North Carolina’s Biogas Permits Are Woefully Inadequate

July 7, 2022

More Stringent Monitoring and Compliance Protocols Are Needed 

Waterkeeper Alliance and Waterkeepers Carolina are severely disappointed with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (NCDEQ) over their recently adopted general permit requirements for concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) to install biogas digesters. The NCDEQ strategically released the updated permit over the July 4th holiday weekend. As the advocates representing over 30,000 North Carolinians, as well as the greater interests of all impacted communities, we are evaluating next steps in our continued battle for more stringent requirements for facilities with farm digester systems, including robust water quality monitoring and compliance to ensure clean water for all North Carolinians. 

“This permit is woefully inadequate and fails to assure compliance with water quality protections as required under North Carolina law. It’s a perfect storm of opportunistic greenwashing, climate change profiteering, and regulatory truancy designed to invent a new dirty energy sector. These CAFOs biogas projects do nothing to reduce hog waste cesspools and will likely make water quality impacts even worse for communities downstream. There are cleaner, safer options, but greedy corporations don’t want to pay for them. North Carolinians will continue to absorb the full cost, while industry takes all the profit. We will not stop until NCDEQ does its job by putting the interest of the people over corporate pressure.” 

– Kemp Burdette, Cape Fear Riverkeeper and Larry Baldwin, Campaign Coordinator, Waterkeeper Alliance