ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, February 5, 1996 TAG: 9602050025
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: GRASSY HILL
SOURCE: TODD JACKSON STAFF WRITER
CARTER HOPKINS LEFT THE CITY to farm in Franklin County. He loves the land, but he can do without manure spills.
It's a perfect plot for a cheesy horror flick:
A 500,000-gallon tidal wave of soupy manure is unleashed on a quiet country town.
It shuts down the town's water system.
Terror reigns.
People take up arms and flee to the mountains.
Carter Hopkins, a Franklin County dairy farmer, could serve as technical adviser for such a film. On Jan. 27, he experienced his own real-life nightmare.
Hopkins had finished his morning tasks on his 500-acre farm, off Virginia 709 between Rocky Mount and Boones Mill. The Ho Ha Dairy Farm, it's called.
It was 10 a.m., and Hopkins decided to take a break inside for a little while.
About noon, he went out to continue his workday.
That's when he saw it.
"It's a good thing I didn't actually see it happen," he said. "I think that would have just made things worse."
What happened made national news.
A section of a massive manure storage reservoir gave way. At the time, the circular structure - made of 18-foot-high concrete panels linked with a network of steel cables - was full of more than 500,000 gallons of liquefied cow droppings. Farmers store the manure to spread on their fields as fertilizer.
When the manure vat burst, a wave of dark brown waste oozed down a hill into a small creek that empties into the Blackwater River.
The wave was so deep that leftovers can be seen 10 feet up in trees that line the creek.
When he saw the spill, Hopkins said, his jaw dropped.
"I was in shock, really," he said. "It was quite a sight."
For a man whose farm has won a state environmental clean water award, the accident hit hard. But Hopkins didn't panic.
He and his uncle, Harry Hopkins, who owns part of the farm, quickly assessed the situation. Carter Hopkins called the town's water treatment plant to warn of the oncoming contamination in the river.
The water plant shut down until the manure had bypassed its intake system.
Town Councilman Arnold Dillon said: "This man deserves a lot of credit. He allowed us to avert a disaster." If the manure had gotten into the water system, Dillon said, "the people of Rocky Mount may have been boiling their water for six months."
Hopkins is a fit-and-trim, matter-of-fact type of guy who looks younger than his 39 years.
He loves farming. So much, in fact, that he left Roanoke, where he grew up, to take over the family farm when he graduated from Virginia Tech in 1980.
"Ever since I was a little boy, I liked being on the farm, taking care of the animals and things like that," he said, a bunch of peacocks strutting around behind him.
The Franklin County farm has been in the family for years. Carter Hopkins' late grandfather, Circuit Judge Abram Hancock Hopkins, lived there.
Carter Hopkins is the son of former state Sen. Bill Hopkins, who continues to practice law in Roanoke. Carter's brother, Bill Hopkins Jr., is a partner in the law firm. Carter has two sisters, one a lawyer in Richmond, the other a school teacher in North Carolina.
"That's one good thing about all of this," Carter Hopkins said of the accident. "I've been getting plenty of free legal advice - probably too much legal advice."
There are other positives about the situation. It could have been much worse:
The spill could have happened at night, when no one would have noticed it for hours.
A herd of dairy cows usually grazes just below the manure pit. Luckily, the herd had moved up the hill toward the milking stalls when the vat came apart.
"I was afraid there might be a few stragglers that got caught in it, but we didn't find any," Hopkins said.
And, because of all the snow and rain in the weeks before the spill, the Blackwater was surging, which helped dilute and carry the waste downstream.
The state Department of Environmental Quality has informed Hopkins that it has found no initial problems associated with the spill. The department will issue a formal ruling on the case in the next few weeks, according to a DEQ spokesman in Richmond.
If the manure had settled in the creek or river and killed fish or other marine life, Hopkins would have been responsible. A Montgomery County farmer faced a fine in 1991 stemming from a much smaller manure spill caused by a faulty valve on a storage tank. That spill caused a large fish kill.
The farmer later settled with the state by paying a $10,000 fine, about $50,000 less than what was recommended.
With environmental damage out of the way, Carter Hopkins faces two major worries. He and his farmhands must find time to do the extra work created by the spill, such as the daily hauling and spreading of manure on the fields, manure they have no place to store.
Hopkins also recognizes that he may have to pay for a new manure storage facility.
The structure that failed cost $50,000 to build in 1982, and Hopkins didn't carry insurance on it.
Hopkins found out last week that the national company that provided the materials for the structure, Pan-L-Vat Inc., has gone out of business. Hopkins reached a former employee of the company in Iowa. The man told Hopkins he had never heard of a failure like the one on the Franklin County farm.
Hopkins also has contacted the company whose workers built the reservoir, Virginia Silos of Harrisonburg. As of last week, Virginia Silos hadn't sent anyone to look at the ruptured storage tank.
When the tank was being built, a section was cracked as it was being secured, Hopkins said. The section was patched twice over the years, and Hopkins said he was assured there would be no problems.
But he said the vat ruptured at the spot where it had been repaired.
Hopkins thinks moisture seeped into the vat over the years and rusted the steel pipes inside the concrete, weakening the structure until it finally collapsed.
"But it's not like I had a written guarantee or anything," he said. "It's been here 13 years, so the statute of limitations" may have run out.
LENGTH: Long : 119 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: DON PETERSEN/Staff. Carter Hopkins, atop the collapsedby CNBholding tank, says he was in shock when he saw what had happened.
color. Graphic: Map by staff. color.