In 5 Years Swimming Will Be Prohibited In The Buffalo National River

       ARKANSAS

                                         BY

                         Richard Mason

     In 5 Years Swimming Will Be Prohibited In

                    The Buffalo National River

Yes, I’m sorry to say, that is my prediction, and it’s really worse than having the river closed to swimming for a short period of time. If the Buffalo becomes contaminated from the waste produced by the Factory Farm (C & H Hog Farm), it means waste from the holding lagoons and the contaminants from the on the ground disposal have traveled into the ground water and through the subsurface Boone Limestone into Big Creek and then to the Buffalo River. After the River is polluted, even if the Factory Farm is shutdown, the amount of waste in the underlying limestone porosity will take years to stop seeping into the river. We could easily lose the Buffalo for a generation if it becomes polluted. In order to understand the gravity of this situation, let me give you my background and some pertain facts about Factory Farms.

I spent six years as a commissioner serving on the Department of Pollution Control and Ecology Board of commissioners and one year as Chairman.  I am a former three term President of the Arkansas Wildlife Federation, and a University of Arkansas graduate with a B. S. and M. S. in geology. I did my Master’s Thesis surfacing mapping a 36 square mile quadrangle where the weathered Boone Limestone is a frequent outcrop. While I was in college, I was a member of the Ozark Hikers. We didn’t hike a lot, but we spent almost every weekend exploring the many caves in Northwest Arkansas. Almost all of those caves are solution caves within the Boone Limestone. They are characterized by dripping water, flowing springs, and even good size streams, which are fed by the rain water seeping into the Boone Formation. I have spent hours with a rock hammer taking samples of the Boone Limestone, and untold hours inside the Boone Limestone caves. I certainly know the nature of the formation.

The Factory Farm has been permitted to have 6500 animals on site. Those pigs will produce the equivalent amount of waste of a town of 30,000. Just consider this: How would you feel if a town of that size decided to follow the example of the Factory 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. However, it’s even worse than that. The farm is located on a geologic formation called the Boone Limestone.

Over millions of years, limestone slowly dissolves much as a lump of sugar does in your coffee. When the limestone dissolves it become something akin to Swiss cheese because the formation isn’t uniform in the composition. In other words some of the limestone in softer than other part. That’s why you end up with holes in the limestone, and those holes connect. Then, as rainwater or sewerage comes into the formation it fills the holes. It’s a lot like taking a sponge and pouring water into it. It will hold water until the holes in the sponge are filled, and then the water will began to come out. That is exactly what happens to the Boone Limestone, and when that water comes out it brings with it whatever has come into the formation along with the water. The landform where the Boone Formation is present on the surface, is called a karst topography, and the definition of a karst is: 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 River receive their water. In my opinion, there is a near certainty that the Factory Farm sited on the Buffalo River watershed, will sooner or later, pollute the Buffalo River, and considering the destructive global warming trend, where torrential 10 to 15 inch rains are becoming commonplace, I believe, that if the hog farm area were to receive a record rainfall, such as the recent north Louisiana deluge, the hog waste holding pond's levees could be breached, and the resulting contamination would impair the Buffalo River to the point where it would take years to recover. It would make the river a sewer and hundreds of thousands of fish would be killed.

So what are the odds that 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 residue from the holding pits will be scattered over 17 application fields. Eleven of these are adjacent to Big Creek, a major tributary to the Buffalo River. As rain falls on Northwest Arkansas, the hog waste that has been spread on the fields will dissolve and be carried into the subsurface by rainwater, and ultimately end up in the Boone Limestone. The flow route downdip to Big Creek and ultimately to the Buffalo River makes it almost a certainty that sooner or later the contaminated water will flow into Big Creek and then to the Buffalo. And even if the Factory Farm is closed down, the seepage into Big Creek and the Buffalo will continue for years.

 In my opinion, as a former Chairman of the Commission, I don't believe the commission will act quickly enough to stop the impending disaster, unless outraged, public opinion makes them reconsider. However,   they do have the power to prevent the unthinkable from happing. The only way to stop the almost certain pollution of our National River is to have the Board of Commissioners rescind the hog farm permit. I don’t have the email of all the board members but I do have the one from El Dorado. His name is Robert Reynolds <robertreynolds@suddenlink.net. If you are concerned about our National River being polluted send him an e-mail and tell him.