Imagine my relief to hear Becky Keogh, director of the state agency that wrongheadedly permitted that controversial hog factory in our treasured Buffalo National River watershed, assure legislators her staff is hard at work protecting the "healthy" river and its tributaries.
Anyone buying that in light of recent official findings that water quality in three of those tributaries is impaired? Anyone believe this agency has a reason to save face since it approved unleashing millions of gallons of raw swine waste into the watershed?
It didn't seem to matter to Keogh, of the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (cough), that her statement sharply contradicts recent water-quality studies by the National Park Service and U.S. Geological Survey, as well as by professor emeritus John Van Brahana. All show three tributaries are impaired either by low dissolved-oxygen levels that damage aquatic life, or high E. coli content.
Keogh stood the other day to address a room of spectators and politicos with agendas (lobbyists too, imagine!), some of whom want fewer regulations when it comes to protecting our magnificent Buffalo. Darn near impossible to fathom, isn't it?
Keogh assured members of the Agriculture, Forestry and Economic Development Joint Interim Committee of what good health the Buffalo is in and that there's simply no need to list the tributaries on the biennial list of impaired waterbodies required by the federal Environmental Protection Agency. This, despite studies that prompted the park service and others to request Mill Creek, Bear Creek and Big Creek be included on the Department of Environmental Quality's latest list.
The negative findings documented in those streams were dismissed by the department as having been conducted during a "freaky year." Its vigilant environmental watchdogs (now that's freaky) need a longer period of study, the agency claims, perhaps even five years of data.
Hmmm. Well, Chuck Bitting, natural resource program manager for the National Park Service at the country's first national river, said his office has been steadily supplying the state agency with data for decades. He said E. coli bacteria was detected in Big Creek, which flows along waste-spreading fields for C&H Hog Farms, in a full third of tests during in 2014.
Bitting told reporter Emily Walkenhorst that the park service is obligated to monitor water quality in the park, which annually attracts well over a million visitors who leave over $56 million to boost the economy of the region.
"We want to see the river protected by all means necessary and whatever means are appropriate," Bitting told the reporter, continuing: "We're not here to shut agriculture down, and we're not here to shut industry down."
The park service collected weekly water samples in Mill Creek, the Buffalo's largest tributary, for more than a year and periodic samples for more than 30 years. Bitting said park service data during 2015 from the creek showed elevated levels of E. coli--high enough to place warning signs for those seeking recreation along the creek and downstream on the Buffalo River.
At Big Creek at Carver, the park service used U.S. Geological Survey data to determine that the stream's dissolved-oxygen level is too low. Similar findings exist at Bear Creek near Silver Hill, the fourth-largest Buffalo tributary.
Gordon Watkins, who heads the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, told me he believes there is legitimate concern for worry about the Buffalo's health.
"[The Department of Environmental Quality] wants to fall back on technicalities to avoid including Buffalo's tributaries on the impaired list, while [the park service], one of its most trusted partners for over 30 years when monitoring the Buffalo's water quality, is alerting [the state agency] to imminent threats, " he said. "There was a clear desire by agencies, the legislature, and Farm Bureau (their national president "Zippy" Duvall was the hearing's headliner) to avoid EPA oversight but no suggestion the state turn away millions in EPA grant funds.
"Most disturbing was the amount of effort made to explain away ... concerns. It was obvious [Environmental Quality] wanted to avoid listing Big Creek as impaired because that would require them to identify the sources of the problems and act to correct them. And we know where that would lead," he said, adding he still doesn't know how this meeting came about or who called it. His alliance was on the agenda, but he learned about it only by chance last Friday because he'd not been invited.
P-47s, then jets
Retired Col. David Fitton of Harrison flew a P-47 fighter during World War II, followed by piloting jets in Korea. We didn't have jets in combat in World War II, even though I wrote last week the decorated pilot flew them then. Just keeping the record straight.
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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected].
Editorial on 04/02/2016