New map shows clustering of hog, poultry operations

A new map shows for the first time the scope of large animal farms in North Carolina, which environmentalists say pose a threat of polluted streams and air.

National environmental organizations that released the map Wednesday say their research shows hog and poultry operations are clustered near each other and close to surface water, small communities and flood plains.

State environmental regulators say North Carolina has an aggressive inspection program. And an association of agricultural interests say theirs is the most regulated industry in the state and is not to blame for pollution.

The map shows more than 4,100 lagoons holding hog waste and more than 14,000 poultry barns at 3,900 operations. It is the first public accounting of poultry operations, since state law protects the disclosure of their locations, unlike hog and cattle operations.

“We hope this empowers the general public, policymakers and advocates to use these maps” to protect public health, said Soren Rundquist with the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit research organization based in Washington. On Tuesday, Rundquist joined speakers from the Waterkeeper Alliance, the Catawba Riverkeeper Foundation and a neighbor to a Duplin County hog operation in a news media briefing by phone.

Sam Perkins, the Catawba riverkeeper, said when he started with the organization four years ago he knew of about a dozen of what are called concentrated animal feeding operations. After collecting data by flying over farms in a small plane, Perkins said he now knows there are 1,000 such poultry operations in his basin alone.

“It’s a problem that has gotten out of hand, really unchecked, and this map helps visualize that,” Perkins said. “It’s something the state of North Carolina has shown little to no inclination to take action on.”

The groups contend state regulators issued too many permits in the 1990s and have not been aggressive enough in finding violators.

The state’s Department of Environmental Quality disagrees with that interpretation.

“North Carolina has one of the most rigorous permitting programs for concentrated animal feeding operations in the country,” spokeswoman Stephanie Hawco said in an email. “The state environmental department has dedicated staff in seven regional offices that conduct inspections of nearly 2,300 permitted facilities at least once a year. Some facilities are inspected more than once a year.”

Ed Emory, president of the pork industry-funded N.C. Farm Families, said hog farms have been required to obtain permits since 1993, and must be re-permitted every five years in addition to the inspections. There has been a moratorium on new hog operations since 1997. Any violations are public record, he notes.

“The industry stands by its commitment to transparency and good stewardship of the lands and waters where it operates,” Emory said.

The map is interactive – searchable by ZIP code, county, census and watershed. The number of waste lagoons, where manure and other animal waste are submerged, was estimated using N.C. Department of Environmental Quality guidelines and checked against aerial photos of individual farms.

The map estimates how much animal waste comes from each farm, which the Environmental Working Group and Waterkeeper Alliance calculated using state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Affairs data. That department estimates the amount of manure each year from cattle and hog farms.

The locations of poultry farms and an estimate of how many birds are kept in them were made by a Waterkeeper Alliance contractor. The number of birds was checked against U.S. Department of Agriculture 2012 census data for each county, which was divided evenly by the number of poultry farms in each county.

This story was originally published June 22, 2016 at 12:05 AM with the headline "New map shows clustering of hog, poultry operations."