MIKE MASTERSON: Will it hit target?

A single hole

The way-too-long-awaited drilling beneath raw waste lagoons at C&H Hog Farms in Newton County is finally to begin tomorrow and continue for a few days.

Earlier disputes appear to be settled as our state is prepared to shell out $75,000 to complete this job an Oklahoma State professor reportedly offered more than a year ago to arrange for very little, if anything.

The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (cough) has contracted with Harbor Environmental and Safety in Little Rock to see this investigation is performed with complete credibility, something the agency lost in this controversy ever since it quickly and quietly permitted this factory with 6,500 swine into our state's pristine Buffalo National River watershed three years ago.

I understand the agency's work plan, is basically to sink a single bore hole into a area where electronic imaging identified a suspicious plume of possible waste leakage beneath one corner of the lower lagoon.

Oklahoma State geology professor Todd Halihan discovered the suspicious area and possible fracture in the karst subsurface during the spring of 2015 while working under contract for the Big Creek Research and Extension Team from the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture.

But whatever reason, the Big Creek folks, being compensated $300,000 annually in state funds, did not mention the alarming discovery to the Department of Environmental Quality, the state Pollution Control and Ecology Commission, or apparently anyone else outside the team. Its existence wasn't made public until earlier this year at a commission meeting when members of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance disclosed materials it had collected using the Freedom of Information Act.

The rest unfolded from there with disagreements over the number of observers from the Big Creek team and observers allowed from the Alliance. In the end, observers from both sides were denied in favor of a single geologically qualified independent observer named Tai Hubbard.

But that by no means has resolved conflicts in other areas of this expensive drilling investigation. For instance, on Sept. 6, Alliance attorney Richard Mays wrote to Environmental Quality Director Becky Keogh, expressing the group's concern over sinking only one exploratory hole.

Mays wrote: "On July 12, 2016, I wrote to you on behalf of my clients, requesting, among other things, that the agency seriously consider the drilling of more than one hole during the investigation at the C&H hog farm. We continue to believe that, due to the karst geology in that area and the difficulty in pinpointing the precise location of the possible release of hog wastes based on [Halihan's] images, it is very likely that a single boring will not intersect contamination being released from the facility. As a result, it could be erroneously claimed that there is no release. That would be a tragic mistake.

"Most of the cost of drilling," Mays continued, "is in mobilizing the equipment to the site. The drilling of at least one, if not two, more holes while the equipment is there would not add greatly to the expense, but would give a greater level of confidence to whatever results are obtained. In all likelihood, there will be no additional drilling done unless the results of this investigation clearly show a release, and it would be best to resolve the question insofar as possible while this drilling event is taking place. We strongly urge the department to reconsider its decision on the number of holes to be drilled."

Yet again, this agency ignored sage advice, perhaps with politics again trumping sound reasoning, and I understand will drill but the single hole.

Mays added yet another element to this controversy when he also referred Keogh to the panel of experts who examined the Big Creek team's monitoring program in 2014.

That panel was comprised of experts in hog factory operations from the USDA, Ball State University and North Carolina State University. Their findings went to Dr. Mark Cochran at the UA Division of Agriculture. They specified "three major potential threats to water quality associated with C&H Farms": possible leakage from the raw waste lagoons, contamination of surface and subsurface waters due to land application of this waste, and potential long-term buildup of soil phosphorus.

All three of these warnings, now two years past, sound like Arkansas common sense to this Ozarks boy.

Finally today, I strongly recommend every reader who gives a minnow about preserving the purity of our country's first National River to take two minutes and visit the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance website. Click on "photos" and take a stunning and reflective look at what our precious river looked like last week when Carol Bitting and Lin Welford took separate float trips expecting to enjoy familiar gravel bottoms through crystalline waters.

Google the phosphorus mentioned above and river contamination. Draw your own conclusions, then ask, if you were a tourist, would you enjoy this float as it exists today?

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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected].

Editorial on 09/20/2016

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