CURRY
SCHOOL BOARD PRESIDENT GREG ADAMS praises Suggs for bringing in “new determination and energy.” The board has had its own share of criticism, especially over its apparent unfamiliarity with Roberts Rules of Order, its meetings marked with sometimes lengthy debates over the appropriateness of motions and so forth. But Adams said the fact that Suggs was hired with a 6 to 1 vote (former board member Michael Nellums cast the no vote) was a sign that the board, not historically known for felicity, was willing to work together for the common good. He said he could recall only four votes along racial lines by the current board, but those four were significant.
Two were on the election of officers: He was elected president by the three white members plus Diane Curry, and Leslie Fisken lost the secretary position after black board members Curry, McAdoo and Johnson voted no, with Shepard abstaining. The third was the rezoning of districts and the fourth was on whether to go into executive session to discuss a “demotion.” That session was called for by McAdoo after Suggs presented the personnel changes to the board that included the six positions he proposed to eliminate. No vote was taken when the board returned from the session. But Adams says he is “more optimistic about things,” noting that “progress can be messy.” He
said the public should not despair when things do get messy. “Name another large, multicultural, multiracial institution with a multicultural, multiracial board that functions smoothly all the time. Can you give me one? What we’re trying to do is really hard. And plus, it’s in the context of a school system with a difficult history where people have been mistreated and neglected ... in our lifetime.” Adams said the public cynicism “is deadly for us. The next step is apathy. Apathy does not help us.” The board does not always agree, and those disagreements are “honest,” Adams said. “I think this is better for kids in the long run.”
BRIAN CHILSON
MCADOO
BRIAN CHILSON
“I don’t question his intentions,” Cathy Koehler, president of the teachers union, said of the superintendent. “I believe he wants what is best [for the students].” But, she said, she believes Suggs has not asked the right questions or listened to teachers — something that’s surprised her. “We believed we were going to be partners,” she said, after teachers’ first encounter with him as a candidate for the superintendent’s job. When Suggs was hired last summer, in fact, Koehler called it a “great day” for the district, and said he was by far the best candidate. Interviewed a couple of weeks ago, Koehler said he was the best candidate — but that she would like to see the district use a different search firm and come up with better candidates next time the board is seeking a new superintendent, something that happens, on average, every two to four years or so.
HOGS ON THE BUFFALO, CONT. Continued from page 10 field is not correctly included in the NMP, which instead incorrectly listed land not leased by C&H as Field 5. “They will not land-apply on that field until the discrepancy is resolved,” Marks said. She said that there was no hard and fast timeline for C&H to make the necessary corrections. “It’ll be a minor revision,” she said. “We don’t feel as if the mistakes that were made in the permit, at this point … are something that we’re going to call in the whole NMP over. Especially since there’s been no harm caused — there’s been no spreading on those fields that was not appropriate. We want it to be corrected, but there has been no unlawful spreading at this point.” Hannah Chang, an attorney with EarthJustice, a California-based environmental law firm that is part of the legal team representing the coalition, sharply disagreed with Marks’ assessment. “If they want to add this new Field 5 … that’s north of the current Field 5, that is 16
FEBRUARY 20, 2014
ARKANSAS TIMES
not in the NMP,” Chang said. “It’s not even in the picture. That’s a substantial change under their general permit. So they need to get public notice and comment and follow an actually transparent process that involves the public, everything that didn’t happen in the first place.” Further confusing matters, the first quarterly report from the UA testing team used the incorrect maps from the NMP, leading the coalition to believe that the scientists had tested the wrong areas altogether, and causing alarm among some landowners that their property — not leased to C&H — had been tested without their permission. These Mt. Judea landowners sent a letter to the UA research team expressing their concern. Sharpley, the scientist heading the testing, said that he didn’t correct the maps on the quarterly report because UA’s role, by design, is supposed to be completely independent of both state agencies and the relevant stakeholders. “The fields were improperly designated,” Sharpley said. “We knew those fields were mapped wrong … before we did any testing.
We’ve been monitoring the fields that we have permission to monitor, the fields that were permitted to receive manure.” Since the errors in the NMP were a matter to be resolved between ADEQ and C&H, Sharpley didn’t think it was his place to highlight the errors in his quarterly report. “In hindsight, I would have done things differently,” he said. “It’s a lot of confusion, and it’s unfortunate.” Regarding the concerned landowners, Sharpley said that the UA group did not do testing on any land not leased to C&H. The scientists did test on the field leased to C&H but not correctly labeled in the NMP. Though C&H cannot spread on that field until the NMP is corrected, Sharpley and ADEQ said that this testing would be useful in establishing a baseline for future monitoring. “If there is a clarification that makes this all make sense, we’re happy to know it,” Chang said. “If the UA study could be revised in a way that actually tests the land that will be receiving impacts from C&H waste, then all the better.” But, Chang said, these problems
don’t inspire confidence in the NMP or the regulatory process. “These misrepresentations confirm the fact that it really did fly under the radar and that there just wasn’t a careful eye to this application,” she said. “The fact that these misrepresentations took place are reason enough to reopen the whole permit. It’s not just reopening it with respect to this field, but with respect to the entire permit because the permit was applied for and approved based on information that was not fully disclosed. Under the regulations, that’s plenty of grounds for ADEQ to reopen it and at least get public comment.” Gov. Mike Beebe’s spokesperson Matt DeCample said that the important point was that “they tested the fields where the nutrients were being spread. They didn’t miss any of those fields. “There’s no bad news [in the first report], which is great. But to really allay concerns, it’s going to take more than the first round of tests, and we know that. We have confidence in the process and the science.”