The crystalline Ozark mountain stream was exactly as it had been when I splashed in and fished its cool waters as a teenager in the '60s. Rushing over stones worn smooth over centuries of constant flow across rapids, this beauty of nature winds from one tranquil pool into another.
It was easy to remember why I'm crusading to keep many tons of hog manure from polluting this treasure called the Buffalo National River. Not another state has such a gem that attracts thousands of tourists each year and the $40 million or so they leave behind. On this day last week, I was at the Grinder's Ferry launch site watching a dozen journalists and others begin a media float sponsored by the National Parks Conservation Association. Representatives also were there from groups such as the Canoe Club, Buffalo River Watershed Alliance and the Ozark Society, each one passionate about protecting the quality of nation's first national river.
Beforehand, I plopped down for breakfast inside the historic Ferguson's Store in St. Joe beside Dr. John Van Brahana, the former University of Arkansas professor and renowned hydrologist who, with his youthful team, is voluntarily conducting water quality and dye tests along Big Creek, a major tributary of the Buffalo.
We talked of politics and mutual concerns, including the obvious secrecy and obfuscation surrounding the 2012 permit our state's Department of Environmental Quality (cough) issued to C&H Hog Farms of Mount Judea. And now Brahana's initial dye tests of subsurface water flow in the wells and runoff from the hog factory are confirming earlier concerns, that the flint and chert karst strata that sandwich sandstone layers beneath the manure application pastures is flowing even faster and more broadly than he initially suspected.
"Our testing continues," he said. "We should know much more about how water flows beneath the surface, and contamination levels by the end of the summer."
We agreed how wrong it is that the special interests involved in perpetuating this Cargill-supported factory of up to 6,500 swine (that generate the amount of raw waste from a city larger than nearby Harrison, population 13,000) can take advantage politically of conditions that cause people of a community and state to pay with their very quality of life.
Brahana seemed concerned the widespread anger this factory has created might be spilling over to other meat producers, even locally, who were not involved in this shockingly bad decision.
The whole bad dream that has lasted well over a year also causes me, and now many others, to wonder just how deeply raw politics rather than truth and the overall general welfare (rather than special-interest desires) play into many decisions made by our state agencies, including the politically appointed Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission.
I also learned that DNA testing appears to be under way to determine the source animals responsible for elevated E. coli bacteria levels increasingly discovered in Big Creek near the Buffalo. Such results should reveal a lot.
Meanwhile, Pam Fowler of Jasper had the following letter published in Harrison and in a weekly paper. This slightly edited version explains the effects this factory already is having on quality of life around once-serene Mount Judea.
"Last week I took my mom and aunt to the old Sexton Cemetery in Mount Judea. It's a sweet tradition; they gather whisk brooms and cleaning supplies and go to the cemeteries where their loved ones are buried, and sweep off and wash the headstones, remove last year's decorations and replace them with their new, carefully selected flowers. . . .
"They fuss over the flowers, trying to arrange them to their prettiest ... It's more precious to me every year, watching their little crooked backs tending the resting places of their family and where they too will rest someday.
"We arrived at the cemetery and it looked lovely. ... mowed and manicured, with the big trees serenely shading the quiet plot of ground. I like coming here. My father and brother, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents and great-grandparents, who were the first white people to settle in Big Creek Valley, are all buried here.
"If you could just take it all in with your eyes, it'd be a perfect scene; but we stepped out of the car to a horrendous and overwhelming stench of hog manure and, I guess, burning hogs--distinct singed-hair smell--and the nightmarish sound of shrieking hogs. A horror film couldn't have had more unnerving sounds. A burning, wailing and gnashing-of-teeth picture.
"It turned a wonderful tradition into an extremely unpleasant task. I had to tie a scarf over my face to breathe as we worked quickly to escape back into our car. Ordinarily we would stay a while after decorating and share memories or funny stories of our loved ones, or just quietly ponder and enjoy the sweet smell of blooming honeysuckle.
"But not this time. It seems "our fear-based" concerns have become reality--truly sad indeed. This Memorial Day, I mourn not only our loved ones who have passed on, but also I mourn our loss of enjoyment of traditional outdoor activities, which is a loss of life as we've known it in our little valley."
Sure hope the mega-billion-dollar-earning, multinational corporation Cargill is reading, don't you?
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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.
Editorial on 06/08/2014