Hogs on the Buffalo

Even the 89th General Assembly, which just went home this week, admits there is a problem. But they didn’t fix the problem.

Yes, there is a problem with a hog farm in the Buffalo River area, but the REAL problem the Legislature heard about – and did little about – is the public notification process on state rules, regulations and standard changes.

The pork production farm, (called a Confined Animal Feeding Operation by the state) located on the only National River in Arkansas, the beautiful Buffalo River, is NOT the issue here.

The issue is how the public, finally, heard about it.

Once all the application paperwork and application was approved – then and only then did this hog farm really become public knowledge.

How did this happen, you ask?

Easy as you shall see. The public is really not a part of this process.

Two years ago, lame-duck and often a grumbling Gus of the State Senate, Sen,. Percy Malone, D-Arkadelphia, cleared a room of more than 80 state agency employees faster than the last school bell of the day. He did so with a scathing and often rambling diatribe on the way state agencies, commissions and boards, allow staff members to write, draft and even implement new rules, regulations and standards that the public has to live with – before the public even knew there were new rules, regulations and standards.

Presiding over the Joint Rule Committee, Malone lashed out at the room full to overflowing of folks from almost every state agency.

“If you are here today to have this committee hear your new rules, regulation and standards, but have not had them (the rules) approved by the commission or agency, first, then you are in the wrong room.”

Staring down most of those in the room, the chamber emptied to less than a dozen folks remaining. Then Malone and the committee got down to business.

Every day, Monday-Friday and especially on a Sunday, the classified section of local newspapers are filled with long, rambling and often costly legal notices of rule, regulation or standards changes being made by the state. Seldom do these rules get approval of the board, commission or agency they are written to help.

Most of the time these rules are the result of some committee at the agency, who is helping build a better mousetrap, capture more Federal or grant monies and seeks to ease the rules and oversight they are under. These state employees, often at the behest of the federal agency they are dealing with, write these additional rules, regulations or standards to match some grant or process  to curry federal approval.

This also goes for the permit application for the controversial hog farm on the Buffalo River.

As far as the permit application, the farm applied for, met all the questions asked of the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, the lending agency to finance the corporate farm and even met the approval of the Director of ADEQ as “administratively complete.”

Administratively complete means in government-speak – all the I’s were dotted, and t’s crossed. Loan approval was met. The engineering plans laid out to take care of the facility. Everyone, at least everyone who massaged these mountains of paper, seemed was happy.

But they forgot about the public. What would they think? That’s’ where the rub comes in.

A long, lengthy legal notice for a permit application was printed in the Little Rock newspaper (and even perhaps in the local weekly in the area, but this fact seems to still elude the ADEQ).

The legal notice did not use the words “hog farm, or corporate farm.” It said “confined animal feeding operation, or a CAFO,” not a pork production facility.

It did not say lagoons full of smelly, pig poop, it said a solid waste lagoon.

It did not say it was near the Buffalo River. It gave it’s approximate location  to the nearest town and along the nearest state highway.

So no one in the public actually understood a corporate hog farm with 6,500 caged momma pigs would be commercially bred to birth out another 20,000 piglets twice a year.

And once those type of production standards and the amount of waste those pigs would produce in this fragile watershed – look out.

The criticism was fierce and is only getting hotter as every day passes.

But it is now a Catch-22. The permit has been issued. The state can do nothing, it says to stop this.

Teresa Marks, director of the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality said: “If you don’t want any type of permitted facilities in that water shed, you’re going to have to enact laws to do that.”

Translation of that government speak: “We did our job.”

She continued: “We don’t have the authority to deny a permit just because it is in a watershed that we would rather it not be in.”

Translation of government speak: “Can’t help you. We did our job.”

So now it is up to the public to speak up and speak out for the Buffalo River and how public comment policy is gathered in this state.