On Wednesday, the North Carolina General Assembly overrode Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto to pass into law the Farm Act, which expands the state’s right-to-farm law. The law now greatly restricts farm neighbors’ ability to bring nuisance lawsuits against farm operations for air, water, and soil pollution that reduces their quality of life or the value of their property.
The Farm Act “strips families of the ability to defend their rights to clean air, clean water, and a healthy place to live and work,” said David Kelly, senior manager of North Carolina political affairs at the Environmental Defense Fund, in a statement. “Working alongside farmers, agriculture groups, and agribusinesses in North Carolina, we have been making progress toward solutions that advance a strong agricultural economy and protect natural resources and public health. The nuisance provisions in Senate Bill 711 will only serve to further divide communities and undermine this progress.”
Expansions of right-to-farm legislation have been debated across the country, as the agriculture industry seeks to win new protections from litigation that targets common practices on large-scale industrial livestock farms. The Farm Act was hotly debated in North Carolina, and comes on the heels of a successful nuisance lawsuit filed by residents of Duplin County against a branch of Smithfield Foods, the largest hog producer in the country.
Residents of Duplin County shone a spotlight on the practice of collecting untreated manure in open-air lagoons and spraying fields with manure mist, which drifted to neighboring properties. Some residents testified that they had been unable to use their porches and yards as a result of the smell and air pollution from neighboring hog farms.