NC CAFO Owners Lose: Governor Vetoes Bill To Limit Hog Waste Lawsuits
Elsie Herring has been fighting for decades against the industrial hog farm that moved in beside her family’s Eastern North Carolina property in 1986 and began spraying the fecal material of 2,000-plus hogs onto the field that ends eight feet outside her kitchen window.
But last Friday, when newly elected Democratic Governor Roy Cooper vetoed a bill that would protect the hog industry from lawsuits like one she and about 500 others have filed against a subsidiary of Smithfield Foods, she breathed a sigh of relief—at least for the moment. “This is a really big deal,” Herring said from her home in Duplin County, where hogs outnumber people 40 to one. “It was a bad bill that only protected the industry. I’m very glad the governor is standing up and doing the right thing by the people.”
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Together, the pigs produce 10 billion gallons of feces and urine each year, which the operations store in large, open-air pits, euphemistically referred to as “lagoons.” To make sure the pits do not overflow, the operations periodically lower their levels by shooting the fecal mixture over “sprayfields” of feed crops with high-pressure sprinklers. Scientific studies confirm that discharging animal waste into the air damages human health in the surrounding areas. The foul-smelling chemicals the CAFOs release—namely ammonia and hydrogen sulfide—are associated with breathing problems, blood pressure spikes, increased stress and anxiety, and decreased quality of life, studies have found.
About 160,000 North Carolina residents live within a half-mile of a manure pit and would be affected by the bill, and about 960,000 residents live within the three-mile nuisance zone, according to a recent mapping analysis conducted by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), which also released a list of the property owners affected. “For them to feel like we should have no recourse in our quest to get justice is an insult on top of the conditions they’re focusing us to live with, with the pigs and their waste,” Herring said following the General Assembly’s passage of the bill, but before the governor’s veto. “We’re not just complaining to be complaining; we’re complaining because our lives, our livelihoods, our property rights, and our health—all of those things—are in jeopardy.”
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http://civileats.com/2017/05/09/north-carolina-factory-farms-lose-effort-to-limit-pollution-lawsuits/