Arkansas Blog

I have to ask/say this: The Arkansas River flows the breadth of Oklahoma, bringing its silt, trash and angricultural polluntants into our state on its journey to the Mississippi. To what degree this ranks I have no idea. But would it not behoove Arkansas to turn it around and call upon Oklahoma to clean up its portion of the Arkansas River before it gets to the Natural/Diamond State?

I like Beebe

I hate Oklahoma

But Edmonson is a good Democrat and is dead on in this lawsuit.

And its not about protecting the farmers...the farmers are treated like sharecroppers by Tyson's. They have no problems taking all the profits while putting all the the risk on the local farmer and then when somebody like the EPA steps in Tyson's hides behind the independent contractor agreement and pretends they have absolutely no connection.

Tyson has made a nice penny in this gambit I think it might be time they help the farmer and our environment

Beebe will fight Edmonson and screw the environment because Morril Harriman and the Poultry fat cats said jump and Mr. Beebe says how high.

Beebe better keep Jim Lendall off that ballot, becasue I will looking elsewhere to cast my vote.

Don't get me wrong...
Isn't it part of Mr Beebe's job to hold Tyson accountable? His "friendhsips" with the likes of Harriman and Kennedy are what keep Mr Beebe's vision scewed.

Oklahoma will continue to win because we're simply wrong and plum guilty.

He loses this fight. He loses Lakeview. Has Beebe ever won a substantial case as A.G.

I realize he won that one really big case in private practice that made him the multi-multi-millionaire that he is today, but his track record in his duties for the state is pitiful.

This wealthy white male, based on his public record in statewide office, is o.k. with higher energy cost because the power companies are his friends, he is o.k. with pollution because the chicken companies are his friend, he is totally impotent in representing the state's interest, and now he wants a promotion.

The lobbyists will tell you that everyone they talk to says Beebe will win. The only problem is that they are only talking to each other.

Another thing about Beebe is that he comes across great when he is in control of the situation. But he is extremely arrogant and has a hot temper that he usually controls pretty good. But what's going to happen when he gets in the heat of the campaign and someone starts questioning him on his votes in the Senate and has action as A.G....he is going to turn red in the face, blow his top, and snap at someone publicly. If this moment comes on camera it will be bye-bye Beebe.

I have a hard time, and little patience for, defending polluters and/or Big Chicken. To say that this is in defense of the chicken farmer is a red herring. The Arkies raising the chickens have no more say in how it is they grow chicken than an eighteenth century indentured servant to a rich land lord. Truth be told, Oklahoma is right. Arkansas is wrong. If corporate chicken wanted the farmers to farm in a more environmentally sound way, it would happen. They have chicken farmers by the mountain oysters and the rooster fries. In fact, farmers that have attempted to change Big Chicken have found themselves in receivership. Big Chicken finances their houses. Big Chicken supplies their chickens. Big Chicken buys their birds. Big chicken is soilant green.

In defense of the AG working to defend farming practice of Big Chicken, I have heard that Edmonson has retained the services of a Law Firm Famous for fighting Big Tobacco and that they now wish to reclassify nitrogen as a carcinogen. I have heard that this would destroy all forms of farming because fertilizer is nitrogen. I?ve heard that Big Chicken would pick up its marbles and go to Mexico if Oklahoma won.

What I?m not hearing is what our natural resources mean to our state in the form of tourism. The fact of the matter is, this is a problem for Arkansas too. Just ask the locals that fish the streams of Arkansas if they are seeing increased algae blooms. I myself have seen it on the White, the Little Red, and the Norfork. What causes this, you might ask. Well, nitrogen, increased nitrogen causes this. The nitrogen and erosion run-off from construction and development in the watershed cause this.

Is Arkansas (specifically ADEQ) doing anything to curb this?

NO!

Arkansas is considering severely weakening the rules that protect our most pristine streams, rivers and lakes. Comments to the Arkansas Pollutions Control and Ecology Commission (PC&E) are due by this Friday -- June 3. Please send your comments telling PC&E not to weaken the rules for Extraordinary Resource Waters to reg-comment@adeq.state.ar.us by no later than June 2 at 4:30 pm. Regular mail to: Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, Public Outreach and Assistance Division; P.O. Box 8913; Little Rock, AR 72219-8913

I meant toxic waste. They would have nitrogen reclassified as a toxic waste, not a carcinogen.

after reading all the comments on the pollution of the illinois river i am shocked that so many people know so little about water quality or what it needs to be to have a healthy fish population in a river.I see one person talking about run off from construction and sediment from it getting into the river.A river has to have sediment and erosion of soils etc running into it ,its a natural thing that has been going on since the beggining of time and has a nessary place in nature . all that silt and soil in the water during large rains is minerals that are nessary to feed the alge etc that the little critters feed on and the fish feed on them and the big fish feed on them etc and so and so.if you break one link in the food chain you kill out all the species in the river. even a fish poops and a certain amount of poop or fertlizer is nessary also to keep a river healthy.when water is nutrient rich for fish you shouldn't be able to see a peice of white paper the size of a silver dollor 1 ft down in the water.also humans require ahout 60 minerals to live and when you fertlize with npk only you deplete you soil of the other 57 minerals that are essential to life,if the minerals are not in the soils when a plant grows there it don't have all the nessary minerals in it for cattle or humans etc.chicken litter is one of the best sources we have to replace those minerals in depleated soils.i don't own any chicken houses and never have but i sure try to get some chicken litter to put on my garden each year!somebody talked about arsnic in the chicken litter.arsnic is an essential nutrient. all the 60 minerials that are required for humans to live are poisiness in their metallic state to humans at some level or another but when they are in the soil and a plant grows there it breaks them down into a notoxic form for humans and can be used by humans when they eat the plant.another thing i noticed is people complaining about all the phosphorus in the illinois river from the chicken litter, and run off from farms.if you check up on phorphorus you find it is very very stable when spred on soils ,it don't erode ,its what all the fertlizer people called money in the bank ,meaning if phorphorus was cheap you could buy a lot of it spread it on your farm and it would stay in the soil until you spread nitrogen and potassium on the land and plants would use what they need and the rest didn't hurt anything and you could keep doing this until the plants used it up.another thing about the phorphorus reading oklahoma is getting ,if you notice they are only testing for phorphorus during high water during heavy rains. i think you'll find it is giving them exceptionally high reading for phorphorus in the water.they say its to get a reading from the run off of farms,well i don't beleive this at all.from all the news i have watched and from talking to people that run suewer plants they say that very very few suewer plants have the capibility to take phorphorus out of their suewage befour they dump it into the rivers so about all cities dump their phorphorus during high water or big rains .if a fair sized city dumped their phorphorus during low water when the river wasn't running much it would probly kill every fish in it.by checking for phorphorus at just during heavy rain and high water would give and exceptionally high overall reading of phorphorus that would not normally be there,by using those reading and figuring for a year on the flow of the river you could make it look like a lot more phorphourus was going into oklahoma than what really was because the cities are only dumping their phorphorus during high water or heavy rains and not continously all year.another reason i don't think the phorphorus is comming from the chicken farms is if you watched channel 3 news from springfield mo all threw the years they have said many many times about springfield mo dumping their phorphorus into the james river arm of table rock lake and said it caused the large fish kills on table rock lake.i have bass fished table rock lake for closed to 40 years and have seen bass dead by the piles in the james river arm my self from springfield dumping their phorphorus into as stated by channel 3 news and if their is any chichen housed on the james river arm of table rock lake i have never seen any .i have also built houses and many many building in that area .we had a family owned buisness that employed 50 to 80 men at times in construction and i have covered a lot of that area very well.from what i under stand phorphorus that is coming from cities is from laundry detergents and soaps ,i am told that it is not nessary that is just a brightner for clothing and are alturitives if someone has just got to have his or her duds a little brighter.why not work on the biggest cuause and ban phorphorus in deturgents and soaps and stop all this mess! ii would think the water quality in the streams in arkansas and oklahoma was probly a lot worse befour man ever came here. can you imagine a herd of buffalo that was so large that it crossed a river for days in one herd that might have number not in thousands but in hundred of thousands.i say that the water quality was shot to hell for a long period of time by todays standards.there were far far more buffalo than we have cattle.can you imagine the erosion and gravel washing down the streams where their was only timber.if you notice their is far more dirt ,gravel etc that washes out of timbered areas than fields.a good stand of grass just about stops erosion right the oppsite of what most enviromentalist tell you.just watch during a big rain,i'm no expert on all of this but i have been around for a while and it doesn't take an expert to see a lot of this enviromental stuff is bull crap,its not for the good of the people and isn't based on sound sience

after reading all the comments on the pollution of the illinois river i am shocked that so many people know so little about water quality or what it needs to be to have a healthy fish population in a river.I see one person talking about run off from construction and sediment from it getting into the river.A river has to have sediment and erosion of soils etc running into it ,its a natural thing that has been going on since the beggining of time and has a nessary place in nature . all that silt and soil in the water during large rains is minerals that are nessary to feed the alge etc that the little critters feed on and the fish feed on them and the big fish feed on them etc and so and so.if you break one link in the food chain you kill out all the species in the river. even a fish poops and a certain amount of poop or fertlizer is nessary also to keep a river healthy.when water is nutrient rich for fish you shouldn't be able to see a peice of white paper the size of a silver dollor 1 ft down in the water.also humans require ahout 60 minerals to live and when you fertlize with npk only you deplete you soil of the other 57 minerals that are essential to life,if the minerals are not in the soils when a plant grows there it don't have all the nessary minerals in it for cattle or humans etc.chicken litter is one of the best sources we have to replace those minerals in depleated soils.i don't own any chicken houses and never have but i sure try to get some chicken litter to put on my garden each year!somebody talked about arsnic in the chicken litter.arsnic is an essential nutrient. all the 60 minerials that are required for humans to live are poisiness in their metallic state to humans at some level or another but when they are in the soil and a plant grows there it breaks them down into a notoxic form for humans and can be used by humans when they eat the plant.another thing i noticed is people complaining about all the phosphorus in the illinois river from the chicken litter, and run off from farms.if you check up on phorphorus you find it is very very stable when spred on soils ,it don't erode ,its what all the fertlizer people called money in the bank ,meaning if phorphorus was cheap you could buy a lot of it spread it on your farm and it would stay in the soil until you spread nitrogen and potassium on the land and plants would use what they need and the rest didn't hurt anything and you could keep doing this until the plants used it up.another thing about the phorphorus reading oklahoma is getting ,if you notice they are only testing for phorphorus during high water during heavy rains. i think you'll find it is giving them exceptionally high reading for phorphorus in the water.they say its to get a reading from the run off of farms,well i don't beleive this at all.from all the news i have watched and from talking to people that run suewer plants they say that very very few suewer plants have the capibility to take phorphorus out of their suewage befour they dump it into the rivers so about all cities dump their phorphorus during high water or big rains .if a fair sized city dumped their phorphorus during low water when the river wasn't running much it would probly kill every fish in it.by checking for phorphorus at just during heavy rain and high water would give and exceptionally high overall reading of phorphorus that would not normally be there,by using those reading and figuring for a year on the flow of the river you could make it look like a lot more phorphourus was going into oklahoma than what really was because the cities are only dumping their phorphorus during high water or heavy rains and not continously all year.another reason i don't think the phorphorus is comming from the chicken farms is if you watched channel 3 news from springfield mo all threw the years they have said many many times about springfield mo dumping their phorphorus into the james river arm of table rock lake and said it caused the large fish kills on table rock lake.i have bass fished table rock lake for closed to 40 years and have seen bass dead by the piles in the james river arm my self from springfield dumping their phorphorus into as stated by channel 3 news and if their is any chichen housed on the james river arm of table rock lake i have never seen any .i have also built houses and many many building in that area .we had a family owned buisness that employed 50 to 80 men at times in construction and i have covered a lot of that area very well.from what i under stand phorphorus that is coming from cities is from laundry detergents and soaps ,i am told that it is not nessary that is just a brightner for clothing and are alturitives if someone has just got to have his or her duds a little brighter.why not work on the biggest cuause and ban phorphorus in deturgents and soaps and stop all this mess! ii would think the water quality in the streams in arkansas and oklahoma was probly a lot worse befour man ever came here. can you imagine a herd of buffalo that was so large that it crossed a river for days in one herd that might have number not in thousands but in hundred of thousands.i say that the water quality was shot to hell for a long period of time by todays standards.there were far far more buffalo than we have cattle.can you imagine the erosion and gravel washing down the streams where their was only timber.if you notice their is far more dirt ,gravel etc that washes out of timbered areas than fields.a good stand of grass just about stops erosion right the oppsite of what most enviromentalist tell you.just watch during a big rain,i'm no expert on all of this but i have been around for a while and it doesn't take an expert to see a lot of this enviromental stuff is bull crap,its not for the good of the people and isn't based on sound sience

another thing i would like to say is to the people talking about adeq and other government agencies not protecting our prestine rivers in northern ankansas is the water quality in northern arkansas was already a lot better than the rest of the state befour it was ever regulated!Now the rest of the state is wanting to put unrealistic water quality standards on the people that live here and make it where people can't even survive on the water sheds of these rivers.well your rivers are just as pristine as ours .it seems to me people in the rest of arkansas want to dump thier sewage ,chemicals ,trash etc into the pristine rivers in the rest of the state and then come up here to get away from what your doing down there.I think befour you complain about us you need to clean up your pristiene rivers to the water quaility we have always had befour you come up here where we live and use our land and natural resources and trash yours.I live on the Kings river watershed and their are lots of cattle and chicken farms on it and always has been but there is very little city sewage running into it and it has always been above even the strictest water quality standards .get your imformation from good sources before you start pointing fingers.the nitrogen that was talked about as poluting different rivers is redicilous as far as coming from farms .people farming uasally only fertlize with it in the spring and most farmers can't afford because the cost is so high.Nitrogen dissapates into air very fast and what the plant doesn't use it dissapates into the air and is not a source of polution is the rivers from farming.Now i don't know about city water that is dumped into the river ,it could contain nitrogen in it.i hope some of you realize if no fertlizer is put on the soil that it will grow no food weather it is corn or soybeans or grass for cattle and that means no food for the masses of people,wake up to reality it must be done and for a good reason.fertlizing is just replacing the nutrients that have been used in the soil by farm crops that we have to eat or cattle or chickens ect that are nessisary for people to live.no fertlizer no food.it amazes me people evidently know so little what is nessisary to grow food.there is very little profit in farming but it has a very quality of life. no farmer has the money to put excess fertlizer on his field that i know of he would go broke .every farmer i know has always done soil test to see what has been used out of the soils and what is needed to replace it so his crops will grow weather he uses chicken litter or commerical fertlizer,i just don't know anybody that can afford to waste fertilizer or can afford even to put enough on to bring it up to soil test to replace the nutrients used by plants.i think if you check into farming you will find farmers do an excellant job with what little money they have and got paid their fair share for what they done you the cost of everybody groceries would go up.it seem to me like a lot of people are biting the hand that feeds them out of ignorance.close to a 100 percent of farmers i know have to have a steady job and come home and take care of their farms evenings and weekends while everybody else is out playing.like i say farmers do an excellant job with what they have and very few people could make with what they have to do that is why farmers are getting less and last year we seen global food shortages for the first time i have seen in my 55 years!there are too many people in our country that don't have a clue what is nessisary to grow food!and no chicken litter is not evil its is a fantastic way of replacing nutrients used out of the soil. a human needs around 60 minerals to live ,a plant needs only 9 to flurish but can get by with 3 minerals so that is what when most people fertlize the use npk but it doesn't replace all the minerals that have gone out in havested crops that the human body needs and chicken litter helps with that.you see all these dieases that people have anymore that just few people got ,check it out most if not all are because we grow our crops in depleted soils,replacing only what the plant needs to survive and not what humans need to survive ,it is a global problem .don't cuss a farmer with your mouth full their not the problem here.i hope people quit condemming them out of ignorance.one thing i do have to agree with the way tyson treat their growers stink!they put everybody on a feed conversion program from what i understand and it don't make any differance if everybody grows a good profitable chicken there is a fair amount of people that after investing a large sum of money that is almost always borrowed and all thier hard work break even on exspencies and no pay for thier labor and investment or they lose a substancial amout of money every batch of chickens!i have a neighbor that is one of the finest people and hard working people you will ever meet and he has lost thousand of dollors on batchs of chickens for the last couple of years besides not getting anything for his labor.he hasn't been even able to pay his gas bill.if his wife didn't have a good job he would have starved out several years ago.i think this fertlizer thing and farmer thing is about as simple as do you want to fertlize feilds or do you want to eat?no fertlizer no food it is that simple.I think people should go to the university of arkansas they have done studies on chicken litter and fertlizers and crops for about as long as i can remember and get some good science or go to some of the universeities in oklahoma that do these studies i'm sure you will find the same result.i think most of the bad imformation on fertlizer is coming from enviromental groups that like the spotted owl that did better in second growth timber but they used people ignorance about it to get timber cutting on the west coast almost shut down and has cost the people of the usa threw the years since hundereds of billion of dollors if not thrilllands in material cost everytime you build anything out of wood and is still costing and for no reason,if a tree isn't cut when it matures it dies,its like a garden harvest it or it rots.i think this fertlizer and phosphorus and our rivers being being put on the erw list and having to have a better water quaility than the rest of the state is another spotted owl thing.people are using it to get what they want !not because of sound science.they are using people's ignorance to get it accomplished.if you make a cess pool to swim in where you live then want to come up here where i live to enjoy nature it sounds pretty corrupt to me especially when you want it keep up to your unreasonable standards that you have no intension of going by yourself where you live!

another thing i would like to say is to the people talking about adeq and other government agencies not protecting our prestine rivers in northern ankansas is the water quality in northern arkansas was already a lot better than the rest of the state befour it was ever regulated!Now the rest of the state is wanting to put unrealistic water quality standards on the people that live here and make it where people can't even survive on the water sheds of these rivers.well your rivers are just as pristine as ours .it seems to me people in the rest of arkansas want to dump thier sewage ,chemicals ,trash etc into the pristine rivers in the rest of the state and then come up here to get away from what your doing down there.I think befour you complain about us you need to clean up your pristiene rivers to the water quaility we have always had befour you come up here where we live and use our land and natural resources and trash yours.I live on the Kings river watershed and their are lots of cattle and chicken farms on it and always has been but there is very little city sewage running into it and it has always been above even the strictest water quality standards .get your imformation from good sources before you start pointing fingers.the nitrogen that was talked about as poluting different rivers is redicilous as far as coming from farms .people farming uasally only fertlize with it in the spring and most farmers can't afford because the cost is so high.Nitrogen dissapates into air very fast and what the plant doesn't use it dissapates into the air and is not a source of polution is the rivers from farming.Now i don't know about city water that is dumped into the river ,it could contain nitrogen in it.i hope some of you realize if no fertlizer is put on the soil that it will grow no food weather it is corn or soybeans or grass for cattle and that means no food for the masses of people,wake up to reality it must be done and for a good reason.fertlizing is just replacing the nutrients that have been used in the soil by farm crops that we have to eat or cattle or chickens ect that are nessisary for people to live.no fertlizer no food.it amazes me people evidently know so little what is nessisary to grow food.there is very little profit in farming but it has a very quality of life. no farmer has the money to put excess fertlizer on his field that i know of he would go broke .every farmer i know has always done soil test to see what has been used out of the soils and what is needed to replace it so his crops will grow weather he uses chicken litter or commerical fertlizer,i just don't know anybody that can afford to waste fertilizer or can afford even to put enough on to bring it up to soil test to replace the nutrients used by plants.i think if you check into farming you will find farmers do an excellant job with what little money they have and got paid their fair share for what they done you the cost of everybody groceries would go up.it seem to me like a lot of people are biting the hand that feeds them out of ignorance.close to a 100 percent of farmers i know have to have a steady job and come home and take care of their farms evenings and weekends while everybody else is out playing.like i say farmers do an excellant job with what they have and very few people could make with what they have to do that is why farmers are getting less and last year we seen global food shortages for the first time i have seen in my 55 years!there are too many people in our country that don't have a clue what is nessisary to grow food!and no chicken litter is not evil its is a fantastic way of replacing nutrients used out of the soil. a human needs around 60 minerals to live ,a plant needs only 9 to flurish but can get by with 3 minerals so that is what when most people fertlize the use npk but it doesn't replace all the minerals that have gone out in havested crops that the human body needs and chicken litter helps with that.you see all these dieases that people have anymore that just few people got ,check it out most if not all are because we grow our crops in depleted soils,replacing only what the plant needs to survive and not what humans need to survive ,it is a global problem .don't cuss a farmer with your mouth full their not the problem here.i hope people quit condemming them out of ignorance.one thing i do have to agree with the way tyson treat their growers stink!they put everybody on a feed conversion program from what i understand and it don't make any differance if everybody grows a good profitable chicken there is a fair amount of people that after investing a large sum of money that is almost always borrowed and all thier hard work break even on exspencies and no pay for thier labor and investment or they lose a substancial amout of money every batch of chickens!i have a neighbor that is one of the finest people and hard working people you will ever meet and he has lost thousand of dollors on batchs of chickens for the last couple of years besides not getting anything for his labor.he hasn't been even able to pay his gas bill.if his wife didn't have a good job he would have starved out several years ago.i think this fertlizer thing and farmer thing is about as simple as do you want to fertlize feilds or do you want to eat?no fertlizer no food it is that simple.I think people should go to the university of arkansas they have done studies on chicken litter and fertlizers and crops for about as long as i can remember and get some good science or go to some of the universeities in oklahoma that do these studies i'm sure you will find the same result.i think most of the bad imformation on fertlizer is coming from enviromental groups that like the spotted owl that did better in second growth timber but they used people ignorance about it to get timber cutting on the west coast almost shut down and has cost the people of the usa threw the years since hundereds of billion of dollors if not thrilllands in material cost everytime you build anything out of wood and is still costing and for no reason,if a tree isn't cut when it matures it dies,its like a garden harvest it or it rots.i think this fertlizer and phosphorus and our rivers being being put on the erw list and having to have a better water quaility than the rest of the state is another spotted owl thing.people are using it to get what they want !not because of sound science.they are using people's ignorance to get it accomplished.if you make a cess pool to swim in where you live then want to come up here where i live to enjoy nature it sounds pretty corrupt to me especially when you want it keep up to your unreasonable standards that you have no intension of going by yourself where you live!