The 40 inches of rain Hurricane Florence has dumped on North Carolina is leaving a trail of industrial waste as runoff from coal ash pits, inundated sewage systems, and feces from dozens of hog farms pour into rivers, lakes and neighborhoods.
North Carolina is home to the densest population of hogs in the country with 2,100 hog farms producing an estimated 40 million gallons of hog poop a day, most of which ends up being stored in 3,000 open-pit earthen basins known as “lagoons.”
Before Hurricane Florence made landfall, hog farms had been frantically trying to lower the level of those lagoons by spraying the waste on fields. But as of noon Monday, two hog lagoons in the hurricane area had been breached, seven had overflowed, and four had been inundated. Another 14 were at or almost at capacity and in danger of overflowing, according to the Department of Environmental Quality.
“You basically have a toxic soup for people that live in close proximity to those lagoons,” said Sacoby Wilson, a professor of public health at the University of Maryland. “All of these contaminants that are in the hog lagoons, like salmonella, giardia, and e-coli, can get into the waterways and infect people trying to get out.”
These lagoons contain large amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus, which farmers spray as fertilizer onto nearby fields. In excess, these nutrients are also a primary contributor to algae blooms and so called “dead zones,” large areas with such low levels of oxygen that animals can’t survive. Some, like the deadzone in the Gulf of Mexico is so big it can be seen from space.
Nitrogen from agricultural runoff is also the primary contributor to dangerous levels of nitrate in drinking water across part of the US, which has been linked to different kinds of cancers and blue baby syndrome - a potentially fatal infant condition.
Things could still get worse. Duplin County, which has the highest density of hogs in the state, is bisected by the Cape Fear River, which is forecast to reach major flood levels Tuesday with a crest of 62.3 feet. During hurricane Matthew in 2016 the Cape Fear River inundated 14 hog waste lagoons, the river had crested at 58.9 feet.
“North Carolina gets hurricanes and floods every year,” said Michelle Nowlin, law professor at Duke University. “I question the wisdom of having a disposal method that is so vulnerable to the types of weather events that we have in this region, with potentially catastrophic effects.”
It’s not just hog waste that’s a threat: On Friday, over 5 million gallons of partially treated sewage spilled into Cape Fear River when a generator failed at Wilmington's wastewater treatment plant. Anything above 1,000 gallons is considered significant.
