How's it possible that Oklahoma State University geologist Todd Halihan discovered likely evidence of raw hog waste seeping deep into the karst-laden subsurface and groundwater beneath the hog factory at Mount Judea without state environmental agencies, the governor and Arkansans learning of it for a year?
How could the Big Creek Research and Extension Team from the University of Arkansas and the Cooperative Extension Service retain Halihan, yet fail to post the scientist's results on the team's website until late last month? After all, the only reason it was formed was because former Gov. Mike Beebe ensured public money was appropriated to protect the Buffalo National River watershed from contamination by raw waste created by C&H Hog Farms.
So many questions swirl today around this issue that became public at a meeting of the Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission just the other day. And now the entire state knows Halihan conducted tests in March 2015 to identify what independent experts concur is evidence of fractures and waste leaking into multiple areas as deep at 120 feet beneath two waste lagoons and barns that contain up to 6,500 swine.
Since Halihan offered to assist in getting drilling tests done for free to confirm his electrical resistivity imaging studies, why wasn't his offer accepted immediately last year? Has anyone responsible for environmental quality insisted on such drilling? If not, why the heck not?
Don't the research team, the Pollution Control and Ecology Commission, the Department of Environmental Quality, the governor and we the people who are paying for all this supposed environmental "protection" want to know the truth of what's transpiring beneath this factory? I'd sure like to know.
I asked Gordon Watkins, who heads the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, one in a coalition of concerned Buffalo River advocate groups, for his thoughts. He responded: "It's unclear if/how [the Big Creek team] and OSU planned to release the pond data ... since January we've sent multiple FOIA requests for the data to [Environmental Quality], U of A and OSU so they knew we were aware of the problem.
"Watershed Alliance board members drove to Stillwater on April 3 to meet with Halihan, and he showed them the images and said he'd already sent them to Professor Andrew Sharpley [head of the Big Creek team]; they again FOIA'd the U of A for the data but were stalled," said Watkins. "We were told the data was too voluminous to email to us and they were in the process of posting it to [their] website.
"But we wanted the data for the ... meeting on April 30, so we then contacted Halihan, who sent the data directly to us via email with no problems," Watkins continued. "We posted it on our Alliance website. The next day the same data appeared on the [research team's] site."
Oh my, such a coincidence. I'm not nearly skeptical enough to believe the Big Creek folks hurried to finally post the results one day after the Alliance did after having the information, presumably, since March 2015.
Neither the research team nor OSU have yet to offer any explanation for what Halihan's findings actually mean, Watkins said.
Now, I'm no member of any agriculture-oriented research and "extension" team. But I believe through applying whole-hog common sense, I'll opine as follows on Halihan's findings.
If someone gathers the willpower to conduct the inexplicably neglected test drillings in areas identified by Halihan's research, I believe they'll confirm what the findings suggest: lots of raw hog waste infiltrating the karst and groundwater beneath C&H Hog Farms. What would that confirm? That our state's Department of Environmental Quality (cough) made a phenomenally bad decision by issuing this factory a permit in such a sensitive region.
Perhaps no one has drilled there because what they're likely to find also would support what karst expert John Van Brahana and his diligent team of volunteer researchers have been saying for two years now. Now that would be a fine kettle of poisoned fish, wouldn't it?
Now that such crucial information has been made public, I again lay the matter of preserving the purity of our national treasure at the feet of Gov. Asa Hutchinson. His predecessor, Governor Mike Beebe, publicly said his biggest regret in office was allowing this hog factory to be permitted in the watershed, adding that he didn't even know it was happening.
I'm hoping the governor will closely review these findings, and order testing to either confirm or reject Halihan's findings along with a credible analysis of how much waste already has leaked and the nature of possible damage to the watershed and the Buffalo flowing less than seven miles downstream.
It's unimaginable that the Pollution Control and Ecology Commission and the Department of Environmental Quality were not made aware of Halihan's critical findings. How do you feel about these latest developments, Mr. and Mrs. taxpaying and voting Arkansas?
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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at mmasterson@arkansasonline.com.
Editorial on 05/07/2016