Environmental Justice Advocates Challenge Weak Rules on Poultry Factory Farms

The Lumber River Riverkeeper and other environmental justice advocates in Robeson County NC have filed a complaint with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) civil rights office, challenging North Carolina’s weak rules on the glut of poultry factory farms impacting their communities.

Riverkeeper Jefferson Currie and the other complainants cite the disproportionate impacts of the huge operations releasing severe air and water pollution on primarily Native American, Black, and Latino residents in Robeson, Duplin, and Sampson counties.

As reported by environmental reporter Lisa Sorg of NC Newsline, the concentrated poultry factory-style farms cumulatively produce about 2.5 billion pounds of waste per year from millions of birds in the impacted area. Testimony cited in the complaint reports the reek of ammonia and clouds of flies from roadside piles of the poultry “dry litter” produced by farms exempt by state law from permits or even disclosure of their locations. 

The complaint was filed on behalf of the community members by the Environmental Justice Clinic at Vermont Law and Graduate School. 

While this complaint is in its early stages, it brings to mind the previous effort launched to bring stronger regulations to North Carolina’s massive factory hog farm industry. It bears close watching by concerned conservationists and environmental justice advocates for the largely poor and minority communities suffering the burden of unregulated agribusiness pollution across much of rural North Carolina.