Nearly $2 million in grants will g to improve the state's water quality and help farmers clean up hog lagoons as part of a deal reached with Smithfield Foods in 2000, the state attorney general's office announced today.

The state struck a deal with Smithfield, the world's largest pork producer, in which the company would help fund projects to help remedy the environmental damage caused by hog lagoons.

The $1.8 million in grants announced today represent the sixth set of grants gong to environmental projects. The company committed a total of $50 million to such efforts. Some examples of the grants awarded are:

-$500,000 to the N.C. Foundation for Soil and Water Conservation to close hog waste lagoons that are not in use. The foundation has already closed more than 100 inactive lagoons.

-$350,000 to The Nature Conservancy to preserve almost 450 acres of wetlands in the White Oak River basin in Onslow County near Camp Lejeune. Located at the headwaters of the New River Basin, these wetlands and are important to regional water quality, state officials said.

-$308,000 to the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission to install borders and buffers on hog farms in the eastern part of the state.

-$250,000 to the N. C. Coastal Land Trust and the N. C. Coastal Federation for the Cape Fear Arch Water Quality Initiative, a project to develop water conservation plans for the entire Cape Fear region.

-$222,750 to Ducks Unlimited to continue an initiative to restore about 80 acres of wetlands in the Black River watershed in Sampson County.

-$170,000 to the N.C. Zoological Society to restore wetlands and create an environmental education center at the Sylvan Heights Waterfowl Park & Eco-Center in Halifax County.

-$43,668 to the New River Foundation to restore and monitor water quality in the Henderson Green Watershed on the New River in Onslow County.