I'm no psychologist, yet it strikes me our state is roiling in a state of cognitive (I prefer hognitive) dissonance when it comes to the controversial and divisive C&H Hog Farms it allowed into the Buffalo National River watershed.
I'll explain. First off, our state in 2012 allowed this factory containing up to 6,500 sows and their offspring to set up shop along Big Creek, a major tributary of the country's first national river.
Not only did the state issue the factory's permit in such an inappropriate location, but our Department of Environmental Quality (cough) actually went out of its way to give permission through its new, less-restrictive General Permit, then seemingly cleared all hurdles in what became a quiet push toward rapid approval.
The deal was done so quickly and darned near silently that not even the National Park Service or the Department of Environmental Quality's own local regulatory officers in nearby Jasper knew it was finished until it was. The state agency's own former director said she didn't know her staff had issued the permit until it had been. The way this piggy permit greased through the state's permitting process stretches my boundaries of logic and reason.
Then the approval became public knowledge and an enormous, sustained after-the-fact public stink arose that began with a detailed complaint by the National Park Service.
How other than hognitive dissonance could I best describe the new and admirable five-year-ban on any new hog factories in the Buffalo National River watershed approved by our Legislature and the Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission?
So sometime this month, this ban on any other concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) planting themselves in this unique watershed will take effect. The entire region is underlain by the limestone-riddled Boone karst formation, which readily transfers subsurface water through cracks and caves in all directions for great distances. The majestic Buffalo flows about six miles downstream.
But the ban doesn't affect C&H because, well, the same state that now has banned others exactly like it due to the very real possibility they could pollute our national river with hog waste also issued the permit and blessings to spew millions of gallons of raw waste along so-called spray fields.
In some instances those fields border Big Creek and come within a short distance of the Mount Judea school. In addition, the state's permit allows the two hog waste ponds to leak up to 5,000 gallons of the stuff for each acre.
State geoscientists and the National Park Service already are documenting notably elevated levels of microbes and bacteria in groundwaters between C&H and the Buffalo, especially during heavy rainfall.
We taxpayers are shelling out $750,000 over five years so a University of Arkansas geoscience team (more state) can monitor the levels of waste flowing from this (state-approved) factory in a now CAFO-banned region. That, in itself, strike anyone else as dissonant?
Imagine all this state effort, and state money, and state testing, and state legislation and state time to ensure this single hog factory, which the Arkansas "Environmental Quality" folks today would ban from the watershed because of possible waste contamination, yet remains while generating millions of gallons of waste annually in that sacred place.
Some believe the factory is being, and has been, coddled for political reasons. Oh, surely they are misguided! One thing, however, is certain in my pork-chopped mind. The mishandling of this mess constitutes an acute and expensive hogitive dissonance that could have been easily avoided back in 2012 if the justifiable concerns and restrictions had been in place that exist today.
Kepler to the rescue
In today's "bucks trump everything else" world we've created and accepted, it's nice to know there are still businessfolk like Kepler Knipp. He owns and manages Kep's Clean Used Furniture in my hometown of Harrison. I've done a fair amount of business with Mister Kep of late.
He sold me a side-by-side refrigerator last month with his typical 30-day warranty and told me to call if I had a problem.
Well, sure enough, last week I came home to find the fridge had shut down in my absence, leaving freezer items melted and the fridge side barely cool.
Kep arrived within an hour at the house, then called his repairman, who had to take the refrigerator's control board with him overnight for a touch of solder. Meanwhile, Kep hauled another fridge from his store to my garage so I could store the perishable items until the next morning when the repairman returned. Everything was repaired and returned to my appliance. Kep hauled his trailer back to the house so he could return the loaner to his store.
I relate this personal little story to reassure readers there are still businesspeople with integrity like Kep who actually keep their word. And any time I see evidence of integrity at work (and thankfully have the means to tell the world) I plan on doing just that.
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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected].
Editorial on 09/06/2015