A person paddles a canoe on the Buffalo River as trees display fall colors. (Photo courtesy of National Park Service)
Marti Olesen has now driven the five-hour round trip from Ponca to Little Rock three times in recent weeks with the intention to learn about lawmakers’ plans for the Buffalo River watershed.
Once when the Arkansas Department of Agriculture and the Department of Energy and Environment brought a pair of rules regarding permit moratoriums through the promulgation process to a legislative committee meeting. And twice during the 95th General Assembly when she expected Sen. Blake Johnson, R-Corning, to introduce Senate Bill 84 to the Senate Agriculture Committee.
Lawmakers have yet to consider the bill during the current session.
SB 84 would prohibit a state agency — not limited to the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Energy and Environment — from instituting a moratorium on the issuance of permits in a watershed, including the Buffalo River watershed.
“My personal interest is that [the Buffalo River] is a national park, and it belongs to the people in America, as well as to every resident in Arkansas, and we should all have access to a free and clear river because that’s why it was made a national park,” said Olesen, the 73-year-old vice president of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance.
Olesen, who rose before dawn to make what she described as an expensive trip south, was one of many packed into a small Senate committee room in the Arkansas Capitol Tuesday morning in anticipation of discussing SB 84.
Sponsored by Johnson and Rep. DeAnn Vaught, R-Horatio, SB 84 would make all existing permit moratoriums unenforceable upon its passage and any future moratoriums subject to approval from the Legislative Council, the body that meets when the full legislature is not in session.
Johnson didn’t show Tuesday morning to run his bill because he was serving as the chair of a separate committee, he told the Advocate.
“That’s just part of the process,” Johnson said of his bill not being discussed. “It goes on the regular agenda … I was still working on the amendment and that process.”
Johnson said Tuesday afternoon that he didn’t know when the bill would be introduced in the agriculture committee, and he said he wasn’t in a position to say what he was changing about the existing language.
CAFOs
In 2023, the Legislature passed Act 824, also sponsored by Vaught and Johnson, which gave the Department of Agriculture regulatory authority over large livestock farms, commonly known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs).
The Department of Energy and Environment previously held that authority.
Because of Act 824 of 2023, state agricultural leadership promulgated a rule that would have placed a permanent moratorium on swine CAFOs in the Buffalo River watershed. It would have also limited the required public notice of new permit applications for livestock and poultry farms to the department’s website.
Another rule, from the Department of Energy and Environment, would have also placed a moratorium on hog farms in the area, but its application would have been specific to waste disposal permits that regulate pollution sent directly into waterways.
On Tuesday, Olesen described the situation thus far as a “long, hard battle,” and she hopes for a moratorium on medium and large CAFOs in the Buffalo River watershed.
“Everyone would miss the beauty of the river and being able to use the river to seek peace and quiet,” she said. “You don’t know what is lost until it is gone, as Joni Mitchell said.”
Olesen is a retired educator who now operates a small tourism business along the Buffalo River, she said.
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