmental harm that was being caused by C&H,” Reimer said. “So instead, what’s happening is, they’re looking at fields that aren’t part of C&H, or they’re doing all this work on a field that is not in C&H’s [nutrient-management plan].

“It seems like there’s this train wreck of things that are happening as a consequence of the misrepresentation that took place at the very beginning,” Reimer said. “And no one seems to be interested in trying to resolve [these problems].”

Marks said that changes to the hog farm’s nutrient management-plan map constitute only minor revisions that are not cause to reopen the permit for public comment. However, Henson and his partners have applied to the department to change the method of manure application on several of the grasslands within the plan, constituting a “major modification,” which does allow for public input.

Wednesday, the department announced that the public hearing for the modification is scheduled for March 24 at 6 p.m. at the Jasper School District cafetorium at 600 School St. in Jasper.

Marks said she and her staff expect to get strong feedback during the public comment period, although she stipulated that public comment will only be allowed on the portion of the permit being modified, not on the entire permit. The department began accepting written public comments on the modification Wednesday.The comment period will remain open until 4:30 p.m. March 24.

Henson said he himself had requested the public hearing for his farm’s proposed modification.

“They’re trying to ruin my name now, but the truth is, we have nothing to hide,” Henson said. “I’m the one who asked for the public hearing. I don’t want them coming back to say ‘we didn’t know.’”

Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/21/2014

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