At least eight manure lagoons in hog-heavy southeastern North Carolina were breached, flooded or “overtopped” due to relentless rainfall from Hurricane Florence and flooding that is expected to continue for days, said a state official on Monday. The North Carolina Pork Council, a farm group, said “we remain concerned about the the potential impact of these record-shattering floods.”
Secretary Michael Regan said the breached lagoon was in Duplin County, about 70 miles north of Wilmington, near where Florence made landfall on Friday. The two inundated lagoons were in Jones County, about 80 miles northeast of Wilmington and a total of five “overtopped” lagoons were in Jones and Pender counties. Pender County, is 30 miles north of Wilmington. “Reports are continuing to come in,” said Regan during a briefing led by Gov. Roy Cooper.
North Carolina is the second-largest pork-producing state in the nation and ranks third in broiler chickens. There are 6,500 industrial-size hog, poultry and dairy operations across the state and more than 3,700 open-topped manure lagoons.
A breach is the most serious, describing what happens when the wall of a manure lagoon collapses and the waste drains away. In an inundation, flood waters rise over the walls of the lagoon and mix with the contents. Overtopping occurs when rainwater fills a lagoon to overflowing.
The North Carolina Pork Council said floods were “creating widespread impacts across all of eastern North Carolina. Several of our hog farms have been affected.” The breach in Duplin County was in a lagoon on a small farm and inspection “showed that solids remained in the lagoon,” it said. “Four additional lagoons have been inundated by flood waters.”
Environmentalists have argued for years that the large number of livestock farms in the eastern half of the state was unsafe and warned that massive storms could overwhelm the lagoons, resulting in contaminated water and potential health risks. Ahead of Florence, the pork council said farms in the major hog areas reported capacity for more than 25 inches of rain in their lagoons. On Sunday, the National Hurricane Center said Florence poured as much as 40 inches of rain on southern North Carolina and 20 inches in western North Carolina and northern South Carolina.