Say Goodbye to the Buffalo National River

               Arkansas

                              By

                 Richard Mason

              Say Goodbye to the Buffalo National River

                                 (It’s going to be turned into a hog farm sewer.)

Yes, I know that sounds a little grim, but I believe I have the credentials to make that statement. If the Factory Hog Farm, located on the Buffalo National River’s watershed, is not moved to a more suitable location, it is almost a certainty that the river will suffer irreparable damage. I have the education as a geologist with an advanced degree to evaluate the landform on which the Factory Hog Farm is located, and I have the experience, from serving as president of the Arkansas Wildlife Federation, and as a former Commissioner and Chairman of the Board of Commissioners of the Department of Pollution Control and Ecology Commission, to judge environmental problems.

In my opinion, the permit to operate the Factory Hog Farm and to dispose of its waste on fields in the river’s watershed will sooner or later pollute the River, and if a Texas size rainstorm (such as the recent one that nearly washed Houston away.) hits north Arkansas and breaches the holding lagoon levees, thousands of gallons of hog manure will flood into Big Creek, which will flow into the Buffalo National River. It will make our National River a sewer.

I'm a geologist, and I did my surface mapping master's thesis on a 36 square mile northwest Arkansas quadrangle. A great deal of my mapping was on the weathered surface of the Boone Limestone. I had a thousand first-hand looks at the weathered Swiss cheese outcrops of the Boone, and I saw a lot of the formation underground. I was a member of the Ozark Hikers and our hiking was mostly cave exploring. Almost all of the northwest Arkansas's caves are weathered solution caves in the Boone Limestone. There are many caves where good size underground streams flow freely out of the limestone. This is the same formation on which the hog farm is located, and I can say, as a professional geologist, who is extremely familiar with the Boone Limestone that it is almost a certainty that someday, and probably in the very near future, hog waste seepage will flow into the underlying porous limestone and will work its way into streams that feed the Buffalo.

The waste from the holding lagoons will be scattered over application fields, and eleven of those are adjacent to Big Creek, a major tributary to the Buffalo River. The Boone Limestone landform is called a Karst topography: From a freshman geology book: Karst topography is a landscape formed from the dissolution of soluble rocks such as limestone, dolomite, and gypsum. It is characterized by underground drainage systems with sinkholes and caves.

Multiply sinkholes and caves by a million times a million and you will have an understanding of how Big Creek and the Buffalo National River receives their water. So what are the odds the lagoons will leak and the manure spread on the fields in that area will penetrate into the ground water? Let look at some examples.

 *In 1995 Missouri had 9 hog factory spills within just five months. That killed as estimated 250,000 fish and 25 miles of stream habitat was impacted. In North Carolina a study of 11 lagoons that were 7 years or older found that half leaked moderately too severely. In Minnesota their Pollution Control Agency estimates the average rate of leakage in their lagoons that are leaking is 500 gallons per lagoon acre per day. In the first nine months of 1995 four states reported a total of 16 spills. (*Taken from The Environment and Factory Farms in Rural America/ In Motion Magazine.)

The Factory Farm has been permitted to have 6500 animals on site. Those pigs will produce (each year) the equivalent waste of a town of 20,000. Just consider this: How would you feel if a town of that size decided to follow the example of the Factory Hog Farm, put their sewage in a holding ponds, and then spread it out on a field nearby after it settled? Yes, that is unthinkable, but that is exactly what the Factory Farm proposes to do. In my opinion, there is a near certainty that the Factory Farm sited on the Buffalo National River watershed, will sooner or later, pollute the River, unless we can convince the Department of Environmental Quality to revoke the permit. If you treasure the Buffalo, please contact the Department or a Commissioner and ask them to save our National River.