Hog-farm permit to be topic for state

Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality administrators are to meet today with representatives of several environmental-advocacy organizations to discuss the operational permit for C&H Hog Farms, the concentrated animal feeding operation built earlier this year near Mount Judea.

Hank Bates, a Little Rock lawyer who sent a May 15 letter to the department identifying what he described as multiple discrepancies in the farm owners’ permit application, asked for the meeting. Bates will be joined by representatives of the Ozark Society, the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, the Arkansas Canoe Club, the National Parks Conservation Association and other groups named as interested parties in the letter.

The advocacy groups were also named as parties with standing in a May 6 legal notice of intent to sue the U.S. Department of Agriculture and its Farm Service Agency by the nonprofit environmental-litigation organization Earthjustice. The notice, required when suing the federal government, cites violations of the Endangered Species Act and failure of the Farm Service Agency to involve other agencies while conducting its environmental assessment of the farm site.

Katherine Benenati, an Environmental Quality Department spokesman, said department Director Teresa Marks, permits-branch director John Bailey and other department administrators will attend the meeting. The meeting, to be held at department headquarters in Little Rock, will not be open to the public or the media.

Although neither Bates nor the department have outlined specific goals for the meeting, Benenati said the department views the meeting “as an information exchange,” while Bates said he sees the meeting as part of an “ongoing discussion among many different parties.” Gordon Watkins, a member of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, said he hopes to make clear to department officials that his organization doesn’t plan to give up its fight against the hog farm.

“We’re going to try to listen, to see if [the department] has any problems, concerns with this permit, or suggestions on correcting it, and see if there’s any common ground,” Watkins said. “We want to express our concerns and emphasize that we’re not going to go away.”

Public outcry over C&H Hog Farms, which is permitted to house about 2,500 full grown sows and as many as 4,000 piglets at a time, began earlier this year after Buffalo National River Superintendent Kevin Cheri sent a public letter to Linda Newkirk, the Farm Service Agency’s state executive director. Cheri outlined what he called more than 40 discrepancies in the agency’s environmental assessment.

The farm was the first in the state to receive a general permit under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System. Many people and organizations that typically monitor permit applications through the Environmental Quality Department’s website said they were taken by surprise when they learned of the permit’s approval, causing many to complain that the department’s public-notification efforts were inadequate.

Additionally, environmental-advocacy groups have raised concerns that manure from the farm could potentially contaminate both the surface water of Big Creek, a tributary to the Buffalo National River, and area groundwater.

The Environmental Quality Department has tried repeatedly to quell concerns about the farm, emphasizing the thoroughness of the permitting process, which can take as long as two years. During a March meeting of the Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission and again in May at a public meeting held in Jasper, Bailey, the Environmental Quality Department’s permits official, gave a presentation to explain the guidelines of the general permit and characteristics of the design for C&H Hog Farms.