THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, February 16, 1995 TAG: 9502160337
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LON WAGNER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines
Gov. George F. Allen's vow to reconsider state environmental regulations may already be getting some industries to take a second look at Virginia.
The country's largest beef and pork processor, IBP Inc., is eyeing Southampton County and other parts of southeastern Virginia for a location to build its first East Coast hog slaughtering plant. IBP is also looking in South Carolina and eastern North Carolina - the hog-raising capital of the East.
It might not have considered Virginia five years ago because of the state's more stringent pollution laws. Smithfield Foods Inc., tired of banging heads with Virginia's water-quality regulators, built its new hog processing plant in Bladen County, N.C.
The IBP plant, which North Carolina officials say could produce 3 million gallons of wastewater each day, would have significant regulatory hurdles to clear in many states.
``Virginia is re-evaluating these regulations,'' said Jim Bradshaw, director of Economic Development for Franklin-Southampton County. ``I would think that is something we would be able to overcome.''
IBP has asked Bradshaw if Franklin-Southampton County has any sites suitable for the hog plant. Bradshaw said he has a location near the North Carolina line for IBP to consider.
IBP Inc. - the name used to stand for Iowa Beef Packers before the company got into the hog business - has denied reports that its proposed plant would process 30,000 hogs daily and employ 2,000 people. Its largest hog processing plant, located in Waterloo, Iowa, employs 2,000 workers.
IBP makes no secret of its desire to build an East Coast plant. Smithfield Foods, an IBP competitor, expects to slaughter 24,000 hogs daily at its Bladen County plant by the end of this year. Smithfield's demand for hogs has helped propel North Carolina to become the second-largest processor of hogs in the country, behind Iowa.
IBP wants to tap into eastern North Carolina and southeastern Virginia's hog farms.
``We've watched that growth with interest, as has the rest of the hog industry,'' said IBP spokesman Gary Mickelson from the company's Dakota City, Neb., headquarters.
As hog farms have proliferated in North Carolina, though, so has opposition to them. And the lax environmental regulations that allowed hog farming to thrive in North Carolina are disappearing. Two years ago, North Carolina toughened its laws requiring livestock farmers to line waste lagoons to prevent wastewater from running off into the ground.
Ironically, while North Carolina is getting tougher on pollution, some say Virginia is easing up. Gov. Allen wants to do no more than the minimum required by federal law.
Virginia's laws already are weaker than North Carolina's in some areas. For example, North Carolina requires a waste management plan for farms with more than 100 animal units - a steer is one animal unit; smaller animals are fractions of a unit. By contrast, Virginia only requires a plan when the farm is 300 animal units or larger.
``We beat North Carolina in the race to the bottom of environmental protection,'' said a Virginia environmentalist who asked not to be identified.
Though that's not how state Department of Environmental Quality officials would characterize it, a 1993 department study suggested that the differences in regulations between Virginia and North Carolina were mostly mythical.
``The findings were that processing of permits, and permit requirements, were not that different,'' said Alan Pollock, an assistant to the director of the department's water division. ILLUSTRATION: Color drawing of hog
by CNB