ACTION ALERT – Follow-up To Buffalo River Watershed Alliance Seven-city Tour Meetings
The Buffalo River Watershed Alliance (BRWA) scheduled a seven-city speaking tour Oct. 25-31, 2013, to inform the public about threats to the Buffalo River from a giant factory hog-feeding operation known as Concentrated Animal Feedlot Operations (CAFO) on a tributary of the national river at Mount Judea. Waterkeeper Alliance from North Carolina was invited by BRWA to come to Arkansas to explain what was happening in North Carolina with the CAFO hog industry.
The following is a quote pulled out of the 10/17/2013 edition of The Freeweekly :
“The key [CAFO’s] success lies not only with the concentration in one operation but in the close proximity of more like them. Those concentrations are the key to the demise of water quality, air quality and the well-being of communities.”
Watershed Alliance said they hope Arkansas can learn from the Swine Saga of North Carolina. Watershed Alliance in North Carolina officially banned the building of new hog facilities that use the open waste pits and spraying methods.
Waterkeeper Alliance alluded to the fact that one of the problems associated with the swine waste was Pfiesteria. Pfiesteria piscicida is a recently discovered, potentially toxic, microorganism. It is found naturally in the environment. It is currently not well understood what environmental factors induce Pfiesteria to produce harmful toxins. These organisms are believed to be native, not introduced species, and are probably common inhabitants of estuarine waters within their range. These microbes have not been found in freshwater lakes, streams, or other inland waters. For the rest of the story on Pfiesteria go here..
Buffalo River Watershed Alliance is a non-profit 501(C)(3) organization which was created in early 2013 in response to C & H Hog Farm CAFO operation. The Alliance was created by stakeholders living in the Buffalo River watershed. BRWA goals are to educate and advocate for protection of the Buffalo River and its associated watershed by:
1) working for the closure and/or relocation of C & H Hog Farm, and
2) supporting a moratorium on any future hog CAFOs within the Buffalo River watershed.
The BRWA board of directors and board of administrative advisors can be found here.
BRWA is licensed by and comes under Waterkeeper Alliance. We are not recommending that you join this organization since it’s tied to the United Nations. (See details below.)
There is a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in place between ADEQ (the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality) and the University of Arkansas which puts the University of Arkansas in charge of doing a study of the potential of water quality impacts with the Buffalo River watershed from animal waste produced by the permitted CAFO, C & H Hog farm. The MOU was signed September 5, 2013. The Governor of Arkansas is seeking authorization from the Arkansas Legislature for $340,510.00 to fund the testing in areas on or near the permitted CAFO, C & H Hog Farm, in the Buffalo River watershed. Additional documents of the CAFO, C & H Hog farm operation can be found here.
Waterkeeper Alliance has over 200 Waterkeeper Organizations on six continents worldwide. Waterkeeper Alliance’s goal is to protect every major watershed around the world. The President of Waterkeeper Alliance is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. For the remainder of the Board of Directors, go here. For the Trustee Council, go here. Some of the other Trustees of Waterkeeper Alliance involved in other Environment organizations are Laura Turner Seydel (daughter of Ted Turner) and Rutherford Seydel (spouse of Laura Turner Seydel and son-in-law of Ted Turner). Laura Turner Seydel and J. Rutherford are also Trustees for the Turner Foundation of which Laura’s father, Ted Turner, is the Chairman. Laura is also the Director of League of Conservation Voters and a board member of Environment Working Groups. Trustee Gordon Brown is a member of Clinton Global Initiative, a Global Environmental Group. Ted Turner created United Nations Foundation with a $1 Billion grant in order to support the United Nations. Ted Turner is the founder and chairman of Better World Fund which is a funder of Atlantic Council of the United States. Open Society Foundations, of which George Soros is the founder and chairman, is also a funder of Atlantic Council of the United States. For a flow chart of some of the interconnections of the Waterkeeper Alliance, go here and go here. Be sure you click on the flow chart for a thorough understanding regarding the parties involved. This is SHOCKING!
Waterkeeper Alliance seems to be a very controlling organization. Our future water rights will be in danger.
Waterkeeper Alliance Named Gyalwang Drukpa “Guardian of the Himalayas” in September 2013. Gyalwang Drukpa is also the founder of “Live To Love” which is a global humanitarian initiative tied directly to the United Nations. Waterkeeper Alliance is tied to the United Nations which makes it look like an Agenda 21 Organization. Waterkeeper Alliance’s goal is to control every major watershed in the world and is using their influence to close down all CAFO operations. Even though Waterkeeper Alliance is only going against the CAFO hog farm operations, we believe this fight eventually will be taken up against other types of CAFO operations. This includes both the cattle and poultry CAFO operations. Eventually the small farmer, cattle rancher, fish hatchery, and poultry farm will be attacked and forced out of business under this system! This article has more information: Agriculture and Food Systems are Unsustainable per United Nations Environment Progamme (UNEP)
Secure Arkansas attended several of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance meetings held on a seven-city tour. We brought up the simple fact that toxic fluoride is being dumped into the river.
Click on these links for more information:
Fluoride from Municipal Water Supplies is Toxic to Fish
Fluoride also damages plants, flowers and the environment
If the concerns are protecting the quality of the water in the streams, rivers, lakes, and surface and ground water sources, then BRWA should fight to keep fluoride out of the environment, too.
BRWA claims that their issue is not necessarily with the livestock industry but only with the Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO)… but time will tell. We think there will be claims made in the future that livestock and farms will not be sustainable in that area. In these CAFO industrialized operations, the animals are held throughout their lives in high densities in indoor stalls until they are transported to processing plants for slaughter. The North Carolina CAFO operation is dealing with Smithfield Foods, the largest pork producer and processor in the United States. Smithfield Foods is headquartered in Smithfield, Virginia, and it runs facilities in 26 U.S. states, including the largest slaughterhouse and meat-processing plant in the world, located in Tar Heel, North Carolina. In September 2013, Smithfield Foods, Inc. was taken over and sold to Shuanghui in the People’s Republic of China. That is Communist Red China. Did you hear that? Communist Red China now owns Smithfield Foods and has 26% of the pork market share in the United States.
Click here to read an article about the merger. Here’s a shocking snippet:
“Shuanghui International and Smithfield Foods on Thursday announced the completion of their merger, officially concluding the largest Chinese takeover of a U.S. company.”
Now, back to the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance (BRWA). The main issue discussed at this BRWA meeting was hog waste. The Cargill C & H Hog CAPO operation will house up to 6,500 hogs and will generate 2 million gallons of hog waste annually. Secure Arkansas brought up the fluoride toxicity issue. The toxic fluoride chemical that is mandated to be put in the public water supplies by Arkansas Act 197 will contaminate the environment by dumping their toxic fluoride waste water into the Arkansas streams, rivers and lakes. Fluoride levels of more than .2mg/L are harmful to the environment, fish, vegetation, and humans and should be banned worldwide. With the passage of Act 197, the fluoride mandate, we will see more toxic fluoride dumped into the ground water, streams, rivers, and lakes as the cities come on board with their public water toxic fluoridation.
If the Waterkeeper Alliance and BRWA truly want to protect our water, they will support the removal of fluoride from all public water supplies worldwide also.
Summary
1) Hog waste. The waste is stored in a lagoon and then dumped and spread over the ground which in turn could run off into the creeks, streams, lakes, and could seep into the ground water. The problem that Waterkeeper Alliance had in North Carolina with Pfiesteria is only associated with salt waters. These microbes have not been found in freshwater lakes, streams, or other inland waters so far.
2) Fluoride is toxic to fish, animal life, and vegetation. The Toxic Fluoride Mandate Act 197 needs to be repealed so fluoride will not contaminate the environment.
A brief review of fluoride toxicity on salmon found that concentrations of fluoride above 0.2 mg/L (10.5ueq/L) could be lethal and inhibiting to migrating salmon (Foulkes and Anderson 1994). Foulkes and Anderson (1994) argued that the current EPA permissible discharge level of 1.5 mg/L of fluoride is not adequate to protect anadromous fish stocks and that fish exposed to these levels will experience lethal or sublethal effects. They suggested that a more appropriate fluoride level would be 0.2 mg/L. Most of the laboratory studies of fish toxicity to fluoride (using sodium fluoride and rainbow trout) show that lethal effects vary widely as a function of temperature and water hardness. For example, Pimental and Bulkley (1983) found an inverse relationship between fluoride toxicity and hardness whereby fluoride toxicity increased with decreasing hardness of the source waters. The minimum level of hardness they tested was 17 mg/L; by comparison, the hardness in Warren Lake is less than 1 mg/L, which presumably would greatly increase the toxicity to fish exposed to fluoride. In a study on the Columbia River, Damkaer and Dey (1989) concluded that salmon loss at John Day Dam for the period 1982-1986 was attributed, in part, to fluoride contamination from an upstream aluminum smelter. Typical fluoride exposure concentrations were 0.5 mg/L in 1982 resulting in 55% mortality and 0.2 mg/l in 1985 resulting in only 5% mortality.
Below are some sites that cover the toxicity of fluoride on fish.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12656244
http://rense.com/general9/florideacc.htm
More information is developing on these topics, and we will alert you as we’re made aware of new details.
Share This Article
