A recent report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said inspectors found no areas of concern on or around C&H Hog Farms, the concentrated animal feeding operation raising swine in Newton County.
The report, signed June 12, is based on an unannounced three-day inspection of the facility conducted April 15-17. The inspection was conducted by EPA Region 6 inspectors Carl Wills and Chris Lister. EPA Region 6 is headquartered in Dallas.
C&H Hog Farms, located in Mount Judea, holds the state's first and only Regulation 6 general permit for animal liquid waste. The farm is permitted to house approximately 2,500 sows and as many as 4,000 piglets at one time.
The production facility where the piglets are birthed and weened sits on a 40-acre parcel, and is surrounded by an additional 630 acres of grassland upon which the farm's owners are permitted to spread an estimated 2 million gallons of manure generated annually by the hogs. Several of the fields associated with the farm abut Big Creek, about six miles from the stream's confluence with the Buffalo National River.
The farm's owners, Jason Henson and his cousins Richard and Philip Campbell, are contract growers for Cargill Inc.
Water samples were collected from more than a dozen sites in the area and were tested for nutrients as well as E. coli and other pathogens. E. coli levels ranged from 18 to 500 colonies per 100 milliliters of water, according to the report. Acceptable limits of E. coli in "extraordinary resource waters" such as the Buffalo National River are set at 298 colonies per 100 milliliters of water, according to the commission's Regulation 2, which governs water quality standards in Arkansas.
Evan Teague, environmental regulation specialist coordinator for the Arkansas Farm Bureau, said elevated levels of E. coli in single-instance "grab samples" like those used in the EPA inspection are not unusual.
"You're always going to have some numbers that are higher than others; that's just the nature of E. coli in the environment," Teague sad. "Even in completely natural settings, you'll have high numbers that exceed water quality standards; that's just the nature of natural watersheds, particularly when you have wildlife in them."
Katherine Benenati, a spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, said that EPA inspections of sites aren't unusual, even on sites that have been repeatedly visited by state inspectors. She also said that results of the recent inspection wouldn't necessarily change the department's posture regarding its own inspections of C&H Hog Farms.
"The EPA inspection wouldn't automatically have a bearing on the frequency of our own inspections," Benenati said in an email Friday. "Keep in mind, we do respond to all complaints and would follow up on any involving the facility."
The chief concern voiced by Bob Cross, president of the Ozark Society, and others has consistently been the potential pollution of both surface and ground water from the farm's hog waste. The waste is held in two outdoor lagoons that have a combined operational capacity of about 3.5 million gallons, with additional capacity to prevent spillage in the event of severe, sustained rainfall.
Because the underlying geology of Newton County is karst limestone, a failure of lagoons' clay liners could send millions of gallons of hog waste into rapidly moving ground water, Cross has warned.
According to the April EPA inspection, the lagoons appeared to be in good order, as were other aspects of the production facility.
Cross and others have also cautioned that because of the farm's proximity to Big Creek, even normal amounts of rainfall could wash freshly applied manure into an open waterway and on to the Buffalo National River. Hog waste is both nutrient-rich, with phosphorous and nitrogen, and a common carrier of pathogens including E. coli.
Cross said that although inspections of C&H Hog Farm have not detected any major problems with the facility, he was still concerned about potential hazards posed by the farm's proximity to the Buffalo National River.
"While I don't see any red flags in the report, it does nothing to lessen my concerns about the farm," Cross said.
NW News on 06/21/2014