Salon.com > Fetzer Mills Jr.

After the flood

Tue, 26 Oct 1999 12:00:00 +0000

North Carolina environmentalists and hog farmers are at war with each other in the wake of the disastrous flooding caused by rains from Hurricanes Dennis, Floyd and Irene.

Environmentalists are charging that plans to allow farmers to get rid of flooded hog wastes by essentially spreading the toxic overflow more widely will threaten the state's drinking water supplies. The state's Department of the Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) is trying to referee the slugfest between the two sides.

"We met with representatives of the environmental and hog farming communities and tried to craft a policy that struck a balance that will protect the environment and allow the hog operators to continue farming, " says DENR spokesman Don Reuter. "Now, we're catching heat from both sides."

In eastern North Carolina hogs out number people by a nearly 5 to 1 margin. There are, or were before the floods, more than 9 million hogs and 2 million people. The floods were disastrous not only because of the unprecedented extent of the floodwaters, but because the waters were contaminated by pollutants, including human wastes, petrochemicals, pesticides, fertilizer and, most extensively, hog wastes, which are stored in open-air storage pits called lagoons.

The flood next time

Wed, 29 Sep 1999 11:00:00 +0000

A hideous stench hangs in the air of Duplin County. It's a smell unlike anything else: rotting animal carcasses, raw sewage, animal waste and decaying vegetation. Pools of rank, fetid water topped with an oily rainbow slick stand everywhere. This was the scene revealed when Hurricane Floyd's record-breaking floodwaters receded.

Driving down Highway 41, the main artery in that quarter of Duplin County, things appear normal from a distance. The once-submerged houses along that route are now above water, and mostly appear undamaged. On closer inspection it's clear that almost every house is abandoned. All of the furnishings, carpeting, linoleum, drywall, clothing and household goods of the occupants are piled high in the yards waiting for trucks to haul them away to the dump.

At some houses a pall of black smoke hangs in the air, as the owners pile their contaminated belongings onto enormous, fiery pyres, sending contaminants into the air. The empty houses, without their window dressings or drywall, doors and windows open wide, appear skeletal, like gaping skulls.

Hog hell in North Carolina

Wed, 22 Sep 1999 16:00:00 +0000

Eastern North Carolina has been hit with a disaster of biblical proportions in the wake of severe flooding caused by Hurricane Floyd. Coffins have floated out of cemeteries, and more than 3 million chickens and turkeys, plus as many as a half-million hogs, are dead in flooded areas of the state.

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."

Journey to the Center of a Race

Wed, 24 Feb 1999 09:36:00 +0000

Prize-winning African-American novelist Randall Kenan ("A Visitation of Spirits") was once dubbed "our 'black' Garcma Marquez" by Terry McMillan, but his new nonfiction book, "Walking on Water," is heavy on the realism, skip the magic. Kenan spent more than four years on the road interviewing black Americans from Louisiana to Alaska, the West Coast to the Northeast and all points in between, including black enclaves in Canada. Part travelogue, part sociological, political and historical study, "Walking on Water" is both broad and deep, an unusually sensitive portrait of black America at the end of the 20th century.

He writes, "The truth is there are over thirty-six million ways to be black, from the curious guy who raises pigeons on the roof across the street from me, who wears the same jacket 365 days of the year, to the Tennessee mountain minister who teaches Greek and Latin to high school students, to the NBA player from Lake Charles, Louisiana, who loves his mother to death, to the matriarch of an apple orchard in Washington State who hates to see her children go off to school, to the crack addict in some Philadelphia alley, with a hard-on and thirty-seven cents to his name, just wanting to stay up and UP, to the congresswoman, to the cowgirl, to the fisherman to the dogcatcher, to the young lovers, at this very moment, engaged in that ancient act that will undoubtedly bring, nine months hence, yet another brown-skinned girl or brown-skinned boy into this world, into this country, into this city, into this block, into this building, into this room where they shall learn their own uniqueness, and, one fine morning, say softly, I am."