Gordon Watkins of Parthenon likely isn't a happy camper after poring over environmental watchdog data gathered by the University of Arkansas.
As president of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, he's filed a formal complaint with Becky Keogh, the director of our state's Department of Environmental Quality (cough) in which he alleges the hog factory operating in the middle of the Buffalo National River watershed has violated its operating permit by improperly storing and handling millions of gallons of swine waste.
His written complaint dated August 12 asks the agency for an independent investigation and that it require the factory to correct its methods and come into compliance with everything its general permit insists be followed.
In his complaint, Watkins, long an advocate for protecting and preserving the majesty of the country's first national river, refers to the Big Creek Research and Extension Team headed by the University of Arkansas at a cost to taxpayers of some $750,000 over five years. Big Creek is a major tributary of the Buffalo flowing just six miles downstream. Some of the fields where large volumes of raw waste are regularly sprayed are along or near Big Creek.
The complaint contends reports this research team have issued thus far show several "red flags" and causes for public concern where preserving water quality in the Buffalo is concerned. Specifically, the bacterial and nitrate levels have risen most noticeably in the factory's on-site, 300-foot-deep house well over the past year. They're elevated in some instances to the point where Watkins says the Arkansas Department of Health would declare them unsafe for human consumption. Yet, his complaint continues, humans and livestock continue to drink from this well.
"Presumably the water is treated to make it safe for use by humans, but the presence of E. coli and total coliforms in the well water, particularly at these steadily increasing levels, is an indication of persistent contamination and a significant danger to human health," his complaint reads. "The most obvious source is leakage from the waste lagoons. Where else could these levels originate?"
The levels Watkins refers to in the research reports reveal that, beginning in the early summer of 2014, E. coli levels measured in samples from the house well were less than 1.0. "However, over the past year these levels have steadily risen and, as shown in the latest April 1-June 30, 2015, report ... all house well samples are now positive for E. coli, with levels ranging from 1.0 (a single sample) to 248.1. Total coliform levels are similarly high."
The revised environmental assessment resubmitted under a court order also describes four other wells in the area that, in light of what's been found in the house well, sure seem to this layman like they also need testing.
He emphasized that the research team's report doesn't draw any conclusions, or express concern over the notable increases in microbes. Nor does it place them in context. The story is told only in data extracted from a page.
Watkins' complaint expresses similar concerns about what the research team reported at the adjacent stream and culvert testing sites that suggest "pond leakage is occurring." In the most recent report, both interceptor trenches dug below the factory show consistently high coliform levels. Trench 2 on the north side shows only one E. coli sample of less than 1, while all other samples of this trench range from 5.2 to 105.4, indicative of pond leakage.
I asked Fayetteville geoscientist and UA professor emeritus Dr. John Van Brahana, who with his group of volunteers has been studying water quality and subsurface water flow around the hog factory and Big Creek for over two years, if he felt Watkins' complaint jibed with his analyses thus far.
"Yes, the findings that the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance have pointed out are indeed troubling, and our [Karst Hydrogeology of the Buffalo National River] data also are consistent with the hog waste moving off-site and beneath the spreading fields into the subsurface water, and from there into tributaries that drain to the Buffalo," Brahana said.
"There are other potential sources of sustained and considerable contamination in this valley. But this hog factory is far and away the largest single possible source of the contaminants mentioned. So yes, this falls exactly into line with what we are finding."
Sounds to me like the Department of Environmental Quality and the EPA might consider getting serious about answering Watkins' complaint and pinning down the source of this documented rise in microbial contamination as soon as possible, even if the research team chose not to address it specifically in meaningful context in its latest report. After all, the state permit allows the factory to leak up to 5,000 gallons of waste a day per acre from these lagoons. Who's even checking for that?
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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected].
Editorial on 08/22/2015