Fiddling while the Buffalo
is Being Polluted
To The
Beautiful Buffalo Action Committee: RESIGN! That’s right, resign because you
are doing more harm to the Buffalo National River by existing, than you are by
proposing watershed improvements. You are putting up a smoke screen that is
hiding the factory hog farm problem. Yes, I know the overall watershed has
other potential problems, but it has one overshadowing tremendous problem. It
is so huge that all your suggestions (and suggestions are all you can do) are
immaterial, if the hog farm continues to exist on the Boone “Karst” Limestone.
As an
expert witness, I can tell you with virtually certainty, that, as I write this
column, and as you read it, the River is becoming more polluted. So Committee,
if you do really want to do something to save the Buffalo National River, you
will resign in mass. That will do more good than all the columns I could write,
or all the good suggestions you could ever come up with.
Just for
a moment consider the effect your Committee will have on the River, if the hog
farm is not moved onto a suitable terrain. (1) The River will almost certainly be
polluted. (2) Your suggestions on improving the watershed won’t make a hill of
beans difference. (3) The amount of hog farm waste---as much as the city of El
Dorado disposes of in a year---will eventually overwhelm the River, and all the
watershed suggestions you might recommend, if they were actually put in place,
would have such a minimal effect on the tons of hog manure residue that it
would be impossible to discern you had done anything. (Nero fiddled while Rome burned, and The
Beautiful Buffalo Action Committee is fiddling while the river is becoming more
and more polluted.)
On the
other hand, if you resign in mass, issuing a statement that the Committee can’t
in good conscious function unless the hog farm is re-sited on suitable terrain,
you will have made significant progress in making the governor and Department
of Environmental Quality Commission move the hog farm to a more suitable site. (Of
course the state should pay for the move---get out your check book Governor.)
This is
not a time to study or fiddle. It is a time to act, and every day of non-action
puts more hog manure residue in the River. There are times when you have to do
something that seems radical, but there are times when radical actions need to
be taken to stop an ecological disaster from occurring. This potential
pollution problem is not just a small trickle of pollution, but potentially
thousands of gallons of polluted, hog manure residue water from rains that will
carry a tremendous amounts of pollutants into Big Creek or into the subsurface,
and that polluted water will work its way into the National Buffalo River. This
threat to the river can’t be overstated.
When the
National Park Service posts the River as “No Swimming” and then forbids the
eating of fish caught in the river, will you, the Beautiful Buffalo Acton
Committee, have any remorse about fiddling while the river becomes polluted?
Well, you may or may not, but since you are just a cog in the process, the
blame must be spread around and there are a lot of folks who are responsible
including our governor and congressional representatives.
The hog
farm is the third serious challenge our National River has had, and through a
lot of hard work and tremendous activism by the people who love the river, the
first two challenges have been defeated. Of course the first one was the Corp
of Engineers plans to dam the River, and create another dinosaur lake. Dinosaur
lakes can be compared to the fins on a 1968 Cadillac. These oversized lakes
have very little purpose except to impound vast amounts of water. The river-killing
Corp of Engineers proposed damming one of the last free flowing rivers in the
mid-south, but thanks to Dr. Neil Compton, who spearheaded the fight, the free-flowing
Buffalo River wasn’t dammed.
The
second challenge to the Buffalo occurred in the summer of 1986 when a company
applied for a landfill permit near the Buffalo River. Every conservation group
in the state banded together to stop the permit from being issued. I was
embroiled in a tough fight in El Dorado to stop a company called Ensco from
receiving a permit to incinerate cancer causing PCBs in a waste disposal
incinerator. We had a tough fight and although we didn’t stop the company from
receiving a permit, we managed to get a permit so stringent that the company eventually
stopped the incineration. During that fight Governor Bill Clinton appointed me
to fill the Environmental Seat on the Pollution Control and Ecology Commission.
“An oilman to take the Environmental Seat on
the Commission?” screamed several conservation groups. To say I wasn’t well
received by the rank and file environmental groups in the state is an understatement.
However, I met with them, and all I basically said was to give me a chance.
After a couple of years and some classic, verbal fights during Commission
meetings, I changed some environmental minds. I was awarded a Woody Award by
the Sierra Club and named Conservations of the Year by the Arkansas Wildlife
Federation.
Back in
1986, as soon as I became a Commission member, I became embroiled in a fight to
keep the Pindall Landfill from receiving a permit. The reason environmental
groups were opposing the permit was because, if the landfill leaked, the
polluted water from the landfill would flow directly into the Buffalo River. It
took a combined effort by a group of dedicated conservationists to rally pubic
opinion against the landfill, and to come up with the data from around the
country from dozens of existing landfills to show that almost every landfill we
examined eventually leaked.
When the
Commission met in a packed hearing room, we had the hard evidence that if the
Pindall Landfill was permitted there was an over 90% chance that it would
someday leak and a 100% certainty that the polluted water would flow into the
Buffalo River. The Commission turned
down the permit application.
Today we
have a similar situation, but the differences are huge. While the Pindall
Landfill leak would put several thousand gallons of polluting liquids into the
Buffalo, the hog farm could put hundreds of thousands of gallons of hog manure
residue into the River, from run-off into Big Creek or seeping into the
subsurface of a karst topography. The result could destroy the recreational use
of the River.
Make no
mistake about it: I am not a left wing environmental nut from Vermont telling
you the sky is falling. I’m telling you as a Professional Geologist with a master’s
degree from the University, six years as a P. C. & E. Commissioner, one who
has walked the land, explored the caves, and spend hours on the river. If I’m
not an expert witness; who is?
If you don’t want the National Buffalo
River polluted, you will do whatever you can to stop it, because if we don’t…the
river will be lost.
