Farmers seek state help on hog waste

North Carolina researchers have spent six years and $17.3 million looking for a better way to manage hog waste than the giant open-air pits that threaten rivers, wells and air quality.

On Wednesday, the state's study, funded by hog producers, ended with the announcement that there are plenty of cleaner alternatives -- but none that the average farmer can afford.

Still, a group of farmers and environmentalists says it is time to start using new systems that could make those hog lagoons obsolete. And they want the state to help foot the bill.

"We do not need any more regulations; we need solutions," said Lamont Futrell, a Wilson hog farmer. "This is going to be a long, hard process."

Futrell is president of a grass-roots organization called Frontline Farmers. His group has joined with Environmental Defense, a nonprofit that focuses on water quality, to push for a $20 million project to put new waste-treatment systems on 50 to 100 of the state's 2,600 hog farms.

The two groups will ask state lawmakers, grant-making institutions, farmers and pork companies to chip in, they said Wednesday.

"We know alternatives are out there, but the costs are too much. So now what?" said Dan Whittle, a lawyer with Environmental Defense. "Steps must be taken to turn this research into reality."

Mike Williams, an N.C. State University scientist and the lead researcher in the state study, looked at all manner of cutting-edge technology: systems that burn waste, treat it in enclosed tanks or recycle it into usable water. Some systems would even generate electricity or other energy, which Williams said farmers could sell.

Whittle said that testing the systems on a larger scale would help their manufacturers cut costs. And he predicts that the project would uncover a system that farmers can afford.

A gradual switch

If the project is successful, hog farmers around the state would gradually switch to a waste management system that wouldn't leak into rivers, pollute the air with ammonia and pathogens, or plague neighbors with the stench of hog manure.

Those would be big changes in a state with 10.1 million hogs -- and they could allow a beleaguered industry to expand.

Hogs now bring in more than $2 billion a year for the state's farmers and employ about 49,000 people in North Carolina. Most of the hogs are grown by farmers on contract to major pork processors.

Waste is flushed into outdoor ponds, then spread on fields as fertilizer. That waste treatment system became a target for environmentalists in the mid-1990s, after several major lagoon ruptures sent millions of gallons of waste into rivers. Neighbors also complained of the stench created by thousands of pigs raised in close quarters.

Public pressure led state lawmakers to ban new hog farms. None have been built since 1997.

In 2000, two top pork producers, Smithfield Foods and Premium Standard Farms, agreed to pay for a study to identify more environmentally sound technologies.

If any of those technologies were found to be affordable, the companies said, they would begin using them at all company-owned farms. Legislators promised to mandate them at the many contract farms as well.

Williams, the researcher, said Wednesday that none of the systems was cheap enough that the state should mandate its use on existing farms. Even the cheapest technology, Williams said, would cost at least four times as much as lagoons and probably would cut the size of the state's hog industry by more than 50 percent. A lagoon on an average-size hog farm costs about $650,000.

Still, Williams said he has hope for a few of the systems. He said that, with refinements, they could get cheaper: "They are oh so close," he said.

Farmers and Environmental Defense say their project would help a few of those systems make the grade. Without the project, they say, Williams' research could come to nothing.

Whittle said he hopes to be able to offer legislators a workable alternative to lagoons by September 2007, when the moratorium on new hog farms expires and they must consider what to do next.

No one has committed to paying for the program. Pork company executives say they already have spent millions on the study, and now they want the state to provide incentives for new technology.

Some state lawmakers say the state has an obligation to help farmers solve the problems created by lagoons. The state mandated the use of lagoons in 1993.

"I have always thought that if we're going to go to a superior technology, we'll have to have some way of paying that cost," said Sen. Charlie Albertson, a Duplin County Democrat.