88 days added for comments on hog ban

Team releases report showing farm’s impact on tributary

People have 88 more days to submit comments on a proposed ban on certain-sized hog farms in the Buffalo National River’s watershed.

That’s because the final report of the team studying the impact C&H Hog Farms had on a river tributary has been published.

The Big Creek Research and Extension Team posted the 280-page report, with 619 pages of appendices, online Thursday.

On Friday, the Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission voted to open the public comment period on the ban for 90 days from Thursday. The comment period lasts through Jan. 21.

“The public needs the opportunity to look at it,” Commissioner Mike Freeze said of the report.

Freeze and other commissioners said in July they wanted to withhold allowing the partial ban to begin going through the rule-making process until the report was completed. At the time, they believed the report would be released imminently. They voted in favor of initiating the rule-making with the understanding public comment period could be altered to accommodate the report’s release.

The original comment period closed in September and amassed more than 400 comments. All but two favored the ban.

Experts reached Friday said they hadn’t had much time to scan the report.

Gordon Watkins, president of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, said he wanted to read it before commenting. He said he read several pages but not much.

David Peterson, president of the Ozark Society, said the report showed the gravity of phosphorus buildup in soil over time, suggesting adjustments to how C&H was applying its phosphorus-rich manure mixture, called “slurry,” to the ground.

That backs up his group’s and other groups’ concerns about how farms are advised and required to apply fertilizers to the ground.

“It actually substantiated some things that we thought were true and had analyzed in the data before,” Peterson said.

As of late Friday, Peterson said he read fewer than 40 pages, although that was more than many others.

John Bailey, director of environmental and regulatory affairs for the Arkansas Farm Bureau officials, said he began reading the report Friday. He’d read the executive summary and conclusions before saying it appeared to support what the Farm Bureau has said — that C&H wasn’t worsening Big Creek.

“What I feel like this document says is what we’ve been trying to say all along, is that there’s no environmental impact,” he said.

But, Bailey added, the report makes some observations the Farm Bureau could take to heart, namely suggestions for how to better apply manure to land to minimize environmental impact.

“What we’re going to have to focus on is, is there a better way to manage this, to keep phosphorus on site,” he said.

Big Creek flows into the Buffalo River more than 6 miles from where C&H abuts it. C&H is permitted to house up to 6,503 hogs, although it normally operated with about 3,000. It will close by the beginning of next year under a $6.2 million buyout from the state, brokered by Gov. Asa Hutchinson.

The Big Creek Research and Extension Team, comprised of 10 researchers and several field technicians, didn’t find C&H had been contributing to algal blooms or other water quality issues along the Buffalo or Big Creek.

Researchers found certain concentrations of nutrients didn’t appear to have increased

since the beginning of the study through the end.

The final sentence of the report reads, “as long as the integrity of the holding ponds is maintained, the main longterm environmental concerns with [concentrated animal feeding operation] lies with land use and nutrient management of the fields permitted to receive slurry.”

On a few occasions, researchers noted a lack of data on conditions prior to C&H’s operations prevented them from drawing conclusions.

The study didn’t begin until several months after the farm began operations. That means researchers couldn’t compare measurements of nutrient concentrations during C&H’s normal operations to before C&H opened.

The partial ban is for federally classified medium and

large hog farms in the Buffalo National River’s watershed. That’s a slightly smaller watershed than the whole Buffalo River, which is 15 miles longer than the National River designation.

Farms are federally classified as small, medium or large. Medium hog farms are defined as having 750 or more swine of more than 55 pounds, or 3,000 or more swine of 55 pounds or less.

Some comments questioned whether the proposal, as written, would prevent hog farms as large as C&H from being constructed within the watershed.

Hog farms often have combinations of the two weight classes of pigs. The proposed ban doesn’t explain how to calculate whether a hog farm meets the size threshold if combining the two weight

classes of pigs.

Several comments questioned why the proposed ban would be limited to hog farms while other animal farms can cause pollution concerns, as well. Poultry farming in Northwest Arkansas has long been blamed for excess nutrients in the Illinois River in Oklahoma.

Many comments hit on the same themes: calling the C&H Hog Farms permit a mistake, arguing the karst topography of the region is unsuitable for sizable hog farms, and/or supporting broader restrictions in the watershed. The suggested restrictions include prohibiting small hog farms, barring other types of concentrated animal-feeding operations, and preventing the transport of hog manure and spread of hog manure on land within the Buffalo River’s watershed.