Conservation Action: Coal Ash and Hog Waste Flooding Our Rivers
We’re no longer talking about “potential” pollution from Hurricane Florence’s massive flooding. The real damage from environmental neglect is becoming plain—brought to our attention by citizen monitors.
The Cape Fear River Watch, Waterkeeper Alliance, and Earthjustice were among the groups with volunteers and staff providing first-hand reports and photographic documentation of coal ash containment failures, hog waste lagoon breaches, and livestock drowning. The groups provided evidence of gray material resembling coal ash flowing into floodwaters. The Lee plant on the Neuse River near Goldsboro and the Sutton plant on the Cape Fear River near Wilmington are among the facilities involved.
Earthjustice staff attorney Pete Harrison cited three separate coal ash storage breaches at Duke Energy facilities impacted by Florence.
Cape Fear Riverkeeper Kemp Burdette told NPR that an estimated 7 million gallons of untreated swine waste had been emptied into floodwaters. The News & Observer reported that about 3.4 million chickens and turkeys and 5,500 hogs had been drowned in flooded animal feeding operations. This toxic mix of raw waste, rotting carcasses, and contaminated ash all add to the dangerous stew of polluted waters threatening public health.
As of noon Monday, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) had confirmed that at least 32 hog lagoons have overflowed, 27 more have been inundated by floodwaters, and five have been damaged or completely breached.
“These cesspools of hog waste failed completely, spilling millions of gallons of untreated hog waste into floodwaters,” said Cape Fear Riverkeeper Burdette. “Even worse, these contaminated waters will flow through communities downstream, threatening homes, churches, schools, and anything else in their path.”
Even as some hog facilities are still inundated by floodwaters, citizen advocates are already documenting ongoing violations of the weak management requirements in place for these hopelessly antiquated animal waste systems. Hog facilities were seen spraying waste onto saturated fields, a violation of environmental rules and permit conditions that will result in the waste washing into surface waters just as surely as if it had flowed from overtopped or breached lagoons. These documented violations place another exclamation point on the urgency to overhaul the entire system for handling and regulating factory-style farm wastes.
In the wake of the Hurricane Florence-spawned pollution disasters, groups like the Waterkeepers are already renewing calls for stricter coal ash regulations and more aggressive cleanup schedules.
This is not the first time that a hurricane has exposed the disasters-in-waiting that are the hog and power industries’ antiquated waste management systems. In 2016, Hurricane Matthew did the same, and so did Hurricane Floyd 17 years before that. Increasingly severe storms are the angry face of a natural world which will keep showing us this lesson until we learn it—and act.
