Rule to ban big hog farms along river goes to panels

Legislators are scheduled to meet today to consider a proposed rule banning all future medium to large hog farms in the Buffalo River watershed.

The rule proposed by the Ozark Society and the Arkansas Public Policy Panel was motivated by nearly two years of contention surrounding a large hog farm in Mount Judea that started up in May 2013 with environmental permit approval from the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality.

C&H Hog Farms, which contracts with multinational corporation Cargill, is permitted to house up to 2,500 sows and 4,000 piglets on Big Creek about 6 miles from where it meets the Buffalo National River.

Environmental groups have cautioned that potential runoff from the hog waste on the C&H farm and from any severe weather could damage the river. Additionally, groups are concerned about the effect farm odors could have on tourism nearby.

The Buffalo National River had more than 1 million visitors in 2013, who spent about $46 million, according to National Park Service data.

The rule being considered wouldn’t shut down C&H, however.

“We believe that if we have more of these farms in the area, it’s going to threaten those businesses and threaten the environment in the river,” said Debbie Doss,

who is working with the Public Policy Panel on the proposed change.

Doss said businesses already have suffered from the farm’s presence because people don’t want to vacation nearby.

The two groups got approval from the Pollution Control and Ecology Commission — the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality’s appellate body — to pursue the rule-making in April at the same time the body approved a moratorium on any new medium or large hog farms in the watershed.

The Legislature’s health and agriculture committees can decide to review the rule today. If the committees review it and decide it’s OK, it will move onto the rules and regulations committee. Rule-makers also can get sent “back to the drawing board,” one proponent said.

Jerry Masters, executive vice president of the Arkansas Pork Producer’s Association, said not enough data exist to determine whether a ban is necessary. Masters said that until the river has been harmed and research shows it, he doesn’t see the need.

“I think we’re getting the regulation ahead of where we need to at this point,” he said.

As for the complaints that tourism will suffer or has suffered, Masters said he didn’t believe businesses could attribute problems to the C&H farm.

“I’m not sure that they can measure that a hog farm has affected their lives at all,” he said. “This is a family operation that is trying to operate, and they do operate by the letter of the law.”

The Legislature commissioned a study last year to test water and soil in some areas surrounding the farm. Masters and C&H Hog Farms have argued that the research hasn’t found any significant pollution resulting from the farm. But environmental groups have expressed dissatisfaction with the scope and location of the testing and point to independent studies they believe are a better measure of the farm’s effect.

The proposed ban would affect only medium and large swine “confined animal operations” and “concentrated animal feeding operations” — what the Environmental Protection Agency defines as farms where animals are kept and raised in confined situations. The EPA designates a small concentrated animal feeding operation as having fewer than 750 large pigs.

Small hog farms have existed in the Buffalo River watershed since the 1980s, but C&H was the first big one to come along, Masters said.

“We’re not against small farmers or anything of that nature,” Doss said. “The farms that we’re talking about are not traditional farms. They’re producing huge amounts of waste with thousands of pigs.”

Doss grew up in Oklahoma near the Illinois River and remembers a heavy rainstorm that caused flooding and the rupture of a hog-waste lagoon. The lagoon spilled the waste into the river, which Doss said “stunk for nearly three years afterwards.”

“I’ve seen Big Creek flood, and it’s a torrent coming down there. I think there’s a good possibility that we could have catastrophic failures like that, besides runoff.”

Masters said environmental groups supporting the ban are basing their opinions on fear.

“We have never had a catastrophic event of a lagoon failure at all,” Masters said, referring to the pork industry in Arkansas.

Masters doesn’t support the ban but said he knows of no farms looking to locate in the watershed. He also noted that Cargill, which is tied to almost all hog farm production in Arkansas, has self-imposed a ban on opening any future hog farms in the watershed.

Jasper real estate agent Edd French has stopped taking any listings in the Mount Judea area.

He said he recently sold a home there for $79,500 after originally listing it at $150,000. The values of homes can go down any time certain businesses pop up nearby, he said, and he had a similar problem selling a house in Boone County years ago after a chicken-producing facility was built next door.

French said people are afraid that more farms will be built in the area.

“That … whether well-founded or not, is a fear that people have,” he said.

“If I was going to that meeting,” French said, referring to today’s committee hearing, “I would ask, ‘Would you be willing to live next to a pig farm?’ I think most of those people there would probably say, ‘No.’”