An environmental group, Waterkeeper Alliance, says floods from Hurricane Matthew swamped 98 barns on 27 poultry farms and 15 manure lagoons on nine hog farms in North Carolina based on reconnaissance flights over storm-hit territory. State environmental officials say their aerial observations determined one hog farm had two partial breaches, the most serious type of damage for release of animal waste from a manure lagoon.
Authorities are in the early stages of assessing damage as hurricane recovery begins. The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality began sampling water quality downstream from hog farms last week, and says tests will continue for a few weeks “to ensure we understand any potential impacts on the health of our residents downstream.”
North Carolina is one of the largest hog and broiler-chicken producing states in the nation, with tens of millions of animals produced annually. The largest hog slaughter plant in the nation, with a daily capacity of 32,500 hogs, is in Tar Heel, NC. Environmental groups say the flooding is a severe test of whether large-scale livestock farms can keep animal waste from mixing with storm water.
“The threat is not past” although water levels are receding, said Will Hendrick of Waterkeeper Alliance. “We have all the dead animals” to dispose of. As early as today, the group hopes to update its aerial maps to show livestock farms before the hurricane and soon afterward. “Structural damage is hard to document aerially,” said Hendrick, who declined to speculate on breaches of lagoons or livestock losses.
State environmental officials said they found 14 flooded hog lagoons after flying over the Neuse, Lumber and Cape Fear river valleys last week. DEQ secretary Donald van der Vaart said, “Our priority is on confirming that lagoons are structurally sound and testing water to ensure the environment is protected.” If tests find polluted water, the DEQ will notify farmers, who usually have 10 days to say what they have done to stop the discharges.
The North Carolina Pork Council has said fewer than 3,000 hogs died during Hurricane Matthew. By comparison, in 1999 Hurricane Floyd killed 21,474 hogs, flooded 55 lagoons and breached six lagoons. The state bought out 42 hog farms on the floodplain and removed 103 lagoons in response to Floyd. There are more than 2,100 hog farms in North Carolina.
The hog industry says that when a lagoon is inundated, “a small portion of the wastewater” is carried away by floodwaters, which dilute the material. In a breach, the walls of a lagoon collapse and all the material in the lagoon, wastewater and solid matter, is washed away. In the days after the hurricane, Waterkeeper said floodwater struck poultry bans, “killing the animals inside and washing their untreated feces and urine downstream,” and “hog waste lagoons are being flooded and their untreated contents containing dangerous bacteria and viruses are also headed downstream.”
Environmentalists have argued repeatedly that the large confinement farms in North Carolina generate unmanageable amounts of waste and spread foul odors.