Attorneys for environmental groups have asked the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (cough) to reopen C&H Hog Farms' operating permit for public comment and review because of all the flaws they've found in revisions to the owners' 2014 Nutrient Management Plan.
In response to a lengthy, specific list of significant changes in the way this factory says it will operate, Earthjustice attorney Monica Reimer tells agency leaders several of those alterations appear to deviate from the permit initially issued by the state.
In other words, these deviations clearly constitute a new ballgame when it comes to an operating permit in the Buffalo River watershed. While most are technical in nature, largely involving the amount of raw hog waste applied to various pastures called spray fields close to Big Creek, a major tributary of the Buffalo, they also question conflicting numbers and other relevant data left unexplained in the latest documents C&H has filed with the state.
For instance, Reimer's letter says the field areas reported to be available for waste spraying "have been significantly reduced to 335 acres with no explanation or relevant mapping. There is no way to determine slopes, where soil samples were taken or where waste was applied." This strikes me as especially important since it can only mean more waste will be disposed of in a significantly smaller area than originally stated.
The attorney contends the C&H revised equation of the rate at which soil erodes also has been changed without explanation. "They are much lower than in the original [Nutrient Management Plan] and it appears that low values were used in place of high values without explanation. These are extremely important values for calculating the [Phosphorus] index and are not values which should be changing rapidly over time. An explanation of this change should be required."
To her observation, this nonspecialist in soil erosion a common-sense "Amen."
Reimer adds, speaking of phosphorous, that Soil Test Phosphorus variations were significant, with large declines on some fields and large increases on others. But the problem is there are no maps to show soil-sampling locations so "these unexplained variations raise serious questions about their accuracy. Missing data should be provided by C&H."
OK, my turn again. Shouldn't our Department of Environmental Quality insist on such crucial data without outside attorneys asking for it?
The Earthjustice attorney, whose firm represents local, state and national groups, tells our state agency director: "While the Winter Revision does not appear to show over application, we note that nearly the full annual allowed rate of phosphorus was applied on fields 3, 15 and 17 even though crops were dormant. This would appear to be a case of waste disposal rather than nutrient management and is exactly the kind of disposal practice which should be prohibited in the Buffalo National River Watershed."
That argument makes perfect sense to me. I mean, If the factory's plan is to not apply more hog waste to these fields than the plant life in each field can absorb, why apply it when the plant life is dormant other than to dump the God-awful mess somewhere?
Reimer's concern then shifts to spreadsheets for the so-called 2014 annual report on the C&H Aggregate Phosphorus Index. Yeah, I know the language is enough to make one's eyes blur. Yet this matters a lot because it supposedly measures the amount and application of potentially polluting phosphorus to these spray fields.
The attorney says: "These spreadsheets, submitted in response to your request for seasonal, rather than annual, data, appear to be based on assumptions and data which are not supplied. They deviate significantly from the data provided in the revised [Nutrient Management Plan] and require further explanation."
For example, Reimer says the spreadsheet columns for Field Area and the Application Area deviate significantly from those in the revised plan and account for only 60 acres. She also says there's no data provided on the amounts of nitrogen or phosphorus applied to each field, "which makes it difficult to assure that application rates have not been exceeded."
And so the letter goes, asking why three different documents show three different numbers of millions of gallons of waste applied to all fields, and how many were applied versus being approved. And why the erosion data varies widely with what appeared in the Nutrient Management Plan.
The attorney said she contends these issues that include changing field dimensions without a map, apparently missing relevant data, unexplained assumptions and deviations from the originally approved Nutrient Management Plan together "constitute a substantial modification of the permit requiring that the full permit be reopened for public comment and review."
Stay tuned. We'll see how our state responds to so many legally valid points with this controversial factory supported and supplied by Cargill Inc.
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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected].
Editorial on 03/17/2015