Fit to be fried

A new complaint

The Buffalo River Watershed Alliance is, well, fit to be fried over the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality's (cough) failure to fully monitor the misplaced Newton County hog factory in the Buffalo National River watershed, judging by the group's formal complaint filed last week with agency director Becky Keogh.

Little Rock attorneys Philip E. Kaplan and Dana Landrum penned the five-page letter expressing deep concerns over the way the agency has been basically ignoring previous complaints about C&H Hog Farms at Mount Judea, as well as credible scientific studies documenting environmental changes in the past two years.

Among shortcomings cited is that the state ignored five individual critical evaluations of the factory's draft environmental assessment issued under revised federal court order and recently released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Small Business Administration, which commissioned the assessment.

In short, the alliance contends the agency has been failing badly in its crucial role to objectively analyze all relevant data being collected from various legitimate scientific sources, choosing instead to place its faith solely in the findings of the state-financed Big Creek Research Extension Team (BCRET), led and staffed by members of the University of Arkansas geosciences department.

The alliance says there are enough concerning studies now to justify reopening the factory's controversial permit for review and, "for the purpose of illustrating the significant environmental impact of the C&H Hog Farms as shown by scientific data and information proffered by these experts."

Such information, derived from those separate studies, found the hog factory is indeed located on the Boone-St. Joe karst unit. Yet, the complaint adds, "no geophysical studies or related investigations were conducted to delineate any karst features, subsistence and/or sinkholes under the waste lagoons."

The complaint also contends the agency's unflagging reliance on BCRET is misplaced, as its study "is flawed, inadequate and non-representative." So that naturally would make it a big mistake to rely solely upon the state basically to be investigating itself.

Furthermore, alliance lawyers say, "BCRET's upstream-downstream water monitoring fails to consider how water moves through karst topography, relies on only 6-7 sites spanning ... more than 600 acres of waste spreading fields, and uses inappropriate upstream and downstream sampling sites that do not serve their intended function as a control and a comparison to the control."

The complaint says BCRET's data collected from Big Creek, a major Buffalo tributary, suggest contamination with elevated E.coli and nitrate levels, which shouldn't be ignored. Plus, the negative impact to air in the watershed is notable by the offensive odors and "airborne emissions of volatile organic compounds."

The attorneys said despite repeated Freedom of Information requests made for copies of the required construction permits for the C&H waste holding ponds, "no construction permit has been produced." It goes on to cite the laws and regulations that require such permits, and notes the absence of the required published notice of C&H's application for a construction permit in a Newton County newspaper.

The complaint says the agency "must also show that the ponds and clay liners were constructed in accordance with the engineer's approved plans, and inspected by the [department] for compliance with those plans and appropriate standards." It further says a September 2013 inspection report on the agency's website showed rocks blended into the clay liner, raising questions about its adequacy.

In spite these continued requests to revoke, suspend or simply reopen the permit issued to C&H for a hearing to become fully informed of what's already known about rising pathogen and bacterial levels in the watershed since the factory began operating two years ago, the department oddly has left the matter unresolved, which doesn't absolve its fundamental responsibility to all of us.

The complaint asks Keogh and company to finally either reopen the factory's permit and hold a related hearing, or refuse to reopen the permit and hold a hearing.

There's clearly been plenty of data collected to establish grounds for re-evaluating the C&H permit. I'm wondering why this agency, vested with ensuring purity in our environment over political machinations, would hesitate the slightest in eagerly collecting and analyzing all possible facts related to our Buffalo National River. Protecting the environment is the sole reason we have a Department of Environmental Quality.

The alliance complaint concludes by reminding the agency of its solemn obligation. "Our clients are prepared to show that there have been violations of the permit, that it was obtained through misrepresentation and failure to disclose all relevant facts ... Its continued operation is a threat to neighboring residents, property and business owners in its vicinity, students of the nearby Mount Judea school, and the more than 1.3 million people who visit the Buffalo National River each year."

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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at mikemasterson10@hotmail.com.

Editorial on 09/27/2015

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