By Shanya Hayes
Policy Fellow
Lax regulation of industralized hog farms has led to numerous environmental problems for North Carolinians - issues that can be blamed, at least in part, on the decades-long infiltration of hog industry money into state and local politics.
The dilemma shows no signs of resolution. Despite successful fights in court by people who are beset by environmental nuisances from factory-scale hog operations near their homes, N.C. state lawmakers continue to put the success of the hog industry ahead of the health of the human beings they represent.
The state budget approved in late June includes a provision entitled “Swine Biogas Production System Cost Share Funds” (Section 10.3). This section allocates $1.5 million to the N.C. Foundation for Soil and Water Conservation to help hog farmers install anaerobic digesters to generate biogas. Participants seeking funding will be eligible for a cost share of up to 75% of the construction and equipment costs that exceed $440 per 1,000 pounds of hogs. Awards can be up to $100,000 per project.
Industrial hog companies promote biogas as a clean energy source and a way to use up hog farm waste. The dirty truth is this: Making biogas from hog waste doesn’t solve the industry’s longstanding air and water pollution problems in North Carolina.
And biogas, while renewable, is far from "clean." It will increase the release of methane. Transporting the gas risks leaks from pipelines. Making biogas still leaves plenty of hog waste with high levels of ammonia which, when improperly applied to land, creates a risk for ground and surface water pollution.
Making biogas at North Carolina's hog operations, that still use the outdated and risky lagoon-and-spray field method of waste disposal, will not fix underlying pollution problems and will instead entrench further this hazardous practice. The lagoon-and-sprayfield method stores hog waste in open, usually uncovered, pits until it is sprayed onto nearby lands.
In recent years, Dominion Energy and Smithfield Foods, a major pork producer, proposed a joint project called Align RNG to collect gas from 19 hog farms in Sampson and Duplin counties. If the project goes forward, it will significantly grow the hog biogas industry in North Carolina.
In keeping with decades of legislative support for the industry, the establishment of hog biogas in North Carolina features special treatment and subsidies for a politically and financially powerful business - at the expense of local residents.
A general biogas permit was released on June 30 by the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) as required in the 2021 Farm Act. The general permit will speed and simplify the biogas permitting process by creating a single set of standards for biogas facilities, instead of making each proposed facility adapt to local soil, water and other environmental conditions.
The N.C. Sierra Club, Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), and other environmental and justice groups submitted recommendations for how DEQ could strengthen the general permit. But few of those suggestions were incorporated.
In late July, SELC announced that it would challenge the permit in the N.C. Office of Administrative Hearings on behalf of the Environmental Justice Community Action Network and Cape Fear River Watch. The groups claim that the permit continues a legacy of environmental injustice and that DEQ is not ensuring that all North Carolinians have clean water. The lawsuit seeks better protections for the environment and communities where the hog farms are, including better technologies to deal with hog waste.
The lagoon-and-sprayfield hog waste management system is a menace to public health, air and water, and should be replaced with superior processes that are in use in other states. Even if the existing systems are maintained, technologies such as flow meters, rain gauges, lagoon level monitors, and equipment to reduce discharge are available and should be required by DEQ.
It makes no sense to layer biogas technology atop industrial hog operations that have yet to solve longstanding water and air pollution problems. Moreover, it's wrong to dedicate public funds to support biogas companies that perpetuate environmental injustice by threatening the health of hog farm neighbors - many of whom are Black, brown and indigenous people. Biogas may be touted as a solution, but it's nothing more than a smelly smokescreen.
North Carolina regulators and lawmakers must require this industry to clean up its act - in the most literal sense - and put an end to the ugly tradition of valuing pigs over people.