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Wednesday, July 07, 2004

Environment - More on Hog Farns

Following on our July 5th entry, which included stories about hog farms in Iowa and Nebraska, is this story today in the NY Times about "Dr. [C.M.] Williams, the director of the [North Carolina State University's] animal and poultry waste management center, [who] is to present the first overall results of a four-year comprehensive study of 16 options for phasing out North Carolina's system for treating the tons of waste produced by its swine." More:

The hope, soon to be tested, is that this report will provide a tool kit for farmers to reduce or eliminate the pollution caused by one of rural America's most noxious industrial archipelagos - the farms in eastern North Carolina where hogs live, eat, defecate and are prepared for a honey-baked future in closely confined quarters. The hogs belong mostly to out-of-state companies; their waste belongs to the farmers who contracted to raise them. They go; the waste stays, to be digested gradually by bacteria in open-air lagoons. The system has repeatedly failed, occasionally fouling the water and infuriating people downwind.

Now North Carolina has become the laboratory for what is technically, economically and politically possible in regulating such farms. More and more, states are taking the lead in seeking solutions to environmental problems - hogs in North Carolina, heat-trapping gases in New Jersey - while the Environmental Protection Agency or other federal regulators debate the problems' scope. * * *

In North Carolina, Mr. Rudek said, an agreement between pork producers and the state attorney general in 2000 mandated that the Williams report set the tone. "It said: We've done talking about what the problems are. Now we are going to talk about solutions,'' he said. The report, he said, could be a building block for state or federal regulation. As the person assigned to assemble a tool kit, or proto-regulation, to help end what has been one of the most politically divisive debates in recent state history, Dr. Williams has been lobbied, flattered, criticized and deluged with information. He believes that his report will be a road map for an industry conversion ("cleanup'' is a loaded term here), but he cannot be sure it will be used. "Simply put," Dr. Williams said, "within this state, and I think this will apply to other states and provinces, there will be a decision that all people will have to make: Do we continue with the past system or proceed with a new system?" Knowing that innovation can be expensive and that North Carolina would suffer if hogs, like tobacco and textiles, left town, he added, "If we do proceed with a new system, there have to be reasonable incentives." * * *

The early technical front-runner involves culling solids from the water flushed out of the barn with advanced chemical techniques and bacterially treating the remaining effluent, removing the majority of pollutants. The technique, which eliminates the lagoons, costs four to five times as much as the lagoon-and-spray practice and twice as much as its nearest competitor, Dr. Williams said. At that price, he said, mandating a technology as promising as the early leader "would run the industry out of the state." A lower-cost version is now being tried.

Smithfield executives are not ready to give up lagoons and spray fields. Dennis Treacy, vice president for environmental, community and government affairs there, said in an e-mail response to questions: "It is a common misunderstanding that new technologies will eliminate the use of lagoons and spray fields. In fact, the majority of the alternative technologies under consideration will continue to use lagoons and/or spray fields as a component of the overall treatment technology."

And the E.P.A? Dr. Viney P. Aneja, a professor of air quality at North Carolina State and an expert on air pollution from factory farms, says it "has stayed on the sideline." Sally Shaver, an air quality official for E.P.A. based in Raleigh, sees nothing wrong with the division of labor. Ms. Shaver defended the agency's gradual approach: last year, it put out a rule on water pollution at the farms and is completing a consent decree with the industry that would require monitoring air quality at concentrated swine, poultry and dairy operations. Given the concentration of hog farms, North Carolina's lead role makes sense, she said.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on July 7, 2004 11:51 AM
Posted to Environmental Issues