The Clintons Bad Water Crisis

[Dave]

Obviously the situation in Flint has been big news both regionally as well as nationally and of course the political candidates have taken note of the situation. To no ones surprise, Hillary Clinton jumped on the Flint bandwagon and went as far as to demand that Governor Snyder resign. As it turns out though, the Clintons have had their own issues with clean water... granted it was during her husbands tenure as governor of Arkansas. The point here of course is that Hillary is no stranger to corruption and ethical lapses over her years in the public eye and she was most certainly well aware of the situation in Arkansas as its been reported that she and Bill on at least a few occasions were guest of the owner of of Tyson Foods, John Tyson. Even back then the Clintons were the poster children for everything that is wrong with politics. Its funny that people who would vote for Hillary would do saying that republicans can't be trusted, are all about the almighty $$$ and so forth yet the Clintons are 'more republican' then republicans are.... weird how that works!

THE 1992 CAMPAIGN: Candidate's Record; Arkansas Water Pollution Looms as a Campaign Issue

EUREKA SPRINGS, Ark.— Four years after George Bush took a famous boat ride through Boston's polluted harbor and took control of the environmental debate in his Presidential quest, environmental specialists in the Administration say Mr. Bush's re-election campaign is now deciding whether to make a similar campaign stop here in northwest Arkansas.

Across this splendid region of hump-backed hills, hardwood forests and emerald pastures an angry struggle has erupted over wastes from hundreds of millions of farm animals.

The waste is draining from the land and polluting the White River and its tributaries, a network of streams nationally acclaimed for trout fishing and canoeing, and critics blame Gov. Bill Clinton, the Democrat likely to run against Mr. Bush, for being slow to react.

Mr. Clinton's top environmental aides vigorously defend him, saying that in his 12 years as this state's chief executive he has balanced two important concerns, economic growth and environmental protection.

But both Mr. Clinton's critics and supporters say the deterioration of the White River region has made him vulnerable to political attack.

"Clinton's guys in Little Rock say they have the situation under control," said Skip Halterman, a 47-year-old guide who has fished in the White River basin of northwestern Arkansas all his life. "It's not true. Not a one of them has walked these streams, floated these rivers or seen the pollution up close. What they're doing is all a show to keep what's happening to our water from becoming Bill Clinton's Boston Harbor."

Officials of President Bush's campaign organization are considering a campaign stop in this area to highlight Mr. Clinton's environmental record, or sending a television production crew to the region to film a political advertisement, say top environmental policy specialists in the White House, the Office of Management and Budget and the Interior Department.

In some ways, the deterioration of the White River is a new problem for Governor Clinton. As a candidate for President, he is being judged by different standards than he has been while Governor. During his first term, from 1978 to 1980, only a dozen or so advocates were prominently expressing concern about the state's environment. An Interest in Jobs

There was more concern about the economy in this, one of the nation's poorest states. Many people argue that the most pressing issue should be economic development, and a certain amount of environmental cost is the price of propserity, and aggressive environmental regulations raise costs and could make the state less attractive for industrial investments.

In the interest of jobs, Mr. Clinton encouraged the development of a formidable animal agriculture industry, and it is now the nation's eighth largest. Much of the industry, which produces 1 billion animals a year, is in the state's northwestern region, where they produce as much organic waste each year as New York and Los Angeles. Most of that winds up being spread on the land as fertilizer.

His aides say that when he learned that scientists were linking declining water quality to the industry's wastes, he formed a task force to solve the problem.

But Mr. Halterman and other critics point out that the 28-member panel is dominated by representatives of the poultry, hog and cattle industries. Several panelists, including some state officials, agreed that the group's agenda was heavily influenced by representatives of the poultry industry, the Farm Bureau and cattlemen's association.

Mr. Clinton's critics also noted that he formed the task force only after John Tyson, vice-chairman of operations for Tyson Foods formed a similar panel to develop practices that would minimize pollution from chicken farms. Tourist Industry in Jeopardy

The condition of the White River is now changing the views of many Arkansas residents. The river is known to fishermen nationwide for its trophy-size trout. And its problems strike at the heart of what many people think is special about living here. As Bill Bowen, Mr. Clinton's chief of staff, put it recently: "The eternal paradox of Arkansas is that all of us want a modern economy, a VCR, a big pickup -- and we still want to be able drive no more than a mile to be in the woods and go fishing."

The White River's problems seem to be jeopardizing the second half of that equation. Each of the last two summers, dead German brown trout and rainbow trout washed up by the dozens in the tailwaters below the dam that forms Bull Shoals Lake, suffocated by a lack of oxygen in the water. Potentially dangerous concentrations of fecal bacteria have made more than 400 miles of streams unfit for swimming.

Canoeists and fishermen no longer flock here as they once did. Hotel and motel owners say the region's $300 million a year tourism industry is in jeopardy.

Almost everybody interviewed for this article said that while Mr. Clinton has been in office, 1978-80, then 1982 until now, the water quality in the White River and its countless tributaries has grown worse. The only exceptions were his top aides and executives of poultry and hog companies, led by Tyson Foods, based in Springdale. Wide Extent of Pollution

The debate over whether it is fair to blame Mr. Clinton is likely to continue through the Presidential campaign. What is not debatable is the extent of the pollution.

This resort town once had pure mineral springs and streams so clear that the gravel gleamed like polished amethyst and jade. Today, not a single spring is safe to drink.

After light rains, animal wastes wash off the land, and springs in neighboring Boone County become more contaminated with fecal bacteria than New York Harbor, a study by the United States Geological Survey, a unit of the Interior Department, found.

Nearly every scientist who has studied the contamination says manure is being too heavily applied as a fertilizer and soil conditioner to cropland and pastures. Nitrogen and phosphorous not used up by the crops drains into streams and ground water.

But in a region where most homes have shallow wells, and fresh water is the lifeblood of an economy based on cattle, hogs and chickens, many residents have a more pointed explanation for the contamination. They say that the deteriorating water quality is a result of political choices, especially Governor Clinton's reluctance to challenge Arkansas's rich and powerful poultry industry.

"In his first term, Bill Clinton took on Georgia-Pacific," to stop clear-cutting of timber in the state by the the huge paper and wood products company, but was unsuccessful, said James Lingle, an environmental lawyer in Rogers who has known and supported the Governor for 20 years. "It was a big factor in why he lost after one term," Mr. Lingle said. "You can fight that big industrial windmill like the paper companies and the chicken processors, or you can be Governor of this state. When he was re-elected in 1982, Bill Clinton decided he wanted to be Governor."

In 1990, after nearly a decade as the state's chief executive, Mr. Clinton formed the task force on animal waste. Its mission was to develop voluntary programs to persuade poultry and cattle farmers to store and spread manure more carefully. It was also to rewrite an old rule regulating the storage and use of liquid wastes from dairies, hog farms and egg-laying houses.

The task force's work has raised a furor in this region. Environmentalists say its proposals are almost identical to minimal rules that are already in place and will do little to clean the water. But farmers fear rising costs and bristle at more Government interference in their business.

Both groups, as well as people involved in tourism say that formation of the task force was a political gesture, and point out that it did not occur until Mr. Clinton decided to run for President. 'A Big Political Game'

"What I'm worried about is that we farmers are pawns now in a big political game," said Jerry Hunton, a 41-year-old dairy and poultry farmer from Prairie Grove who is a Democratic first-term State Representative who says he supports Mr. Clinton.

Clinton's top environmental aides are working hard to counter the impression that the task force was motivated by political considerations. "We didn't know as much about this kind of pollution as we do now," said Kenneth L. Smith, Mr. Clinton's special assistant for natural and cultural resources. "As soon as this was brought to his attention, Governor Clinton acted as forcefully as state and Federal law would allow him to."

Pollution experts say Mr. Clinton had ample warning but has been consistently slow to react. In 1983, the development of a sinkhole in a creek near a water treatment plant in Green Forest allowed a million gallons a day of partially treated chicken wastes from the plant to drain into the underground water supply used by Green Forest residents. Seventeen months later, Mr. Clinton declared 60 square miles of Green Forest an "imminent health threat emergency."

In 1989, residents of Clifty confronted Tyson and the Clinton administration again after the Department of Pollution Control and Ecology allowed the company to spread chicken wastes from two plants in Rogers across mountain pastures there. The state also issued a permit for Tyson to build a 471,600-gallon chicken waste lagoon within 200 feet of a stream.

Wastes flowed off the hillsides, killing all the fish in two ponds built by John Obenshain, a cattle rancher in the community. Bacteria also contaminated his well, and the wells of several more families in the area, according to tests by the state Health Department.

"I was one of those guys who used to think that what happens on the other side of the fence is no concern to me and what happens on my side is no concern to them," said Mr. Obenshain. "But when it's coming over the fence and under the fence, I decided to do something about it."

Tyson voluntarily closed the lagoon in 1990 and pulled out of the community after the dispute became one of the region's top television news stories. John Tyson, the 38-year-old grandson of the founder of the $4 billion-a-year company, the nation's largest poultry producer and processor, said his company no longer uses lagoons to store plant wastes and will end the practice of spreading waste on land next month.

"We're all responsible for northwestern Arkansas," Mr. Tyson said. "We've got to get out of finger pointing and get down to what really needs to be done here. I live here. Our employees live here. It's a beautiful area, and we mean to keep it that way."

In little more than a generation northwest Arkansas has grown from a land of chicken-scratch farmers raising a few cattle, hens and hogs into one of the country's centers of industrialized animal agriculture. But the region's 350 million chickens and turkeys, 400,000 cattle and 500,000 hogs produce huge amounts of organic waste.

Amid the concern about pollution, farmers look at all the waste, particularly the 300,000 tons of "litter" cleaned out of chicken houses, and see grass, miles of green grass for grazing. The litter, spread across the land, turned ruined ground into fertile soil. Washington and Benton counties west of here are now productive cattle-raising areas after being fertilized.

"When I came here in the 1940's, this land was nothing but dry sand with gullies so deep you could hide a tractor in them," said Floyd Hunton, Jerry Hunton's father who established the family's farm in Prairie Grove. "Chicken litter made this country."

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/21/us/1992-campaign-candidate-s-reco...

[XLFD]

Great job of the correlation between Ms. Clinton's current words and the hypocrisy of what she and her husband did for the denizens of Arkansas when they had control over it.  She wasn't calling for her hubby's resignation then, or doing anything recognizable that would have positively affected the health and well-being of that state. 

Another article by the NY Times around the time stated:  "Mr. Clinton is also widely criticized for his environmental record. A study by the Institute for Southern Studies, a research group in Durham, N.C., listed Arkansas 48th among the states in its recent Green Index, which ranked states in terms of the severity of their environmental problems and the rigor of their environmental enforcement."

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/22/us/clinton-record-in-leading-arka...

They effectively chose economic development over the ecologic development in their partnerships with businesses, much like Snyder is being accused of.