DATE: Tuesday, July 15, 1997                TAG: 9707150036

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 
SOURCE: BY ESTES THOMPSON, ASSOCIATED PRESS 

DATELINE: NEWTON GROVE                      LENGTH:   60 lines

VIRGINIANS SEE LIFE DOWN ON THE FARM N.C. HOG FARMER, WHO WANTS TO OPEN VA. SITE, GIVES TOUR, FIELDS QUESTIONS

About a dozen Virginia residents toured a hog farm Monday in Johnston County to see what kind of farm is being proposed for their home county.

Swine breeder David Herring invited people from Pittsylvania County to see his farm. The tour came just before a meeting about the hog farm called by the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors in Chatham, Va.

Herring talked about odor and pointed out that there was none from his farm.

But potential water pollution and spread of large hog farms into Virginia because of a proposed moratorium on them in North Carolina were two concerns of Karen Maute, a member of the county's industrial development authority.

``We fear there will be a proliferation of this into Virginia,'' Maute said as she paused from asking Herring pointed questions about Virginia's environmental laws.

Some of the Virginia residents said they were concerned about being home to a hog farm because of environmental problems in North Carolina.

Animal and treated municipal wastes and runoff from farmland and urban areas have boosted nitrogen levels in rivers of eastern North Carolina. The high nitrogen levels spawn algae that uses oxygen and suffocates marine life. Some researchers say nitrogen helps feed a bacteria called pfiesteria that in large enough concentrations eats fish flesh.

State figures show 54 percent of the nitrogen at New Bern on the Neuse River comes from agricultural sources - cropland and animal waste. The rest is divided among municipal and industrial discharges, forestry, urban runoff from parking lots and roads and atmospheric sources.

Maute said the right-to-farm law approved by the Virginia legislature allowed swine operation to build without being ensnared in the permit process and without having a public hearing.

The county governing board reduced buffer requirements for large hog farms from 500 acres per 350 hogs to 20 acres, she said.

``The right to farm legislation made it so citizens lost their right to a public hearing,'' she said.

Teresa Kleinman, who lives downstream from the proposed farm site, said she had concerns about the ability of the site to absorb water and about runoff of hog waste into the four creeks surrounding the 550-acre piece of land.

The four creeks that surround the site drain into the Bannister River. That river is the drinking water source for the towns of Halifax and South Boston, both east of Chatham. It empties into the Dan River, which joins the Roanoke River at Clarksville, Va.

Herring, who has bought Genetic Improvement Services from a firm in Indiana, currently raises 624 breeder sows and about 8,000 piglets on his North Carolina farm. He proposes to have 1,250 sows and 20,000 piglets in Virginia, but hasn't finalized the deal with the landowner.

He told the Virginia group that hog farms aren't the polluters they are portrayed as in the news media, despite the spill of 25 million gallons of hog sewage from a lagoon in Onslow County two years ago.

His record is clean with the state Division of Water Quality, division spokesman Ernie Seneca said. Herring was one of several hundred farmers cited for not having a certified operator of the farm, but has complied with that new regulation, Seneca said.

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