THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, January 28, 1997 TAG: 9701280273
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: ELIZABETHTOWN, N.C. LENGTH: 74 lines
The director of the state Division of Water Quality says Smithfield Foods is being misleading when it says expanding its Bladen County hog slaughter plant won't lead to more hog farms in the state.
Preston Howard, director of the water quality agency, faulted a company report released last year for providing conflicting information about pork production.
Howard says the plant expansion could lead to an additional 2 million hogs in the region.
Smithfield Foods, the parent company of Carolina Foods in the tiny Tar Heel community 25 miles south of Fayetteville, wants to expand its plant by killing an extra 8,000 hogs a day. It now processes about 24,000 daily.
A company report issued to support the expansion concluded that some 1.5 million swine will be added at 410 new North Carolina farms by the end of 1997 regardless of whether Carolina Foods expands its operations.
But in a recent letter, Howard raises doubts about that claim.
He also noted the company had not analyzed why groundwater levels have dropped near the slaughterhouse, which draws 3 million gallons a day from Bladen's aquifer. Smithfield says it plans to reduce water consumption through a wastewater recycling program, but water quality agency officials say the company report contradicts that claim.
Howard's agency has been reviewing the indirect environmental consequences of allowing Smithfield to expand its Tar Heel plant for 14 months.
Besides the growing anti-hog sentiment in North Carolina and the public relations problems the industry has suffered since several massive waste spills in 1995, Smithfield faces its own environmental and image problems.
Those problems could affect whether the expansion at its Tar Heel plant will be allowed to go forward, The News & Observer of Raleigh reported Monday.
Last month, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency filed a lawsuit seeking $125 million in fines from Smithfield because of repeated pollution violations at its slaughterhouses near the Pagan River. On Jan. 16, Terry Lynn Rettig of Virginia Beach, a former operator of Smithfield's sewage treatment plants, was sentenced to 30 months in prison for falsifying reports and destroying evidence.
Clark Wright, a New Bern lawyer who represents Smithfield Foods, agrees that the Virginia case could complicate the company's permit review. North Carolina law allows regulators to weigh a company's compliance record, and the state has rejected permits because of such considerations at least twice.
But Wright said the EPA is using ``fundamentally unfair'' tactics to attack Smithfield, which he said is now upgrading its Virginia slaughterhouses. ``The company is in the process of expending millions to treat effluent from its facilities,'' Wright said.
Environmental groups say Smithfield shouldn't be rewarded for its track record in Virginia.
``Smithfield's gross noncompliance with environmental requirements alone should result in a denial of their permit,'' said Derb Carter Jr., a lawyer with the Southern Environmental Law Center in Chapel Hill.
Along with other groups, the center petitioned the Environmental Management Commission in 1995 to review the secondary impacts of Smithfield's plans. The groups fear the expansion will boost the state's population of 9.5 million pigs, resulting in more waste sprayed in counties already overloaded with manure.
Wright, Smithfield's lawyer, says the hog industry is going to grow no matter what his company does.
``Clearly,'' he said, ``there are other factors affecting farm growth in North Carolina beyond the packing capacity.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo by TAMARA VONINSKI/The Virginian-Pilot
A statue of a pig graces the entrance of the Smithfield Packing Co.
headquarters in Smithfield, Va. The company's statement that more
hog farms in North Carolina aren't imminent is being disputed.
KEYWORDS: SMITHFIELD FOODS