ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, January 29, 1997 TAG: 9701290012
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE
TWO Charlotte County residents recently learned that a swine company was rooting around their community for some land to buy. The company was apparently checking out a neighboring farm along the Staunton River to set up a hog operation with 30,000 sows.
Pork companies are looking at sites in Mecklenberg, Nottoway and Brunswick counties as well, drawn by the flat terrain, cheap land and lax regulations in Virginia. State officials are showing corporate hog representatives around Southside as a great place to expand. They are also selling rural communities on the pork industry, casting it as an opportunity for economic development.
But the two Charlotte County residents don't buy it. They know about the environmental disasters occurring in North Carolina due to the rapid, uncontrolled expansion of the swine industry. ``We're scared to death,'' one said. If our General Assembly members want to preserve Virginia's communities and environment, they should look to North Carolina, learn, and take a strong stance to control the pork industry.
Since 1989, the hog population in North Carolina has more than doubled. Today, with more than 9 million hogs, the state has more swine than people, and ranks second in hog production in the nation. The costs of this economic development have far outweighed the benefits.
Almost 90 percent of North Carolina's swine are produced in mechanized, assembly-line fashion in ``hog factories'' of 2,000 hogs or more. These facilities employ only a handful of workers, many of whom are paid minimal wages. Further, because the hog-factory owners are under contract to sell directly to the major swine corporations for reduced prices, small-time hog farmers are unable to compete. It is estimated that almost two-thirds of the independent hog farmers in North Carolina have gone out of business in the past 10 years. And most of the profits of these new hog factories are spent outside the region, robbing the local communities of true economic growth.
These economic consequences are bad, but the environmental impacts of corporate hog production are worse. Hogs produce about four times as much waste as humans. Today's average hog factory generates as much waste as a small city. The waste is stored in giant lagoons holding millions of gallons of untreated hog urine and feces, and later sprayed over adjacent fields as fertilizer. Yet the pork industry, masquerading as traditional agriculture, has avoided the kind of pollution controls we require of other major polluting industries.
In 1995, in Onslow County, N.C., one of these lagoons burst, spilling 25 million gallons of liquid hog manure - more volume than was spilled in the Exxon Valdez oil disaster. The waste from the lagoon, touted as ``state-of-the-art'' by the industry, flowed knee-deep for miles across roads and farmland, and into nearby surface waters. More than 10 lagoons in North Carolina have burst in the past two years.
More often, heavy rains and flooding cause hog waste to run off the fields and lagoons to overflow. The waste winds up in rivers and streams, where nitrogen, phosphorous and other nutrients cause massive algae blooms deadly to fish and other wildlife. The lagoons also release high levels of ammonia gas, a by-product of the decomposing hog waste, which returns to earth as acid rain.
But the impact of greatest concern takes place out of sight - the slow contamination of groundwater. State health officials in North Carolina are telling some homeowners to use bottled water because dangerous levels of nitrates have been found in one-third of the drinking wells near big hog factories.
For years, North Carolina citizens tried to get their state and local officials to rein in the swine industry. After last year's spills, the legislature finally passed stricter controls. Meanwhile, before the industry could gain a foothold in South Carolina, that state's legislature enacted the toughest hog-facility pollution controls in the nation.
With these two states cracking down, the swine industry is apparently looking to Virginia, where the rules remain friendly to big agribusiness. For example, Smithfield Foods Inc. of Virginia, which operates two hog slaughterhouses and meatpacking plants in Isle of Wight County, has a record of environmental violations dating back to 1978. The state has been unable, and unwilling, to force the company to clean up its act. Recently, the federal government stepped in, cited Smithfield for 5,000 violations of the Clean Water Act and sued for $125 million.
Another major pork producer, Carroll's Foods of Virginia Inc., wants to establish a major hog-production complex in Southside, and has worked with Virginia Tech to produce studies concluding that such expansion would be economically desirable for this rural region. The researchers assumed that regulations would minimize odor and pollution problems.
But two things have happened since then that leave Virginia's citizens and environment more vulnerable to potential disasters. The state limited the ability of local governments to restrict agricultural operations. And the state loosened the water-pollution control laws that apply to confined-animal operations.
All we have in place now to regulate the swine industry is a set of general permit requirements for hog producers - whether they are raising 750 hogs, 7,500, or more. And there's no public-notice requirement to inform citizens that a hog factory may be coming to their community. The pork companies need simply to tell the state they will follow the rules, OK their plans with local officials, and begin operation. But the rules are woefully inadequate to deal with the millions of gallons of waste produced by today's modern hog factories. For instance:
* The minimum buffer distance between hog facilities, including the fields where manure is sprayed, and occupied homes is required to be only 200 feet; drinking water supplies 100 feet; and surface waters a mere 50 feet.
* Waste lagoons are allowed to be built in the water table, and are not prohibited from discharging in the event of a 25-year storm.
* The regulations fail to require start-up or annual inspections, emergency plans, lagoon-closure specifications, or financial liability in case of failure.
* Perhaps most important, they fail to provide for strong enforcement measures.
Legislators should enact solid safeguards that will allow hog farmers - big and small - to conduct business, but in a community-friendly and environmentally sound manner.
This means requiring individual, site-specific permits for the larger operations that cross the line from ``farming'' to become a major polluting industry. It means requiring greater buffer distances between these hog factories and adjacent property, surface waters, homes and businesses. It means addressing issues such as emergency planning, lagoon closure and financial liability. And it means allowing local communities the right to control where these huge hog factories are located. We ask nothing less of other major industries.
Cathryn McCue is public communications coordinator for the Southern Environmental Law Center in Charlottesville.
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