DATE: Monday, September 8, 1997             TAG: 9709080033

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B4   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

DATELINE: CHATHAM                           LENGTH:  113 lines

EVEN IF THEY'RE UNWANTED, INDUSTRIAL-SIZE HOG FARMS ARE MOVING TO VIRGINIA A 2-YEAR-OLD LAW PREVENTS THE ENFORCEMENT OF NEW RESTRICTIONS THAT TARGET THE FACILITIES.

Industrial hog farmers want to migrate into Virginia now that pollution problems have forced North Carolina to close its doors to them.

Virginia Agriculture Commissioner Carlton Courter says it's no big deal, because environmental regulations have always been tougher here than in North Carolina, and because most of the expansion is destined for the Midwest.

However, supervisors in Southside counties targeted for large, smelly hog farms worry that there is little they can do to keep them out because of Virginia's 1995 Right to Farm Act.

``I'm not sure what the counties can do to protect themselves,'' said Jim Campbell, director of the Virginia Association of Counties.

In Pittsylvania County, the supervisors voted 6-1 against locating a hog farm in a watershed prone to flooding.

But their objection may be moot because of the Right to Farm Act. The law forbids local governments from requiring a special-use permit or a public hearing for intensive livestock operations on land zoned for agricultural use.

``They are going to be able to move right in with little or no regulation on behalf of local government,'' Campbell said.

The scrubby piece of land in Pittsylvania County looks like a practical place to raise pigs.

The soil is too shallow to nourish a decent crop, and nobody lives close by.

But neighbors and environmentalists believe the 550-acre site is a bad spot for thousands of hogs, whose manure would be stored in lagoons and periodically diluted with water and sprayed on the thin ground as fertilizer.

They believe flooding could cause the lagoons to overflow and pollute the four creeks that surround the site. The creeks drain into the Bannister River, the drinking water source for the towns of Halifax and South Boston.

``We have flooding every few years here,'' said Theresa Kleinman, who lives near a creek about a mile downstream from the proposed hog farm. ``When we have heavy rains the water runs off like it's on concrete.''

She fears that the hog farm would reduce the value of the home she and her husband bought less than a year ago and contaminate the shallow wells they use for drinking water.

``If this is acceptable, then the rest of Virginia is in serious trouble,'' she said. ``We're just looking for protection.''

Del. William Bennett, a Democrat who farms and practices law in Halifax County, wanted a close look at the proposed hog farm. So he ignored a ``no trespassing'' sign and walked the property.

``I was most disturbed by the shallowness of the soil,'' Bennett told fellow members of a legislative committee studying the effects of industrial hog farming in Virginia. ``You could hardly kick up the topsoil.''

The legislators are trying to determine whether state and local laws are adequate to protect the environment from hog waste.

There are 25 large hog farms in Virginia. A Department of Environmental Quality report to the committee said neighbors periodically complain about the smell from manure spreading, but the farms are meeting water quality standards.

During the committee's public hearing Aug. 28 in Chatham, several speakers said it would be unfair to create new laws to restrict hog farming.

``If you can regulate this industry out of business, who's next?,'' asked Tommy Motley, a dairy farmer in Pittsylvania County.

But others called for a moratorium like the one North Carolina adopted that same day.

Kay Slaughter, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, said the biggest problem with industrial hog production is the disposal of waste.

State environmental regulators say one hog can produce waste equal to that of four or five humans. That means a farm with 10,000 swine - the size proposed for Pittsylvania - would produce about the same volume of waste as a city the size of Charlottesville (population 40,500) without the benefit of a sewage treatment system.

``Local government should be allowed to treat industrial hog facilities as the industrial facilities they are and not farming activities,'' Slaughter said.

William Coleman, a Halifax County supervisor, urged the committee members to propose amendments to the Right to Farm Act. ``The taxpaying public should not be saddled with the costs of cleaning up pollutants from such operations,'' he said.

Advocates said the act was passed to keep counties from arbitrarily using special-use permits to stop farm expansions in agriculture zones when neighbors protest.

Virginia Farm Bureau lobbyist Martha Moore said most complaints about farming come from residents who move near an established farm.

She also said the special-use permit process was applied unevenly. It became hard for farmers to make business decisions when faced with arbitrary restrictions, she said.

``The farmers were saying, `You tell us what to do, and if we abide by the rules, you've got to let us operate,' '' said David Kenyon, an agriculture economist at Virginia Tech.

The legislation gave counties a year to revise zoning ordinances that apply to farming operations.

Some counties passed tight restrictions on intensive livestock operations. But in Southside Virginia, only about half of the counties adopted new ordinances.

Pittsylvania County actually made it easier for large hog farms by reducing the buffer requirements from 500 acres per 350 hogs to 20 acres, said Karen Maute, a member of the county's industrial development authority.

In Buckingham County, Carroll's Foods of Virginia rejected the board of supervisors' request that the company cease locating hog farms in the county until state officials have completed their study of the industry. Three large-scale hog farms began operating during the past few years in Buckingham County, two others are under construction, and another two await approval from DEQ.

Carroll's Foods General Manager Adolph Miller wrote in a letter to the board Aug. 29 that the request is unwarranted because state regulations ensure the industry is environmentally safe.

On the day the Right to Farm Act went into effect, Campbell, of the Virginia Association of Counties, warned that something like this might happen.

``Neighbors may find it objectionable, but with the change, there's not a thing that can be done about it,'' Campbell said two years ago.

Now, Campbell said, ``That warning we issued is coming true.''

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