This Is The Kind of Attitude That Is Harming The White River

[SilverMallard]

This article is in today's Harrison newspaper.


Proposed legislation expected today, tomorrow

LITTLE ROCK - State Soil and Water Director Randy Young told his commission Wednesday that he was cooperating with Harrison-area legislators who would be introducing legislation to take farms in the Crooked Creek watershed out of controversial state phosphorus regulations.
That will remove farmers in Searcy County and parts of Boone, Newton and Marion Counties from requirements to develop a fertilization plan and use a certified fertilizer applicator to keep phosphorus runoff into streams to a minimum.
The Sugarloaf Creek, Bear Creek and Long Creek watersheds will be among the streams that still come under the proposed regulations in Boone County.
Young said Thursday morning that he would be meeting with state Reps. James Norton of Harrison and Monty Davenport of Yellville today or tomorrow to help them draft a bill exempting Crooked Creek farms from the regulations.
He had told the commission Wednesday that a University of Arkansas compilation of soil tests showed Boone County farms contained an average of 475 pounds of phosphorus per acre, which is significantly above the 60 to 100 pounds needed for farming. Marion had a 140 pound average, he said.
Asked why, given those figures, he was cooperating with the proposal to remove farms from the regulation, he said he had promised at a December legislative committee meeting that he would cooperate.
He also noted that Crooked Creek did not flow into another state.
Special "excess nutrient" areas were designated for regulation by the legislature two years ago under the threat that if Arkansas didn't act, Oklahoma would require what Young says are impossible phosphorus limits, choking growth in Washington and Benton Counties.
There have been similar rumblings from Missouri and Arkansas streams flowing into Missouri were also designated for regulation.
But the law also included the Crooked Creek watershed, which flows into the White River at Cotter and thence through Arkansas to the Mississippi River.
Representative Norton said Thursday that he had never understood why Crooked Creek was included. "I tried to keep it out two years ago," he said. "It may not have received the attention it should have," during the push to satisfy Oklahoma.
Norton said he, Davenport and state Sens. Randy Laverty of Jasper and Shawn Womack of Mountain Home would sponsor the bill and "hopefully it will go through relatively easy and fast."
The December meeting of the legislature's agriculture committee had resulted in Soil and Water's proposed regulations to implement the law being kicked back to the legislative rules committee instead of on to the Legislative Council whose approval would allow them to go into effect.
Representative Norton said Thursday that some two dozen unhappy Harrison-area farmers attended the December meeting, which drew no news coverage but slowed down motion to finalize the regulations.
At Wednesday's meeting, the Soil and Water Commission gave itself the power to act on the regulations for a 120 day emergency period until the interim legislative rules committee goes back into session after the legislature goes home. The emergency period can be extended for another 120 days but "not indefinitely," the commission was told.
The commission was urged by representatives of the state Department of Environmental Quality and the National Resource Conservation Service to use the emergency period to get cracking on training the local conservation district workers who will prepare the fertilization plans. If the legislative blockage ends, the regulations are to go into effect next Jan. 1. Federal farm and pollution agencies are expecting that, the commission was told.

??Ozarks Newsstand 2005


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Fishing the Ozarks

[LadyFisher]

The squeeky wheel gets the oil. It's as simple as that. The more print or email or TV coverage this story gets the sooner practices like it get stopped. Start a full-fledged campaign. Send a copy to every conservation group, TU, FFF, local and national. Every county commissioner, every state legislator, then start on the national level. Once you've done that, contact every guide, sporting goods store on the rivers and have them do the same thing.

I've written repeatedly on this - ALL politcs is LOCAL. I get bashed for being political, what folks are getting is if you are being involved locally and just howl about who was elected president you blew it big time.

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LadyFisher, Publisher of
FAOL

[SilverMallard]

Published January 22, 2005 Springfield News Leader.

By Mike Penprase
News-Leader Staff

Farmers may go to birds for their fertilizer
Workshop discusses possibilities of using poultry litter instead of chemicals.

Rather than making his grass grow with commercial fertilizer, Sparta farmer Terry Bohmont may just go to the birds.
With millions of chickens and turkeys raised in the Ozarks every year ? producing hundreds of thousands of tons of litter ? an alternative to commercial chemicals may be right under our noses.

That's why Bohmont and other southwest Missouri landowners spent Friday at a workshop on using poultry litter as fertilizer.

And they learned it's not as simple as dumping a mixture of manure and wood chips or sawdust on their fields.

There's plenty of litter around ? 436,500 tons from more than 200 million birds each year, according to the James River Basin Partnership ? but it takes work to determine whether litter is economically and environmentally feasible.

"This is what we came to find out," Bohmont said, "whether it's economically feasible, or not."

The costs of buying, transporting and spreading litter could be cheaper than buying commercial fertilizer, he learned at the session, but there's a limit on the steepness of slopes where litter can safely be spread.

Mount Vernon landowner Kathy Just said she has a nearby source of litter but also has environmental concerns.

"I'm going to be more worried about the capabilities of my land because it's pretty hilly," she said.

Nathan Bilke, another participant at the session that drew attendants from West Plains to Lamar, hopes to see more use of litter as fertilizer. He's managing a federally financed program working with poultry producers in the Elk River and Shoal Creek watersheds to reduce stockpiles of litter.

The main issue with poultry litter is how to make it economical to move the material from areas where there is so much it poses environmental problems to areas that need more nutrients in the soil, Bilke said.

"That's the big thing, how can we utilize it outside the production zone."

At the session sponsored by the Partnership, with part of a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, participants learned that the Elk River watershed is home to 65.5 million turkeys and chickens that generate over 134,000 tons of manure a year.

The Spring River watershed has 95 million birds that produce 254,500 tons of litter.

And the James River watershed has 40.3 million birds that produce 48,000 tons of litter.

All those numbers are from a survey conducted by the Partnership.

Arkansas' experience

The $1.2 million program that Bilke is managing aims to interest crop farmers in using poultry litter. It is financed by the federal government in an effort to reduce water pollution caused by nutrients in litter such as nitrogen and phosphorus.

Compared to pasture farming practiced in much of the Ozarks, growing crops like corn and soybeans take up more nitrogen and phosphorus, deleting those chemicals from the soil when the crops are harvested.

Bilke hopes a program for using the litter gets under way before mandatory rules on how litter is used as fertilizer hit Missouri, he said.

Arkansas provides a view of what happens when farmers are told how to handle litter, Bilke said.

The Arkansas Soil and Water Conservation Commission on Wednesday passed emergency rules requiring people who spread poultry litter to be licensed, along with people who develop farm-management plans.

Proposed rules, which are to go into effect in 2006, have drawn strong protests from farmers in several Arkansas counties, particularly when it comes to restricting application on steep slopes.

Bilke said he expects farmers in northern Arkansas will respond to the rules by sending litter north to Missouri rather than go through a permit process.

Not easy to use

During the Friday session, landowners were told having a farm-management plan and determining whether or not poultry litter would help economically and environmentally are essential.

The Partnership's goal is to link landowners who can use litter with litter suppliers, said executive director Holly Neill.

"We're hoping this report will help producers locate poultry sources," she said. "There are a lot of people who need it in this area where it's hard to find."

In the James River watershed, the bulk of poultry production is in the Flat Creek basin near Cassville, she said.

Elmer Curbow, who farms 300 acres bordered on three sides by the James River near Ponce de Leon, came to the session to learn whether he can use litter on his farm.

He fences his cattle from the river and has done other things to protect the river's water quality, and he hoped poultry litter would be an alternative to other fertilizers.

"Chicken litter will build the ground up faster than anything," Curbow said.

Barton County farmer Chad McCulloch and his father-in-law have used poultry litter on the 1,000-acre family farm north of Lamar for six years, ever since commercial fertilizer costs climbed and anhydrous ammonia prices went through the roof.

"It's worked really well," he said. "We haven't had any complaints."

Not that using litter is easy, he said.

Compared to commercial fertilizer, litter he buys at $7-$8 a ton and transports to his farm himself is a bargain, but it requires more work and more attention to making sure runoff is controlled to prevent water pollution, he said.

"It's not like going to MFA and picking up a load of fertilizer,"he said.

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Fishing the Ozarks

[This message has been edited by SilverMallard (edited 27 January 2005).]

[SilverMallard]

There are a lot of things the gov't is looking at to create new revenue streams for these farmers who have to stop indiscriminately dumping way too much of this poultry litter on their own land. There is also a chemical available which prevents 75% of the leaching process, reducing runoff into streams. The company just asked the legislature for $335k to do a demonstration project in NW AR and they were turned down.



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Fishing the Ozarks

[SilverMallard]

Excerpted from the February 2003 issue of AMBER WAVES, a publication of the USDA.

"Land application (of manure) alone may be insufficient to economically handle all generated nutrients in some areas, without changing the structure or scale of the local animal industry. Some emerging technologies could help with the disposal. Poultry litter is being turned into commercial fertilizer products in Virginia and Maryland. Manure nutrients in the form of commercial fertilizer can be more economically shipped than "natural" manure and are in higher demand (on golf courses, for example)."

"Livestock and poultry feed can be managed to reduce the nutrient content of manure, making it easier to follow a nutrient management plan. For example, some poultry and hog producers are using feed treated with the enzyme phytase to reduce the phosphorus content of manure by up to 45 percent."

"Another emerging technology for using manure is energy production. A power plant in Minnesota currently burns poultry litter. However, the cost of producing energy from litter is estimated at three to four times the cost of conventional power generation. Under different economic conditions, manure use in power generation could be feasible where a high concentration of livestock or poultry provides a ready source of fuel."

"A fertilizer, energy, or industrial waste treatment facility could encourage even greater regional concentration of animal operations by simplifying the manure disposal problem. Depending on the cost of treatment, animal operations may find it cheaper to ship manure to such a facility than to spread it on land. Increased regional concentration of animal production could worsen odor and disturb neighboring communities, but water quality problems would be mitigated as long as spills and storage failures were avoided."



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Fishing the Ozarks

[SilverMallard]

For more info on this topic read LadyFisher's column, "Why Bother," and the "Why Bother" thread on the main forum.

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Fishing the Ozarks

[SilverMallard]

The following is an excerpt from the bill which proposes to exempt the CC watershed farms from the nutrient management plan:

"SECTION 3. EMERGENCY CLAUSE. It is found and determined by the General Assembly of the State of Arkansas that applications of soil nutrients have not resulted in excessive nutrient concentrations within the area now excluded from the nutrient surplus area; therefore, persons applying nutrients within that area are no longer required to prepare for pending nutrient management regulation; and that this act is immediately necessary because citizens will suffer unnecessary economic impacts if they are required to continue to prepare for nutrient management oversight. Therefore, an emergency is declared to exist and this act being immediately necessary for the preservation of the public peace, health, and safety"

How do you propose to be preserving the public "peace, health, and safety" by allowing water contamination to continue unabated?

With several pertinent USDA conservation incentive programs available to offset the HYPOTHETICAL economic impacts of the nutrient management oversight program, how does the Ar legislature still consider this an "emergency?"

This is a terrible piece of legislation, and I hope that ALL anglers who fish CC and the White River will write the Governor, the SWCC, and their legislators to tell them so.


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Fishing the Ozarks

[SilverMallard]

Here's a link to Gov. Huckabee's office...
[url=http://www.arkansas.gov/governor/staff/index.html:07d71]http://www.arkansas.gov/governor/staff/index.html[/url:07d71]

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Fishing the Ozarks

[ArkieFlyGuy]

Silver asked me to post this letter I wrote to the editor of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. Today's edition has on page 5B an editorial by Mike Masterson that is worth a read if you have the chance.

"Kudos to Mike Masterson for bringing to light the Crooked Creek dilemma. As a fly fisherman, I know first hand, as does Mr. Masterson, how several of the streams in Arkansas have suffered from exposure to excessive amounts of phosphorous dumped on the land in the name of fertilizer. Images of the White River and other streams from years past and now indicate a clear ?before and after? picture of what has been done to these waters.

Having been raised on a cattle farm, I understand why the ranchers are concerned. But I also have a degree in Agriculture and have researched studies that prove the amount of phosphorous now contained in the soils of almost every acre of pastureland in Arkansas is sufficient for plant growth for years to come. Without adding an ounce of phosphorous, cattle farmers will be able to provide abundant grass for their grazing and forage needs. The certification program, including education on proper fertilization practices, is under development if not in place. The ranchers in counties affected by the Oklahoma and Missouri concerns are cooperating.

Are the ranchers, politicians, and commissioners of the belief that we Arkansans are not as good as those folks in Oklahoma and Missouri? Is it really OK by them that we clean up our act for other states but keep dumping on our own? Do we really want to change our motto of ?The Natural State??

The dollars spent in the counties around Crooked Creek on tourism based on fishing is not small. Visitors from all over the country and from outside the United States travel each year to fish the waters of the White River system they have heard about or visited in the past. Each fall the Southern Council Federation of Fly Fishers holds a conclave drawing hundreds of visitors to the area from all over. And they come back year after year. And that is only one of the draws to the Ozark fishing streams.

If the pollution continues, the food sources in the streams will continue to die out, and, therefore, will not sustain the fish. No aquatic insects, no fish. No fish, no fishermen. No fishermen and the hotels, lodges, restaurants, fishing stores, and other businesses will suffer the consequences.

And if this is not dealt with, you can bet that those under the obligation of the environmental protection will protest. First will be Crooked Creek. Then the Little Red. Then others will find ?excuses? not to adhere to these regulations.

If you have ever enjoyed a day of fishing any Arkansas water, please make your voice heard. Find your local fly fishing or other fishing club, or conservation group and see what you can do to help. Call or write your legislator or the ASWCC. Do whatever it takes to clean up the waters and keep this ?The Natural State.?

The ASWCC director seems to have other priorities. What he may not believe is that his ?hectic schedule? is going to be even more hectic with all the phone calls, emails, letters, and visits from the fishing community. Mr. Young, this is not going to go away if you choose to ignore it. There are rumblings among my fly fishing friends. I think you are about to hear the thunder."

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Tight lines ya'll!!
Love is grand.... Divorce is 100 grand....

[SilverMallard]

Regulations on poultry farmers are implemented

By Ken O'Toole, CCN staff writer

The state's plan to regulate the use and management of fertilizer and poultry litter, which has upset Carroll County farmers for two years, is moving right along as the Arkansas Soil and Water Conservation Commission approved last week the implementation of three new state laws.

The laws apply only to Carroll County and other northwestern counties, in the White River, Kings River and other watersheds that flow into watersheds in Oklahoma and Missouri.

The three laws approved in 2003 by the state Legislature, over the protests of the Carroll County Farm Bureau and other northwest agriculture interests, apply to the handling, spreading and use of fertilizer and poultry litter on farming pastures, poultry operations, golf courses and lawn maintenance companies.

Originally, the golf courses and lawn maintenance operations weren't included in the original package of laws, but at a series of public meetings throughout northwest Arkansas over the past year, protests that the laws targeted farmers only were apparently taken into account.

There is significant disagreement over who is more responsible for the nutrient runoff that pollutes waterways, with farmers declaring there was no solid science that said urban growth, sewage plants and other sources weren't being held accountable.

The three-law package still does not include sewage plants or urban runoff. The complaint is that the laws applied only to northwestern areas of the state went unheard. Local Farm Bureau leaders have insisted that the laws are the result of lawsuit threats from Oklahoma and Missouri, who claim Arkansas watersheds are putting too much phosphorous into the groundwater and large watersheds such as the White River, which flows into Oklahoma, and the Kings River, which flows into Table Rock Lake in Missouri.

Last week, Soil and Water commission attorney Ed Swain said that last week's adoption of the new rules allows the state to begin certifying people to write nutrient management plans for farms in "nutrient surplus areas," according to a report in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette.

The move also allows the state to begin certifying people to spread commercial fertilizer and poultry litter so they don't pose a threat to nearby streams in the "nutrient surplus areas."

Those areas include Carroll, Boone and 12 other counties in the northwest.

In a new development, Boone County is going to the legislature again, to try to get Crooked Creek watershed removed from the nutrient surplus list, removing farmers in parts of Boone, Newton, Marion and Searcy counties from the controversial phosphorous regulations, according to the Harrison Daily Times.

Sugarloaf Creek, Bear Creek and Long Creek watersheds will still come under the state's oversight.

Rep. James Norton of Harrison said he would carry such a bill to the legislature. The move apparently has the backing of Soil and Water Director Randy Young.

It was noted that Crooked Creek doesn't flow into any other watersheds, according to Norton. Sen. Randy Laverty apparently will also back the bill.

At last week's meeting, the Soil and Water Commission set a 120-day emergency period after the session ends to act on the regulations.

The commission plans to immediately start training local conservation district workers to prepare the fertilizer regulations.

One of the laws requires poultry farmers with more than 2,500 birds to register with the state. That law takes effect early next year.

The local county conservation workers will be required to oversee registration and certification of litter and nutrient spreaders, and they can impose fines and penalties if a farmer is found to be putting too much nutrients containing phosphorous into a watershed.

Fertilizer applicators have to be licensed by the conservation district and farmers are required to keep records of all nutrient spreading.

Farmers also face fines and penalties for violations of those laws.

Since Carroll County and other counties have very few conservation workers, the question remains how enforcement will work.

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Fishing the Ozarks

[This message has been edited by SilverMallard (edited 03 February 2005).]