The Buffalo River has been a part of my life since 1965, from Boxley to Buffalo City. For the past four years I've noticed the increased algae in the Tyler Bend area of the river. Last summer while canoeing to Gilbert, I just cried because the algae was by far the worst I had ever experienced in my 50-plus years of going to the Buffalo. It's worse this year.
Our national treasure is being vandalized.
The algae blooms are caused by excess nutrients in the water. The only source of those nutrients is animal manure. The math is simple, based on recent articles in the Democrat-Gazette. The writers noted that C&H Hog Farms, located on Big Creek, is built for 6,500 hogs, and an adult hog produces four times as much waste as an adult human. The National Park Service states that the Buffalo River has about 1.5 million visitors each year, creating almost 1,000 jobs and bringing in almost $100 million in revenue.
Assume all the tourists are adults averaging two days on the river (most are one-day trips). Assume all poop and pee only in or near the river with 100 percent of their waste entering the watershed. (The Park Service provides great facilities, so this is a huge overstatement.) Do the math: 1.5 million visitors times two days each equals 3 million days of manure in the Buffalo watershed.
Now, assume the hog farm averages 5,000 hogs, not 6,500. Assume these hogs are young with average manure only twice that of a human. The hogs pee and poop within the watershed year-round and the manure is spread within the watershed. That equates to 3.65 million equivalent days of manure going into the Buffalo River, compared to 3 million days of manure from all the tourists on the Buffalo River.
By itself C&H more than doubles the nutrient load on the Buffalo River from "outside" sources. Further, C&H concentrates that manure from the Big Creek confluence downstream, stealing that section of the Buffalo from us.
Nothing else changed within the Big Creek watershed which could contribute to this level of algae.
On July 27 a church group borrowed my trailer and canoes to float Tyler Bend to Gilbert on the Buffalo, 31 miles downstream from Big Creek. They encountered thick algae the entire trip.
On Aug. 4, because of that group's experience below Big Creek and the July 26 Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality alerts about the risk from algae downstream of Big Creek, I took our church youth group upstream to float Hasty to Carver. Big Creek enters the Buffalo right below Carver. The river was low but we encountered no green algae until we reached the Carver pool, when clumps of it began to appear. The extreme algae blooms on the Buffalo are directly tied to hog manure spread along Big Creek.
C&H stated the manure plan would not harm the watershed. They were wrong. C&H has followed their manure plan with no reported failures of their system, yet we have the July 26 Department of Environmental Quality alert and algae clogging the river. The extreme algae bloom was not on the Buffalo River five years ago. The only real change is the hog farm.
There is no way to fix the current hog farm except to end its operation. The Ozarks within the Buffalo River watershed are too porous to contain the manure spread on the fields. We have the mess below Big Creek to prove this point.
C&H has a right to build what they want on their property, but they do not have the right to steal or vandalize their neighbor's property. Pollution from C&H Hog Farms is stealing our property, our national treasure, and vandalizing it.
I beg the Department of Environmental Quality to uphold its denial of C&H's permit to operate the hog farm within the Buffalo River watershed. I beg Cargill and Farm Bureau to withdraw their support for any hog farm in the watershed. They are endangering a significant number of tourism jobs and revenue by this shortsighted support of a hog farm in the wrong location.
To the members of the Pollution Control and Ecology Commission, I'll take any of you on a canoe trip from Hasty to Mount Hershey so you can see for yourself. It's an 11-mile float. You can see the Buffalo above and downstream of Big Creek and the hog farm. You don't need any help seeing the problem, it's very evident. The editor has my contact information.
Both sides are invited. Name the date or do it without me; just do it before the weather cools.
I love that river.
------------v------------
Tony Hilliard of Little Rock is a lawyer at Ramsay, Bridgforth, Robinson and Raley LLP law firm in Pine Bluff.
Editorial on 08/23/2018