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Thursday, March 09, 2006

Environment - Ten-year moratorium on new hog farms in North Carolina will end soon, with no viable solution in sight

The Raleigh North Carolina News & Observer reports today, in a story headlined "Farmers seek state help on hog waste":

North Carolina researchers have spent six years and $17.3 million looking for a better way to manage hog waste than the giant open-air pits that threaten rivers, wells and air quality.

On Wednesday, the state's study, funded by hog producers, ended with the announcement that there are plenty of cleaner alternatives -- but none that the average farmer can afford.

Still, a group of farmers and environmentalists says it is time to start using new systems that could make those hog lagoons obsolete. And they want the state to help foot the bill.

"We do not need any more regulations; we need solutions," said Lamont Futrell, a Wilson hog farmer. "This is going to be a long, hard process."

Futrell is president of a grass-roots organization called Frontline Farmers. His group has joined with Environmental Defense, a nonprofit that focuses on water quality, to push for a $20 million project to put new waste-treatment systems on 50 to 100 of the state's 2,600 hog farms.

The two groups will ask state lawmakers, grant-making institutions, farmers and pork companies to chip in, they said Wednesday.

"We know alternatives are out there, but the costs are too much. So now what?" said Dan Whittle, a lawyer with Environmental Defense. "Steps must be taken to turn this research into reality."

Mike Williams, an N.C. State University scientist and the lead researcher in the state study, looked at all manner of cutting-edge technology: systems that burn waste, treat it in enclosed tanks or recycle it into usable water. Some systems would even generate electricity or other energy, which Williams said farmers could sell.

Whittle said that testing the systems on a larger scale would help their manufacturers cut costs. And he predicts that the project would uncover a system that farmers can afford.

In the mid-1990s, the story reports, after several major lagoon ruptures sent millions of gallons of waste into rivers and countless complaints of the stench created by thousands of pigs raised in close quarters, "public pressure led state lawmakers to ban new hog farms. None have been built since 1997. In 2000, two top pork producers, Smithfield Foods and Premium Standard Farms, agreed to pay for a study to identify more environmentally sound technologies." The moratorium on new hog farms expires in 2007. However:
No one has committed to paying for the program. Pork company executives say they already have spent millions on the study, and now they want the state to provide incentives for new technology. Some state lawmakers say the state has an obligation to help farmers solve the problems created by lagoons. The state mandated the use of lagoons in 1993.
The last third of this ILB entry from Jan. 29, 2006 quotes from a 1999 NY Times story. Just some of its vivid description:
Nowhere is the industry more entrenched, or its political power stronger, or the hurricane's farm damage greater, than in Duplin County. With 48 hogs for every resident, the county has the densest concentration of hogs in the country.

The rectangular lagoons of reddish-brown waste, many of them covering more than an acre, dot the flat countryside. Enclosed within dikes, the lagoons sit behind rows of single-story, gray-metal structures as large as football fields that house the hogs. The hog waste flows through slotted boards in the barns to a cellar, and then is carried by plastic pipes to a waste lagoon. The lagoons now and then burp with the bubbles that mark the natural transformation of feces and urine to the nutrients that farmers spray over pastures and fields of corn, tobacco, soybeans and rye.

See also this photo from today's News & Observer story, which is captioned: "In Duplin County, hog houses and waste lagoons stack up in this 1998 photo. Waste spills and odor complaints led to a hog-farm moratorium in the 1990s."

This ILB entry from July 4, 2004, quotes from a NY Times story of that date, also looking at the same North Carolina researcher, Mike Williams, and his hog waste study.

Finally, what has the pork industry done during the 10-year moratorium on new hog farms in North Carolina because of the problems of dealing with hog waste in that state? Moved into states like Kentucky and Indiana. This ILB entry from Aug. 22, 2005 includes this quote from a Louisville Courier Journal story:
With what were seen as friendly regulations and an abundance of feed and nearby slaughterhouses, North Carolina became a leading pork producer in the mid-1990s. But lagoon failures and manure spills prompted the state to freeze permits for 10 years in 1997.
The Jan. 29, 2006 ILB entry includes this quote from the Muncie Star-Press:
On Jan. 17, IDEM granted permission to Goldsboro, North Carolina-based Ivey's Spring Creek Farm of Indiana, to build an operation containing 700 sows, 2,000 nursery pigs and 4,000 grow-to-finish hogs at 4105 N. Ind. 1, Hagerstown. * * *

One of the reasons for a company like Goldsboro to move to Indiana is that in North Carolina, "they just mushroomed, exploded their hog populations before the state caught up with the need to regulate the environmental consequences of that," Hurt said. "So North Carolina placed a moratorium on any further expansion, which is reasonable."

On Jan. 18, IDEM issued a permit for Natural Pork Production II, Harlan, Iowa, to build a CAFO with a total capacity of 17,072, including 2,400 weaned pigs, 11,712 gestating sows, 2,160 lactating sows, 600 replacement gilts and 200 cull sows. The facility, which would generate an estimated 8.5 million gallons of manure a year, will be north of Williamsburg near the Randolph-Wayne county line.

Each gestating sow can produce about 20 pigs a year, Hurt said, meaning Natural Pork would produce more than 230,000 pigs a year. Natural Pork is part of Audubon, Iowa-based AMVC, the nation's 13th largest pork producer.

Andy Miller, director of the Indiana State Department of Agriculture (ISDA), was among the supporters in the audience last summer when the Wayne County Board of Zoning Appeals approved the Natural Pork Production project.

ISDA this year announced a strategic plan that included a goal of doubling Indiana's pork production. As of Dec. 1, 2004, Indiana trailed Iowa, North Carolina, Minnesota, and Illinois in the number of hogs on hand.

Officials in Randolph County have decided not to adopt any local zoning ordinances to regulate CFOs or the larger CAFOs. "We decided to pass on that," said Randolph County Commissioner Ron Chalfant, a farmer. "We're just going to let the state take care of it. A number of farmers said they were just over-burdened now with state regulations. If the county adds to those, it makes it difficult to entice livestock entities."

Posted by Marcia Oddi on March 9, 2006 04:03 PM
Posted to Environment | Indiana economic development