Tell the Cooper Administration: Hold Industrial Hog Polluters Accountable
By: Waterkeeper Alliance
For decades, North Carolina has allowed industrial hog polluters to dump massive amounts of raw hog sewage in open pits, then regularly spray it onto nearby cropland. North Carolina’s hogs generate about 9.5 BILLION gallons of raw sewage every year — and there has been almost no transparency as to how this waste is handled.
This careless method of hog waste disposal threatens the quality of our water and the health of our communities.
Recent hurricanes have forced eastern North Carolina communities, once again, to deal with the consequences of these cesspools (or “lagoons” as hog polluters call them), as millions of gallons of raw hog sewage spilled into our waterways.
It is time for more oversight, accountability, and transparency.
The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) has proposed revised terms in the general permit that governs hog waste. Those revisions would require industrial swine operators to:
- Regularly report to the state on its management of swine waste
- Agree to better monitoring when groundwater pollution is detected
- Use technology that automatically shuts down spraying of waste when bad weather is likely to cause pollutants to travel off-site
In the wake of devastating hurricanes and historic flooding that flushed millions of gallons of raw animal sewage into our communities’ water, the state has an opportunity to prevent future pollution.
The hog industry is pushing back on these common-sense improvements to the general permit. The Cooper Administration needs to hear from you. Tell Governor Cooper’s DEQ Secretary, Michael Regan, that you support these improvements to protect our water.