Agency to cease issuing permit like hog farm's

Dearth of applications cited

The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality will discontinue the type of general permit that allowed a large hog farm to open in the Buffalo River watershed, the department announced Thursday.

After receiving only one application for the Regulation 6 general permit for concentrated animal feeding operations in more than four years, the department decided not to renew that type of permit.

C&H Hog Farms in Mount Judea is the only concentrated animal feeding operation with such a permit in the state and the only one to have ever applied for it.

The lack of interest in the permitting program was the primary reason department director Becky Keogh decided not to renew it.

"In this case, we don't see that it's [renewal is] necessary, because we haven't had the use that we ... expected," Keogh said.

The general permit was created in 2011 to mirror a federal permitting program that speeds the permitting process for such operations, she said.

Keogh said public comments questioning the necessity of the program were "critical" to her decision to close the program.

The department initially recommended renewal of the permit and held a public hearing in Jasper earlier this month, where the National Park Service opposed the plan. Chuck Bitting, the service's manager of the natural resource program for the Buffalo National River, argued the permit had been changed to allow for less public notice than before and would be detrimental to water quality.

The department received more than 100 comments on the issue, many in opposition to renewal.

C&H's operating permit expires Oct. 31. The owners applied last week for an individual permit under Regulation 5 and for a renewal of their current permit under Regulation 6. Both regulations concern discharge of pollutants from facilities, but Regulation 5 concerns a statewide program and Regulation 6 concerns a federal one. Regulation 6 includes an individual and general permit.

The decision not to renew the general permit will not have any immediate impact on C&H, and law allows for a facility to continue operating under an expired permit if the department decides not to renew that type of permit.

Because the facility only just applied for the permits and department staff haven't fully reviewed the documents or any requested modifications yet, Keogh said, it's difficult to say what will happen to C&H's applications later this year.

General permits are meant to cut down on paperwork and make the permitting process easier. But environmentalists argue they made the process too easy for C&H, which they fear may pollute the Big Creek tributary to the Buffalo National River. The facility abuts Big Creek six miles from where it meets the river.

There is a short waiting period for a general permit compared with "individual permits," which can take six months or longer, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The Clean Water Act prohibits anybody from discharging "pollutants" through a "point source" into a "water of the United States" unless such a "discharger" has a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit.

An individual permit is unique to a specific discharger. The individual permit is normally written to reflect site-specific conditions of a single discharger based on information submitted by that entity, according to the EPA.

A general permit is written to cover multiple dischargers with similar operations and types of discharges based on the permit writer's professional knowledge of those types of activities and discharges, according to the EPA.

Rob Anderson, spokesman for the Arkansas Farm Bureau, said the organization was reviewing the situation and did not have a comment Thursday.

The decision not to renew the permit was "a good first step" in changing the permitting process, said Gordon Watkins, president of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, which was created in opposition to C&H's establishment.

Metro on 04/29/2016

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