The article below was published in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette on August 11, 2015. Reprinted by permission.

The two federal agencies, ordered last December by a federal judge to assess potential environmental damages from the waste produced by C&H Hog Farms in the Buffalo National River watershed, have released their draft report.

Their conclusion: All’s hunky-dory above the river. So we can all relax, fall back asleep and quiet the unfounded concerns. Meanwhile, one geoscientist studying the potential contamination called their assessment “hogwash.”

This paper’s Emily Walkenhorst reports that a complete assessment wasn’t submitted with the original approval of Farm Credit Services’ loan guarantees by the Small Business Administration and the USDA Farm Service Agency. The original assessment without nearly enough significant data to suit U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall essentially found no potential problems, but in a lot fewer words. The new one finds no need for concern that the millions of gallons of hog waste being routinely spread six miles above the Buffalo might permanently contaminate the country’s first national river, not even after an historic rainfall.

Whew! I’m glad those agencies finally performed a supposedly “complete” assessment that … drum roll, please … happened to affirm their initial decision. The new draft basically contends concerns for the well-being of the precious river from waste leakage just aren’t warranted.

Well, excluding any possible accidental discharges from historic rainfall amounts. But even that, the revised document contends, would be “unlikely” to cause lasting contamination.

The report also concludes there’s not even the need to change anything about the surface water, groundwater or soils to ensure there’s no contamination. It also says, according to Walkenhorst’s thorough account: “The assessment concluded permanent damage is unlikely: ‘The construction and ongoing operation of the C&H Hog Farm did not and is not expected to result in any irreversible or irretrievable resource commitments.'”

While I’m just tickled pink these agencies predictably justified their initial oversights by spending seven whole months to determine they were right in their original inadequate assessment, I give ample credibility to qualified differing views.

Geoscience professor emeritus Dr. John Van Brahana, about whom I’ve written plenty, and his band of volunteers already have spent about two years studying how subsurface water flows through the fractured limestone karst that channels it throughout the region, as well as water quality in Big Creek, flowing beside the factory.

So I asked if the findings contained in the revision happen to correspond with his own discoveries. He called the findings “hogwash.”

“This draft environmental assessment is flawed,” he said. “It completely ignores groundwater and karst, although this version does at least include paragraphs that mention the terms unlike their original notice of intent approved by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality. The flow of water streaming through the rocks and soil is essential to study and understand so to protect those who live downstream. It’s a key component of any environmental assessment. Yet meaningful discussion remains missing in this version.

“The factory hoses its slatted floor so all manure and urine flow into troughs piped to and stored in clay-lined lagoons,” he continued. “Lagoons are allowed to leak, more than 5,000 gallons a day under the terms of the state’s permit. Because hogs are continually creating waste, the lagoons must be emptied lest they overflow.

“So they spray the hogwash on fields, all of which are uphill from Big Creek, a major tributary of the Buffalo. On karst terrain, rain or hogwash introduced on the land surface typically infiltrates through soil and moves downward unseen through voids and fractures in the rock beneath the surface. It re-emerges as springs and base flows to the streams, some which we have traced with dyes to other drainage basins, but always flowing to the Buffalo.”

He said this latest report fails to address groundwater studies, which is dominant water flow in this basin. “In fact, it introduces no specific groundwater quality data whatsoever,” he said. “Our team, Karst Hydrogeology of the Buffalo National River (KHBNR) has observed and documented these changes. Their assessment offers no pre-factory measurement of any groundwater quality with which to compare and evaluate changes caused by this factory, nor do they report any measurement of its current state.

“This assessment ignores not only the KHBNR studies, which strictly follow standards of the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Arkansas, but they don’t even mention key karst hydrogeologic research conducted by peer-reviewed journals, numerous faculty, graduate theses, or relevant studies of water quality problems in karst that are known from many other areas.

“Our KHBNR studies are expanding into areas that continue to reflect the concentrated hogwash, already is affecting groundwater and surface water downstream. Space limits my comments to this groundwater. But based on what we have found and I know to be true, the [report] is rife with errors, omissions, and misrepresentations.”

Mike Masterson’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at mikemasterson10@hotmail.com. Editorial on 08/11/2015