Another Call To Action For The Buffalo River!
Bill filed to derail state’s efforts to protect Buffalo River from hog farming
We know you have received several messages from BRWA recently asking for your help in securing a permanent moratorium prohibiting any future swine CAFO permits in the Buffalo National River watershed. Now the legislature is considering a bill which would prohibit moratoriums statewide, including specifically the Buffalo River watershed. Senate Bill 84 is an obvious attempt at an end-run around current rule makings which would establish a permanent moratorium in the BNR watershed.
Vote will likely happen Tuesday Jan 28. We need you to contact the Senate Agriculture Committee members today and ask them to oppose SB84.
How to Take Action
We’ve tried to make it easy by creating a WEB PAGE with a link to a pre-addressed email with a simple message to the legislators.
Without Outlook, here is how to take action;
Email all members of the Senate Agriculture Committee.
The text of the message to the legislators is below. You can copy and paste it into a new email. You can put the following list of legislator email addresses in your ‘To’ box.
[Copy and paste the following list of email addresses in your email ‘To’ box:] [Tested this one and it works great]
ronald.caldwell@Senate.ar.gov, matt.stone@senate.ar.gov, steve.crowell@senate.ar.gov, jonathan.dismang@senate.ar.gov, ben.gilmore@senate.ar.gov, jimmy.hickey@senate.ar.gov, greg.leding@senate.ar.gov, jamie.scott@senate.ar.gov
[Below is the message – add to or change it if you wish:]
Please protect the Buffalo National River and Support a permanent moratorium on large swine CAFOs in the BR watershed.
Protect the Natural State’s beauty and recreation opportunities, our drinking water resources, business economic opportunities, and towns, school systems, and family farms in the area around the BR watershed.
Vote NO on SB84.
And support robust notification requirements about CAFO permits.
Sincerely,
(your name)
Senate Bill 84, was filed January 21, and is scheduled for the Ag Committee Tuesday Jan 28, and it’s important that committee members hear from you today. Follow the link above to learn more.
Once again, please take a few minutes today to help Save the Buffalo River …Forever!
If this bill successfully passes the Senate, it will then go to the House Ag Committee for consideration so you may soon be hearing from us again!
The Board of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance thanks you.
Copyright © 2025 Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, All rights reserved.
You are receiving this email because you opted in at our website or at one of our events.
More details from Arkansas Times
Bill filed to derail state’s efforts to protect Buffalo River from hog farming
by Phillip Powell January 22, 2025
Two state lawmakers filed a bill last Tuesday that would prevent the state from banning hog farming in the Buffalo River watershed or other Arkansas waterways without specific clearance from a legislative panel.
Senate Bill 84 is sponsored by state Rep. DeAnn Vaught (R-Horatio) and state Sen. Blake Johnson (R-Corning), who are both farmers. Vaught’s biography on the House of Representatives website says she is a member of the Arkansas Farm Bureau and the Arkansas Pork Producers Association.
The bill targets a pair of proposed rules from the state Department of Agriculture and the Department of Energy and Environment that would make permanent a temporary moratorium on hog farming in the Buffalo River watershed. Environmental groups have been pushing for such a ban for years, sparked by the state’s 2013 approval of a hog farm in the Buffalo area that has since closed down. A legislative committee held a hearing on the proposed rules in November but did not make a decision; in December, the state agencies said they wanted more time to work on the rules and take public input into consideration.
But the bill from Vaught and Johnson would go beyond the Buffalo River, and prevent state agencies from placing a moratorium on permits for farming in any watershed or other body of water in the state unless they first obtained approval from the Arkansas Legislative Council.
Vaught and Johnson could not be reached for comment on Wednesday.
The Farm Bureau, an industry group, strongly opposes the Department of Agriculture’s proposed moratorium, saying it violates the “right to farm.”
As one of the United States’ only national rivers, the Buffalo River draws millions of tourists every year and is seen as one of the natural treasurers of Arkansas. There’s been recent talk from a group connected to the Walton family of upgrading its status to a national park preserve. Local environmental groups such as The Ozark Society, The Buffalo River Watershed Alliance, Audubon Delta, and chapters of the Sierra Club have led public campaigns against farming in the watershed for years.
Those groups are particularly concerned about concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) — industrial-scale farms which produce an immense amount of liquid animal waste that can pollute waterways with excess nitrogen, phosphorus, and other materials and chemicals. CAFOs confine large numbers of animals in a controlled environment to efficiently produce meat, dairy, or eggs. The controversy over hog farming in the Buffalo River area began with the granting of a permit to C&H Hog Farm in 2013, which caused public outrage and eventually led to then-Gov. Asa Hutchinson to place a temporary moratorium on CAFOs in the watershed in 2020. The moratorium language still stands today, making it government policy not to approve permits in the watershed, though the Legislature has not yet approved that language.
CAFOs must receive waste disposal permits to operate. The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (which is now part of the Department of Energy and Environment) used to issue those permits to farms, until a 2023 law transferred permitting authority to the Department of Agriculture. That legislation, which was seen as a win for agriculture interests, was also sponsored by Vaught.
The new proposed rule by the Department of Agriculture would place a permanent moratorium on “swine Confined Animal Operations” in the Buffalo River Watershed. But it would also limit public notice of new permit applications elsewhere in the state, effectively removing Arkansans’ ability to object to proposed CAFOs coming to their area. That has led environmentalists to oppose the rule and file dozens of public comments expressing their concern.
The Department of Agriculture dismissed those concerns, saying in a reply to public comment that “the notice process provided within the rule is sufficient.”
The rule proposed by the Department of Energy and Environment would also place a moratorium on swine CAFOs in the Buffalo River watershed, but it would apply to farms seeking a different type of waste disposal permit that regulates pollution sent directly into waterways. According to the most recent Environmental Protection Agency data, none of Arkansas’s 776 CAFOs have this type of permit.
It’s dragon slaying time!
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Buffalo River Watershed Alliance
Box 101, Jasper, AR 72641