DATE: Wednesday, November 5, 1997           TAG: 9711050011

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B10  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: OPINION 

SOURCE: BY KAY SLAUGHTER 

                                            LENGTH:   74 lines

HOG FACILITIES: ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER IN THE MAKING?

Recently, Brunswick County passed one of the strongest local ordinances in the state governing hog facilities, and Mecklenburg County has passed an emergency ordinance based on the Brunswick law. At the same time, a General Assembly committee is deciding whether Virginia needs stronger statewide rules to protect against water and air pollution from individual hog facilities.

The committee, chaired by Del. Mitch Van Yahres, D-Charlottesville, was established to study the status of industrial hog farming, additional safeguards needed to protect wells and rivers, adjacent farms and residential areas as well as the costs of benefits of industrial swine production.

In North Carolina, the public outcry led to legislative and gubernatorial actions in response to massive pollution of several rivers caused by hog facilities. As a result, North Carolina passed a two-year moratorium on hog production, and increasing numbers of hog producers are looking north to create or expand facilities in Virginia - in Buckingham, Brunswick, Mecklenburg, Surry, Pittsylvania - to mention a few.

Most of the larger confined animal feeding operations contain 900 or so hogs per hog house with a minimum of three houses/2,700 hogs per facility and with one or more ponds that store the waste washed out of the houses and later applied to the land as fertilizer. While pollution of rivers and streams is a main concern, in Southside Virginia groundwater wells are typically less than 50 feet deep and thus also are at risk.

Virginia's current regulations regarding waste storage and application contain many loopholes. For example, Virginia says the waste pond can have no discharge - ```except in the case of a storm event greater than the 25-year, 24-hour storm.'' Everyone in Virginia knows that we are experiencing several of these storms per summer. In North Carolina, such storms were used to ``clean out'' swine facilities. Also, Virginia law states that no new waste ponds can be located on flood plains ``unless protected from inundation by a 100-year frequency flood event.'' What this protection might be is unstated.

While the Maryland commission investigating outbreaks of pfiesteria has pointed to phosphorus as a likely culprit in the creation of toxic pfiesteria, Virginia's regulations have focused on preventing nitrogen runoff, ignoring the phosphorus problem.

With lax regulations, Virginia hog facilities are not required to ensure that surface and groundwater are protected and air pollution and odors prevented. Nearby citizens and landowners are harmed not only by environmental degradation but by the lowering of their property values.

The current one-size-fits-all permit is insufficient to ensure that the waste does not enter ground or surface water. Thus, for all but the smallest operations, the General Assembly should require site-specific permits and that will include:

Public participation in the permitting process.

Site requirements for houses, waste ponds and application fields, including setbacks and buffers from homes, schools and churches, and ground and surface water.

No facilities in wetlands or flood plains.

No land application of waste during high rainfall seasons.

Frequent inspections and monitoring.

In addition, the General Assembly should pass laws to allow more local authority to prohibit industrial hog operations. Currently, local governments such as those in Amelia, Greensville and Brunswick counties have passed strong local ordinances to control hog facilities, but it remains to be seen whether the hog industry will challenge these ordinances. In any case, more stringent statewide regulations are required to ensure that there is protection through the state.

The Virginia General Assembly should institute a statewide moratorium on hog facilities until it can strengthen the statewide permit program, including monitoring and enforcement, and empower local communities to determine whether they want industrial-scale hog operations. MEMO: Kay Slaughter is a staff attorney with the Southern Environmental

Law Center in Charlottesville. SELC has been involved with the

environmental impacts of industrial hog production in North and South

Carolina and other states in the Southeast.

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