HurricaneRevealsFlawsinFarmLaw

Hurricane Reveals Flaws in Farm Law
October 17, 1999
New York Times

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By PETER T. KILBORN
ENANSVILLE, N.C. -- In the aftermath of Hurricane Floyd, loose
regulations that helped eastern North Carolina become the nation's
biggest producer of turkeys and the second biggest of hogs have come
back to haunt the state's public health and its environment.
Officials say that the September storm that hit the region harder than
anywhere else, killing 48 people and leaving behind more than $1
billion in largely inescapable damage, also left a vast amount of
damage that might have been averted: incalculable and continuing
hazards in ground water, wells and rivers from animal waste, mostly
from giant hog farms.
For years, farmers had been free to build hog and poultry operations
as big as they wanted and wherever they liked. They were allowed to
dig huge pits for animal waste, without regard to the water table or
the health and sensibilities of neighbors.
In the hurricane, feces and urine soaked the terrain and flowed into
rivers from the overburdened waste pits the industry calls lagoons.
The storm killed more than two million turkeys, chickens and livestock
in the region, and waste from the farms is expected to keep leaching
into the water supply until next spring.
"We do have a practical problem here," Gov. James B. Hunt Jr. said.
Normally by mid-October, Hunt said, farmers would have reduced the
levels of waste in the lagoons, where it evolves naturally into
nutrients that are sprayed on crops.
But the lagoons are brimming with flood-bloated waste, and there is
less use for it now. The growth of crops slows in the fall, and many
fields have been saturated or rendered fallow by the storm.
[On Thursday the State Department of Environment and Natural Resources
announced an "emergency waste management strategy" for hog and poultry
farms in an effort to keep waste out of the water supply. The agency
is allowing farmers to spread waste to more fields, but it prohibited
reconstruction of severely hurricane-damaged waste lagoons in the
flood plain.
In the current soaked condition of the land, some waste sprayed on the
fields will spread. "We recognize this policy could contribute to
water quality problems through the winter," said Bill Holman, the
state's assistant secretary for environmental protection. "There are
so many swine operations we have a long way to go."]
In Duplin County, of which Kenansville is the seat, and across the
rest of North Carolina east of Interstate 95, Hurricane Floyd has
exposed the hazards of one of farming's great innovations of the
1980's and 1990's and the political liaisons that helped it develop.
That is the practice of industrial farming, or raising livestock and
poultry in close and confined quarters.
It allows farmers to raise thousands of hogs on land where they could
once raise only scores and gives them tight and automated control over
their livestocks' diets, health and growth. The farmers raise pigs
under contract to major hog processors, known in the business as
"integrators," like Murphy Family Farms of Duplin County. The
processor supervises the construction of barns, supplies the pigs and
their feed and medicine and hauls them off to slaughter after the four
or five months it takes for them to grow to 250 pounds.
In eastern North Carolina, this assembly-line production of hogs and
turkeys has come as a savior for tobacco farmers whose incomes plunged
with the decline in smoking. But Hurricane Floyd has stirred
controversy over a means of capturing the wastes of a hog, which
produces four times that of a human.
Human waste in North Carolina and most of the nation must be captured
in public sewers and private septic systems to prevent the spread of
disease. But the state lets the waste of hogs, which carry many human
diseases, be captured by nothing more than a cesspool. The poultry
waste is far less a problem.
The state had few rules for industrial farming until 1993, when it
enacted a law to prohibit livestock farms from intentionally
contaminating the public water supply. Then, two years ago, it put a
moratorium on hog farms.
In Duplin County, 50 miles south of Raleigh and the home to 42,000
people and 2.2 million hogs, Dr. Hervy Kornegay, a family physician
and chairman of the County Board of Health, said no disease
attributable to the flooding had developed. But as waste seeps into
the private wells that half the homes use for drinking water, Dr.
Kornegay said, "the greatest potential for harm would be severe
gastroenteritis, with diarrhea and vomiting."
And the seepage is under way. Ronnie Kennedy, county director for
environmental health, said that of 310 private wells he had tested for
contamination since the storm, 9 percent, or three times the average
across eastern North Carolina, had fecal coliform bacteria. Normally,
tests showing any hint of feces in drinking water, an indication that
it can be carrying disease-causing pathogens, are cause for immediate
action.
Even before the hurricane there had been flooding and ruptures of the
waste pits that contaminated rivers and killed millions of fish. And
with public fury rising over the acrid, ammonia-laden odors from the
waste lagoons, which carry for more than a mile, Governor Hunt had
begun to call for restraints on an industry he had long allowed free
rein.
Hunt, a Democrat, backs the Legislature's 1997 moratorium on
construction of new and expanded lagoons, which remains in effect
until July 2001. In April, the Governor proposed a plan to phase out
the lagoon system over 10 years while engineers devise safer methods
for disposing of the hog waste. He also brought a former Sierra Club
lobbyist, Holman, the environmental protection official, into his
administration.
"My views and most views have evolved to where we have to take
stronger action to clear up our water and rivers," Governor Hunt said.
"We need a strong economy for our people, but we cannot sacrifice the
environment for jobs."
Molly Diggins, the North Carolina director for the Sierra Club, said
that the state had recently made progress in passing environmental
laws that would not have passed earlier, adding, "But Floyd has set
everyone back on their heels about how much more has to be done."
Any legislation to tighten regulations on hog farms meets the stiff
resistance of companies like Murphy Family Farms, the nation's biggest
hog producer.
"Whatever you do here," said Dennis McBride, the State Secretary for
Health and Human Services, "you're going to end up in court. There's
no question in my mind about that whatsoever. We're not dealing with a
group that's going to go without a fight." The industry, whose North
Carolina Pork Council vies with tobacco as the state's mightiest
lobby, contends that the lagoon system held up well in the storm, that
the bacteria in wells might have come not from hogs but from people,
factories, flooded water treatment plants or migrating geese. The
council said that only 3 of some 4,000 waste lagoons ruptured.
To protect the system, the council sent the state's Congressional
delegation in Washington a document, dated Sept. 29 and entitled,
"Draft Legislation for Flood Relief for Farmers in Eastern North
Carolina." It seeks $1 billion in grants for farmers in 41 counties to
repair or replace storm-damaged facilities, including waste lagoons,
as they were originally built.
Governor Hunt said of the document, "It's 'stunning and it's wrong."
Beth Anne Mumford, the council's spokeswoman, said the document,
disclosed on Oct. 8 by The News and Observer of Raleigh, had been
misunderstood. "Its intent was to be sure assistance wasn't
prohibited," Ms. Mumford said. "We're not illegal operations, so we
shouldn't be punished."
Nowhere is the industry more entrenched, or its political power
stronger, or the hurricane's farm damage greater, than in Duplin
County. With 48 hogs for every one resident, the county has the
densest concentration of hogs in the country.
The rectangular lagoons of reddish-brown waste, many of them covering
more than an acre, dot the flat countryside. Enclosed within dikes,
the lagoons sit behind rows of single-story, gray-metal structures as
large as football fields that house the hogs. The hog waste flows
through slotted boards in the barns to a cellar, and then is carried
by plastic pipes to a waste lagoon. The lagoons now and then burp with
the bubbles that mark the natural transformation of feces and urine to
the nutrients that farmers spray over pastures and fields of corn,
tobacco, soybeans and rye.
In the hurricane, said Rick Shiver, regional supervisor for the State
Division of Water Quality, many of the lagoons flooded and the three
that ruptured were in Duplin County.
Two of the ruptured lagoons were on farms under contract to Murphy
Family Farms of Rose Hill, on the southern edge of the county. Wendell
Murphy, the company's founder and chief executive and a major
contributor to Governor Hunt's campaigns, perfected the current system
of raising hogs for producers. It is the major reason the state's hog
population has grown to more than nine million from less than three
million a decade ago.
Murphy was a State Senator for 10 years, until 1992, and as a
legislator supported measures curbing counties' power to zone out hog
farms. Murphy would not comment for this article, said his
spokeswoman, Lois Britt.
Ms. Britt said the company thought that counties should look within
for solutions to the environmental issues. "It's easy to look from
outside and say what's wrong," she said. She said hog farming provided
jobs and tax revenue.
"The hog lagoons," she added, "held up fine."
Clearly, many farmers have mastered the intricate balance of waste
production, lagoon levels and spraying. The Division of Water Quality
said that it had never recorded a complaint against the hog farm of
Tony Jones, 30, of Mount Olive.
Like nearly all hog farmers, Jones works under contract to a producer.
He raises 4,100 pigs in six barns and has two waste lagoons.
He said he constantly tested the lagoon waste. "If it needs lime to
keep the odor down," he said, "I add lime. If it needs pumping, I pump
on days that are optimum for pumping."
But other farms stir frequent complaints. Becky and Danny Lancaster,
who operate a rural welding supply business, live within a mile of
three farms they call offensive. Mrs. Lancaster, the mother of two
teen-agers, said: "You don't plan birthday parties outside. You no
longer plan things. You plan around the odors and flies."
She keeps a log of odors that waft her way. In September, she made
entries on six days. "Nasty, musty, stifling odor in the air," she
wrote on Sept. 9, a humid and rainy day. "Difficult to breathe. Feel
like suffocating. Like an old outhouse." On Sept. 23, she wrote,
"Smell of urine strong in air."
She produced another log she used to keep of the flies she swatted in
the office. On May 22, 1996, she said, "I killed 1,192. The next day I
killed 1,100. The next day it was 1,140." Flies appear in January,
too.
For years, said H. C. Powers, a 77-year-old retired school principal
and current chairman of the six-member Duplin County Board of
Commissioners, residents have been complaining of odors and flies. But
three board members always support the industry, so efforts by Powers
and two others to regulate the farms die in 3-to-3 votes.
Still, many people here say more pollution control would only imperil
more farmers, who are already struggling. Pork prices have been
plunging for more than a year, so much so that Murphy has agreed to
sell out, for $450 million, to Smithfield Farms Inc. of Virginia, the
nation's leading slaughterhouse.
The County Manager, James W. Barnhardt Jr., said farms in the county
that had $620 million in revenue two years ago were expected to
receive $170 million less this year. "We are trying to diversify,"
Barnhardt said. "On the other hand, Duplin County is a rural
agricultural county. That's what we do."