Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon News

Let the slugfest begin
GOP rivals race to accuse one another of the sin of "going negative."
By Anthony York
[10/26/99]

Brains for hire
William Bennett offers unofficial counsel to a number of Republican presidential wannabes.
By Jake Tapper
[10/26/99]

"Gay panic"
In an effort to keep their client from the death penalty, defense lawyers in the Matthew Shepard murder trial evoke a strange "gay panic" defense.
By Dave Cullen
[10/26/99]

Mountain road
When J.H. Hatfield fled New York's media frenzy last week, he made his way back home to the Ozarks, where a man's mistakes are his own damn business.
By Suzi Parker
[10/25/99]

Not standing Pat
Buchanan revamps his presidential campaign and image by joining the Reform Party and making "racial reconciliation" a pet issue. But just how warm and fuzzy can the new Pat be?
By Jake Tapper
[10/25/99]

Complete archives for News

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Environmentalists are charging that plans to allow farmers to get rid of flooded hog wastes by essentially spreading the toxic overflow more widely will threaten the state's drinking water supplies. The state's Department of the Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) is trying to referee the slugfest between the two sides.

"We met with representatives of the environmental and hog farming communities and tried to craft a policy that struck a balance that will protect the environment and allow the hog operators to continue farming, " says DENR spokesman Don Reuter. "Now, we're catching heat from both sides."

In eastern North Carolina hogs out number people by a nearly 5 to 1 margin. There are, or were before the floods, more than 9 million hogs and 2 million people. The floods were disastrous not only because of the unprecedented extent of the floodwaters, but because the waters were contaminated by pollutants, including human wastes, petrochemicals, pesticides, fertilizer and, most extensively, hog wastes, which are stored in open-air storage pits called lagoons.

The environmental community is concerned that under DENR's plan, hog operations with overloaded lagoons will be allowed to draw down lagoon levels by spraying the overload onto already saturated fields, causing the waste to run off into surface waters and seep into groundwater, causing more contamination of drinking water.

Hog farmers, meanwhile, are displeased with the state's plan because it will not allow farms that have been unable to manage their hog wastes to restock, once their current stock is shipped to market. They are also unhappy because hog lagoons that are more than half destroyed will not be allowed to rebuild in the flood plain.

For years the swine industry has been allowed to operate virtually unregulated in North Carolina. The few ordinances that applied to the field were frequently toothless because the agencies charged with enforcing those laws were denied sufficient funding by the legislature. But the extensive post-flood damage has strengthened the hand of those pushing to regulate the industry.

Even Gov. James Hunt has warmed to increased restrictions on hog farming, as well as on the rampant development that made the floods such a human and natural disaster.

Next page | Blue baby syndrome?