A group called The Ozark River Stewards has written Gov. Mike Beebe seeking clear answers to six questions about the Big Creek Study Team examining the controversial hog factory our environmental agency permitted in the Buffalo National River watershed. They also request Beebe’s action in four areas.
The University of Arkansas’ study team was formed last year, using $340,510 of taxpayer funds, to test for potential pollution and waste contamination that many believe inevitably will enter the watershed from the massive swine operation at Mount Judea.
The river stewards are particularly bothered by contradictions they’ve observed in public statements about the nature and goals of this ongoing study along Big Creek, which flows into the Buffalo. Members also find the irony I do in using a state group to monitor the possible consequences of wrongheadedly permitting this factory in the ultra-sensitive ecosystem underlain by fractured limestone.
Who wouldn’t be confused with all the murk surrounding the way this illogical travesty unfolded? The governor’s office is on record as saying that given Beebe’s “druthers,” he’d never have initially permitted C&H Hog Farms in Newton County. More recently, he said the factory would be shut down if it contaminates the river.
That seems clear to every Arkansan who cares about the country’s first national river.
Then I realize that it also was Beebe’s Department of Environmental Quality (cough) and its appointed director, Teresa Marks, that issued the permit with insufficient public notice or hearings. As is well-known by now, Marks contends she didn’t even know her folks were approving this Cargill-sponsored factory of up to 6,500 swine until it was a done deal. Neither did employees of her agency’s Newton County office. There wasn’t even a public hearing in nearby Jasper.
Later, Marks, who remains director, was quoted as saying, in effect, that she won’t be surprised if the factory does wind up polluting the surrounding watershed. So the governor is employing the UA’s so-called Big Creek Study Team to determine if and when any hog waste sprayed on application fields flows into the surrounding creek and watershed.
Seeming contradictions surrounding this permit have prompted the stewards to seek definitive answers to reasonable questions.
Question one: They wonder how and by whom the study initiated. The governor stated last September that implementing the UA team would allow the state to more thoroughly determine whether unsafe levels of waste could reach Big Creek and the Buffalo River and take preventative action should that occur. However, Dr. Andrew Sharpley, the team’s leader, said the study was initiated by the factory’s owners who, through a county extension agent, sought assistance in developing a research plan, adding that it was to help landowners comply with state and federal law. Which version is correct?
Question two: They ask if the purpose of the UA study team is to protect the watershed or to sustain the “poorly sited” facility, and if Arkansas taxpayers should be asked to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars toward that purpose.
Question three: They ask what the benefit might be to perform “intensive monitoring” on an application field where no hog waste will even be applied since it’s apparently considered to be only a baseline example, and to use maps known to be inaccurate. “Shouldn’t they be monitoring fields that WILL have waste applied?” they ask. Makes sense to me if waste levels are what they are.
Question four: Why is the UA not studying the manure application fields directly across from the Mount Judea public school, as well as the fields already determined to have high phosphorous levels? They say Sharpley has stated publicly that the three fields for study were chosen because he lacked permission to access other fields. Then it was revealed that, because of inaccurate mapping, one of those fields wasn’t among those the factory’s owners had signed agreements to use as cited their own nutrient management plan. Yet the stewards cite a 2013 article in which the governor’s office is quoted saying that the state doesn’t need a landowner’s permission to carry out such testing. The agreement between the UA and Department of Environmental Quality says that agency will “assist the university in obtaining access to conduct the study if access is denied by any landowner.” So what’s up with this confusion?
The stewards closed by asking questions five and six: Why isn’t it a priority to dye-test both sewage lagoons to determine where the 3,400 gallons of raw sewage they are leaking daily is going, and why has the supposedly independent UA study team consulted and sought input from the Farm Bureau and Cargill, which could be construed as a conflict of interest and threaten the scientific approach?
They’ve “kindly” asked Beebe to respond by April 1 to all questions.
Additionally, the group has asked the governor by May 1 that he: ensure testing access to all 17 application fields, add a professional geologist and an independent member of an Arkansas environmental group to the study team, provide a clear mission statement citing the study team’s intent, and that all public expenditures of the team be publicized quarterly.
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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, Pages 15 on 03/25/2014