THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, August 22, 1995 TAG: 9508220316
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY BETTY MITCHELL GRAY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NEW BERN LENGTH: Medium: 64 lines
Gov. James B. Hunt Jr. tightened restrictions on the state's growing hog industry Monday and announced additional money for inspections of the farms.
Hunt also told one group of environmental activists that there would be more money to clean up the coast's waterways, where there have been almost a dozen fish kills this summer, from the Cape Fear River to the Chowan.
The governor announced his plans at a Cabinet meeting at Craven County Community College on Monday afternoon and a meeting with members of the Neuse River Foundation at Lawson Creek Park on the banks of the Trent River later in the day. Those stops were part of a three-day tour of northeastern North Carolina.
``This has not been a good summer for the environment in eastern North Carolina,'' Hunt said.
An executive order issued by Hunt empowers the Division of Environmental Management to require individual permits for hog operations that have directly discharged waste into surface waters. It also directs the Soil and Water Conservation Commission to require hog operations to have met all specifications of their waste-management plans before those plans are certified.
Hunt also reallocated nearly $1.4 million for animal waste-related programs: $205,000 will speed up implementation of certification and training programs for animal waste operators; $1 million will go to North Carolina State University's Animal and Poultry Waste Management Center; and $175,000 will go for a study on whether clay-lined lagoons are leaking animal waste into the state's groundwater.
Hunt said these actions send ``a very clear message to operators of these large hog operations: Shape up or ship out.''
``We are not going to let people use our rivers and streams as cesspools,'' he said. ``North Carolina needs a strong economy. And we have got to have a good, clean environment to have that strong economy.''
Generally, the plan outlined Monday targets hog operations that are not complying with state rules governing animal waste operations and tries to prevent future spills by requiring all aspects of a waste management plan to be in place before new operations are certified by the state, according to Preston Howard, director of the Division of Environmental Management.
At Oceanview Farms, the Onslow County hog operation that spilled about 25 million gallons of hog waste into the New River when its lagoon burst nearly a month ago, the farm's waste management plan had been certified and operations begun without enough land set aside for adequate land application of hog waste.
But some environmental activists said Hunt's plan did not go far enough to protect coastal waterways from nutrient pollution from large hog operations - particularly from hog waste that is sprayed on fields.
``It's some action, and it's been a long time coming,'' said Neuse River Keeper Rick Dove. ``But the plan fails to address the issue of ditches and the runoff from hog farms that comes from these fields and these spraying operations.''
Dove said a better step would be a moratorium on any new hog operations in the state.
KEYWORDS: WATER POLLUTION HOG FARM by CNB