Administrative Watch: EPA Tells DEQ—Clean Up Your Hog Act
The US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Civil Rights Office has told the NC Division of Environmental Quality (DEQ) that it’s time to do its job in protecting low income, minority, rural residents from hog farm pollution.
Last October, about 20 people who live near factory-style hog farms in eastern North Carolina went to Washington. They told their stories of the hardships imposed by factory hog farm pollution on them and their families. EPA officials were sufficiently impressed that they came to North Carolina to check it out.
Slammed by the reality of the problem, they’ve now sent a rare official rebuke (a “Letter of Concern”) to DEQ. Why, they ask, haven’t you done your job, but instead met witness accounts of a public health and environmental crisis with “a potential hostile and intimidating environment?”
That sounds like an excellent question to us. And we look forward to seeing a very different response from the Cooper/Regan DEQ.
