IATP Hog Report - Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

Section 3
and creating setback distances from homes, churches, schools, and
hospitals.
Many hog factories and lagoon disposal systems were constructed in flood
plains in North Carolina. In July 1996, flood water from Hurricane Bertha
led to a 1.8 million gallon spill from a hog waste lagoon in Craven
County, North Carolina. 52 In September 1996, Hurricane Fran caused the
Cape Fear River to rise, flooding sewage treatment plants and manure
lagoons and resulting in $6 billion in damages $872 million of which were
in farm losses. 53 However, the worst was still to come. 54 In September
1999, Hurricane Dennis hit North Carolina with eight inches of pounding
rains, raising the levels of wastewater in hog lagoons. A week later, early
on the morning of September 16, Hurricane Floyd brought 22 inches of
rain. Floyd caused widespread flooding; drowned hogs, chickens, and
turkeys; covered hog manure lagoons throughout Eastern North Carolina;
and spread hog waste, rotting animal carcasses, and pathogens in the
floodwaters. 55,56
As the Neuse River Foundation's riverkeeper, Rick Dove is a full-time
public advocate for the Neuse. Dove described the sight as he flew over
the nearly 2 million year-old river the day after Floyd hit: 57
We saw animal operations whose barns were almost
completely covered with floodwater – a tragedy for the
animals, operators, and our environment. There were
numerous large hog operations where flooding of barns
and lagoons released visible plumes of waste into the
surrounding waters. As we continued to fly upstream, the
number of farms with flooded barns and lagoons continued
to rise. Many farms would have one or more lagoons
compromised, and other lagoons with as little as a foot to
go before the waters reached them as well. In the Neuse
watershed alone, we counted around 25 lagoons that had
been flooded, and double that number was within feet of
being compromised. Todayreports estimate that the
number of lagoons compromised could reach as high as
one hundred. As far as the concern over animal deaths,
today the estimates of dead hogs range from the industries'
15,000 to the media's 500,000. Poultry casualties are
estimated in the millions.
Dove continued by quoting the Winston-Salem Journal: 58
For more than a decade, while North Carolina's swine
population passed 9 million, state leaders knew they were
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