Pits stopped

Lengthy research has turned up five effective alternatives to hog waste 'lagoons.' They should be put to work, soon

North Carolina is indebted to N.C. State University professor Mike Williams for research that could lead to the elimination of open hog waste ponds as a method of disposal -- and thus make North Carolina a leader in sustainable hog farming.

Williams and an advisory panel last week identified five alternative waste treatment and disposal methods that aren't so costly as to chase hog farming from the state. Government leaders and the hog industry should hasten to help farmers put the new methods to work.

Farmers currently wash hog waste into large open-air "lagoons." Solids sink to the bottom, and bacteria promote decomposition. The dilute liquid is sprayed as fertilizer on farm fields. It can be a smelly business. Worse, under some circumstances it can endanger health. Nearby drinking water wells can become contaminated. Heavy rains can cause the earthen-walled lagoons to fail.

Such failures or flooding have spilled millions of gallons of hog sewage into streams and fragile coastal estuaries. That danger led pork producers Smithfield Foods and Premium Standard Farms to fund Williams' studies under an agreement with the state in 2000.

Getting on line

Converting quickly to the new processes Williams has identified would put the alternatives to practical use and foster improvements. The new methods will become cheaper as more are installed. And four of them produce byproducts that farmers could sell to energy companies and recyclers to offset their costs, if there is a substantial market for the byproducts. More systems in use would help accomplish that.

Williams' difficult job was to identify waste disposal alternatives that offered improved environmental protection but didn't entail prohibitive costs. His standard for affordability seems sensible. The cost of new systems couldn't cut the size of the state's swine herd, now at 10.1 million, more than 12 percent.

The five new processes fit those parameters for new and expanding farms. Lawmakers should require new farms and existing ones that want to increase their herds to adopt those alternatives.

The five methods aren't cost effective for existing farms, Williams said. That's disappointing but not a surprise. The lagoon system was adopted because it is cheap.

One of the alternative methods uses large metal tanks to treat liquid wastes before they are discharged. An offshoot of that process mixes hog manure with bulky matter, like wood chips, to create compost. A third and fourth process burn solids. One of those produces methane, carbon monoxide and hydrogen gases, which can be sold to utilities to generate electricity. Both yield ash-laced nutrients usable as fertilizer. The fifth technology creates biogases, also marketable.

A smart investment

The alternatives' higher cost is the main drawback, but to spurn them on that basis would be shortsighted. Certainly major producers like Smithfield and Premium Standard, which contract with individual farmers to raise hogs, have reason to want safer waste disposal so they can continue to thrive in North Carolina. The state now is No. 2 in the nation for swine production, with 10.1 million hogs. Most of the farms are in eastern counties.

A leading nonprofit, Environmental Defense, and a hog farmers group, Frontline Farmers, have joined to call for raising $20 million to help 50 to 100 farmers install the new technologies. That is a sensible request, as the money would help build a critical mass of farms using the new systems.

The funds could come from various sources, including the industry itself, along with Congress, the General Assembly and the state Clean Water Management Trust Fund. Government, after all, has a responsibility to protect public health.

State legislators should make permanent the moratorium on new lagoons, set to expire in 2007, to encourage the use of the new options. And they should consider requiring power companies to generate a portion of their energy from sources like the biogases that the new technologies create. In other words, lawmakers should take up Williams' aim: Give hog farmers every chance to operate cleanly and affordably, so the state can preserve jobs and the industry that creates them.