Many questions, no answers

Not transparent

By Mike Masterson

t's taken months for the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (cough) to finally announce to the public that the suspicious large plume and suspected fracture cited beneath the corner of a massive hog waste lagoon at C&H Hog Farms apparently contains nothing overly foul.

But as of Thursday evening, no one could even say that for certain because neither the agency nor Harbor Environmental, retained to perform this testing, didn't answer in plain English. Nor did they take questions during their public meeting to release the results.

So much for all that "transparency" the state agency's director, Becky Keogh, promised when announcing in September that the state would contract to bore a single hole into suspected waste leakage beneath a corner of the lower of two lagoons.

Instead of getting simple answers about the specific nature of this plume and the relative location of the single bore hole, the audience got peppered with chemical-ese then promptly ushered off to the agency website with any pesky questions.

Retired engineer Duane Woltjen said describing the test hole's location only in terms of decimal degrees of longitude and latitude rather than Arkansas English amounted to "virtually complete obfuscation."

Many who'd driven hours to finally learn the plume's contents and get answers face-to-face justifiably were upset to get none. Some had serious specific questions about the tax-funded $75,000 study to ask of Harbor's project manager as he delivered a PowerPoint-assisted message. Interestingly, it did reveal suspected signs of fracturing between 28 and 120.5 feet, and a "porous zone" between 100 and 120 feet deep.

Public concerns have run deep over the ecological welfare of our country's first national river ever since the state agency responsible for maintaining environmental quality quickly and quietly permitted the hog factory to raise 6,250 swine about six miles upstream of the Buffalo.

UA Geosciences Professor Emeritus John Van Brahana of Fayetteville has spent two years with other volunteers scientifically testing for harmful effects of the millions of gallons of hog waste continually sprayed across fields in the watershed. He said five people who attended told him they felt "ripped off" because meaningful details of the study "were hidden behind the ongoing manipulation of ADEQ."

"No scientific questions of the presenter were allowed, either during or after the talk," Brahana said. "The promise was made that all questions could be asked from the web page, but most felt this was for appearance only, based on ADEQ's previously documented history of ignoring meaningful environmental queries."

Members of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance pointed out that the single hole was drilled due to concerns that group and others raised after a Freedom of Information Act request by the alliance uncovered internal emails among members of the UA Division of Agriculture's Big Creek Research and Extension Team.

The alliance cited one email saying, "there was a possibility of a major fracture and movement of waste" near one of two waste lagoons discovered during an electrical resistivity study performed by Dr. Todd Halihan of Oklahoma State University. This bore hole was recommended to confirm the findings.

Alliance president Gordon Watkins left unimpressed after driving hours to attend. "While Harbor apparently intended to leave the impression that there was little or no evidence of contamination, questions from attendees were disallowed and the complete report was unavailable for review, " he said in a news release.

"The information provided by Harbor was not strongly interpretive, and we need to have it reviewed by experts ... . Professional geologists were present who attempted to ask pertinent questions about Harbor's processes," but they weren't allowed.

Watkins said Dr. Joe Nix of Ouachita Baptist University, who performed some data analysis for the study, commented: "When you close the door on questions, that only raises questions. That's not how science is done."

Ah, but it is how politics too often is done, Joe.

Ginny Masullo of the alliance said: "We certainly could just as easily have reviewed the slide presentation online and gotten just as much out of it. Now there will be no opportunity to ask questions directly to the Harbor representative ... . Until we have experts examine all of the Harbor documentation, we currently have more questions than answers."

Alliance member Marti Olesen said, "We strongly suggested to ADEQ at least three holes should have been drilled to achieve the level of credibility that would put the public's mind at ease. ... We urge the governor's office and ADEQ to demonstrate better scientific protocol and share information with the public with the collaboration and transparency that they promised."

Watkins added: "Aside from this less-than-productive presentation, there remains the larger issue of hundreds of acres of karst spreading fields throughout the Buffalo River watershed. Geologists have indicated to us a better than 90 percent chance the CAFO will eventually pollute the Buffalo River."

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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at mmasterson@arkansasonline.com.

Editorial on 12/04/2016