High winds and heavy rains are possible along the East Coast from Florida northward through the Carolinas, said the National Hurricane Center on Monday. A private forecaster said the hurricane could threaten citrus crops in Florida but the North Carolina Pork Council said hog farmers could handle the expected 4 to 10 inches of rain without damage to manure lagoons.
The National Hurricane Center said a storm surge and dangerous winds “are expected along portions of the Florida east coast and the costs of Georgia and South Carolina, regardless of the exact track of Dorian’s center.” The risk of similar conditions “continues to increase along the coast (of) North Carolina,” it said.
Meterologist Brad Harvey of Maxar Technologies said Dorian “has the likelihood of impacting more of the citrus groves along the I-95 corridor with the high winds forecast to knock fruit off of the trees as well as knock over the trees themselves.” Florida growers are still recovering from Hurricane Irma in 2017, which reduced the state’s orange crop by one-third, to 50 million boxes.
“The North Carolina pork industry is prepared for the approach of Hurricane Dorian and is ready to respond as necessary to protect human health, animals and the environment,” said the North Carolina Pork Council. The farm group said its survey for producers indicated that “lagoons have been well managed through the crop-growing season and can receive the amounts of rain forecasted.”
North Carolina is the No. 2 state in hog production and No. 3 in poultry. It has 6,500 industrial-scale hog, poultry and dairy farms, mostly in the eastern half of the state. Environmentalists have argued for years that large livestock farms should not be allowed on low-lying land because of the risk of flooding, which could release millions of gallons of raw manure from pond-like lagoons. After Hurricane Florence, the state Department of Environmental Quality said 43 lagoons flooded or overflowed and six lagoons had structural damage. There are roughly 3,700 open-top manure lagoons in the state.
Gov. Roy Cooper’s office estimated agricultural losses of $2.4 billion from Hurricane Florence. Field crops, led by tobacco, soybeans, sweet potatoes, corn, and cotton, account for the lion’s share of the losses. Hurricane Florence killed 3.5 million poultry and 5,500 hogs.