Hog-farm foes seek data before pond liners added
By Emily Walkenhorst
Posted: May 27, 2016 at 2:38 a.m.
Updated: May 27, 2016 at 2:38 a.m.
Opponents of the hog farm in the Buffalo National River watershed have asked the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality to not allow the hog farm to install protective liners beneath the manure ponds until further research is done on whether the ponds are polluting.
The department approved C&H Hog Farms' application to install synthetic liners above the clay bottoms that hold the hog manure at the two manure ponds on the facility in Newton County. Messages concerning questions about the department's role in installing the liners going forward -- or whether it had one at all -- went unanswered by the department Thursday.
C&H owners have applied to conduct numerous activities on the farm site, including installing the liners, to assuage concerns of those who oppose the presence of the facility and its large volume of hog manure in the river's watershed, which is the area around the river in which water and sediment may run into the river.
But none of the proposals has satisfied several groups that have organized in opposition to the only large concentrated animal feeding operation in the watershed.
During the Pollution Control and Ecology Commission meeting Thursday at the department's headquarters in North Little Rock, Heber Springs attorney Richard Mays, on behalf of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, asked the department not to install the liners yet at the facility. Mays said doing so would be "premature and foolish" until research is done to find out whether the ponds are polluting.
Commissioner Wesley Stites, a biochemistry professor and chairman of the chemistry and biochemistry department at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, said he didn't follow the logic of the request, summarizing it as "there might be a leak, and we don't want you to put in a liner that might stop the leak."
"So you're concerned about the leak, but you're not concerned about the leaking occurring during the investigation?" Stites said. "I don't understand this at all."
Mays said the group was concerned about any leaks occurring at C&H but that installation of the liners and the accompanying transfer of hog manure could exacerbate any existing issues at the facility.
The Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, along with three other groups that make up the Buffalo River Coalition, has asked the department to halt operations at C&H until more research can be conducted at the site.
The Big Creek Research and Extension Team, which operates out of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture and is monitoring C&H's impact on its environment for five years, has declined to dodrilling requested by those who oppose the C&H farm. The team will tentatively discuss the issue before the Pollution Control and Ecology Commission next month.
The Coalition wants the department and the Big Creek Research and Extension Team to conduct drilling near the manure ponds to determine if the ponds are leaking. The groups requested the drilling after data taken under the holding ponds during a separate research project on the farm's fields where hog manure is applied as fertilizer showed what one researcher said was higher-than-expected moisture. That researcher, Todd Halihan, a professor of hydrogeophysics and hydrogeology of fractured and karstic aquifers at Oklahoma State University, said drilling into the ground could find what is causing the test results. He also said installing liners would address the issue.
Opponents of C&H have raised questions previously about how the department would go about installing liners in the already-filled ponds, but are concerned that their pleas for additional research near the ponds will go unheeded if the liners are installed.
"Our concern is that if they do install those liners before they do the drilling, then they're just going to say the drilling isn't necessary," Buffalo River Watershed Alliance President Gordon Watkins said after the meeting.
Watkins said if the facility has been leaking hog manure into the ground, that would constitute a permit violation for which the facility should be punished. Installing liners without drilling could mean that any pollution that may have occurred would go unaccounted for, he said.
Metro on 05/27/2016