Call it progress.
A joint legislative committee last week reviewed a proposed five-year ban on new medium or large hog farms in the Buffalo National River watershed.
No, it is not the permanent ban that many had hoped for, but a plan to ban such farms for five years could be a step toward a permanent ban.
Nor is a five-year ban even a reality yet. But committee action does push it along a little bit.
It is slight progress but progress nonetheless.
The Public Health, Welfare and Labor committees of the state House and Senate met jointly last week and, without objection, officially "reviewed" the proposal.
That review is part of the process to get a new regulatory rule adopted; but the joint committee last year twice declined to move the matter along, despite support from former Gov. Mike Beebe for a permanent ban.
The issue apparently drew new life this year when Gov. Asa Hutchinson, or his staff, persuaded sponsors of the permanent ban to reduce it to five years with the option to extend it later.
The committee agreed and suggested that, in five years, the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality director should initiate rule-making procedures either to delete the ban or adopt it permanently.
This latest legislative action is far from the last step in the process.
The next step is for another legislative committee, this one the Rules and Regulations Committee, to consider the rule and report to Legislative Council.
If the Legislative Council accepts it, then it goes back to the Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission for final action. The commission oversees the Department of Environmental Quality.
There is one bureaucratic hurdle after another, but the ultimate goal is worthwhile.
All of this stems, of course, from the location of a huge commercial hog-farming operation in the Buffalo River watershed.
C&H Hog Farms, which contracts with Cargill to raise the pork producer's hogs, secured necessary permits several years back to begin the controversial operation on Big Creek, six miles from where the creek meets the Buffalo.
Environmentalists, along with others interested in protecting the nation's first national river, have been complaining ever since about the potential for pollution of the watershed.
Part of the criticism -- a large part -- involves the lack of public input in the process that allowed the permit to be issued in the first place.
Opposition has been long and loud and has resulted in short-term bans on hog farm permits while a long-term proposal is being considered.
The longer-term solution would limit the numbers of swine to 750 weighing 55 pounds or more and to 3,000 weighing less than 55 pounds.
By comparison, C&H is permitted to hold up to 2,500 sows and 4,000 piglets at a time.
The concentration of so many hogs in a small area has given rise to complaints about odor carried through the countryside, but the greater concern is about hog waste contained on site in ponds and applied to fields in the watershed.
Heavy rainfall in recent weeks has increased worry that these ponds could overflow and that runoff from them or from the fields could damage the river.
There is also an ongoing study by the University of Arkansas' Division of Agriculture on the effect on water quality of C&H Farms. The study is measuring runoff and monitoring the effect of rainfall on the holding ponds.
The study will continue for the next four years and its results will doubtlessly impact a decision on whether a ban on medium and large hog farms should be permanent.
Importantly, the hog farm ban under consideration won't make C&H's Hog Farms go away. The operation couldn't expand, if the rule is adopted, but it won't go away.
Commentary on 07/12/2015