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Although the flood waters have crested in many places, the crisis is not nearly over: The dead farm animals are rapidly decomposing, creating a threat of widespread illness via contaminated water and insect-borne disease. Already, the state's politically powerful hog farming industry has been under fire by environmentalists for groundwater pollution problems, and the public health threat posed by decomposing hogs and flooded hog-waste sites could be enormous.

In fact, state officials may be minimizing the extent of the problem. The state has estimated that 100,000 hogs are dead, for instance, though a spokesman for Bill Holman, secretary of the North Carolina Department of the Environment and Natural Resources, calls that "a very conservative estimate."

The Environmental Defense Fund has estimated that a half-million hogs are dead. "It could be lower, but more likely higher," said Dan Whittle of the Raleigh EDF office. EDF is worried about massive groundwater contamination due to decomposing farm animals and flooded animal-waste sites.

A reliable source in the state's agricultural community believes that the dead hog total will be at least 200,000 -- twice the official estimate. "All I know is that we've got a shit load of dead hogs and a shit load of live hogs that will soon be dead if we can't get feed in to them," he said. "The crisis is not over, it's ongoing and will be for at least another five days to a week. In some areas the rivers have not crested, yet." According to the source, the Cargill Company is ferrying in feed free of charge to stranded hogs on boats provided by the state forestry service.

Asked about the disparity between his own estimate and other, higher estimates of dead hogs, he answered, "There's no cover-up, if that's what you're trying to say. Everybody's doing their honest best but no one really knows anything and we won't until the waters recede."

Andrea Ashby, a spokeswoman for the North Carolina Department of Agriculture, said, "We only have 10,000 hogs confirmed dead, but the estimate is 100,000; 200,000 is wrong. I don't know where you got that figure."

It's true that no one can be really certain how many hogs have died until the waters recede. But North Carolina is home to 7.5 million hogs, and the vast majority live in the eastern counties hardest hit by the record flooding. So why the insistence by the state Department of Agriculture on the low estimate, qualified as "conservative" even by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, which provided the estimate?

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