While state pollution control funding has dropped, public complaints about factory hog farm pollution have soared. 

“Stench and flies. Noise and traffic. Waste flowing into waterways. Manure-infused spray. Complaints about industrialized livestock farms prompted the state Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to inspect those facilities at the second-highest rate in 10 years, according to a report recently submitted to the legislative Environmental Review Commission,” reports NC Policy Watch.

Environmental reporter Lisa Sorg also found a jarring gap in these numbers: The number of complaint-driven inspections in four counties dropped, at a time when storm damage breaches in those counties almost certainly drove up the number of serious pollution releases. The four counties (Brunswick, Columbus, Pender, and Jones) are the same ones in which enforcement and inspection duties were taken over by a different state agency. 

In those four counties, the responsibility for monitoring and controlling pollution from factory-style animal operations was moved by state legislators to the state Department. of Agriculture’s Soil and Water Conservation staff. The Agriculture program de-emphasizes enforcement work. 

Sorg wrote, “Oversight in those four counties is even more lax. Until 2012, Soil and Water Conservation staff conducted routine compliance inspections of all permitted livestock operations. Soil and Water staff still can refer farms to DEQ for further investigation and enforcement, but a state law passed in 2011 removed the requirement for the Soil and Water Division to inspect each livestock operation annually in the pilot counties, all of which are prone to flooding, hurricane damage and subsequent pollution from animal waste.” During the 2019 fiscal year, Soil and Water Division staff did not record a single example of a public complaint-driven inspection of livestock operations in those counties.

It appears that it matters who is given responsibility for protecting the public. DEQ, under Gov. Roy Cooper-appointed Secretary Michael Regan, is trying to respond to public complaints despite declining staff resources. Under the separately elected Commissioner of Agriculture Steve Troxler, the Agriculture Department appears to pay little attention to stopping pollution from hog farms.