Hurricane Matthew flooded 142 hog and poultry barns in eight counties in North Carolina, said two environmental groups, vivid proof of the “unnecessary risk” of building large livestock farms “in a low-lying area deluged annually by tropical storms.” The Environmental Working Group and Waterkeeper Alliance said, “The time to address the problem is now, while thousands of gallons of feces dissolve into North Carolina’s water and dead animals wash to shore.”
After Hurricane Floyd in 1999, the state bought out 42 hog farms on the floodplain and removed 103 manure lagoons. Environmental groups say Hurricane Matthew, which inundated North Carolina’s coastal plain with up to 18 inches of rain, is a severe test of whether large-scale livestock farms can keep animal waste from mixing with storm water.
North Carolina is one of the largest hog- and chicken-producing states in the nation. The largest hog slaughter plant in the nation, with daily capacity of 32,500 hogs, is in Tar Heel, North Carolina.
The environmental groups said flooding partially submerged 102 poultry barns on 26 chicken-raising operations and 39 barns on 10 large-scale hog farms along with 14 manure lagoons on the farms in eight counties. “Millions of animals generating enormous amounts of waste in low-lying swamp areas puts public health, the environment and outdoor recreation at unnecessary risk,” said the groups in a report, “Exposing Fields of Filth.”
State environmental officials reported 14 flooded hog lagoons with two partial breaches — the most serious damage to a lagoon — on one farm in late October. The state Department of Environmental Quality and the North Carolina Pork Council were not immediately available to say if they had updated figures.
The two lagoon breaches were on a hog farm in Craven County, a DEQ official told North Carolina Health News. It cited a state Agriculture Department spokesman as saying an estimated 1.7 million chickens, 112,000 turkeys and 2,800 hogs died in the hurricane.
By comparison, Hurricane Floyd flooded 55 hog lagoons and breached six, which could allow all the material in the lagoon to be washed away, and killed 21,474 hogs. The hog industry says that when a lagoon is flooded, a diluted portion of the waste in the lagoon is carried away, but most of the material stays in place.
Immediately after Hurricane Matthew, the North Carolina Pork Council said “the proactive steps we have taken since Hurricane Floyd are working” to prevent widespread damage. The farm group said environmental groups were focusing on livestock operations “while ignoring the environmental impacts of spills from municipal waste systems and runoff from thousands of other sources” due to the hurricane.
Environmentalists have argued there are so many large-scale livestock farms that they generate unmanageable volumes of waste and spread foul odors.