Categories: Environment

After Hurricane Matthew, livestock farms in North Carolina are still underwater

Hurricane Matthew continues to blow. Coverage of Hurricane Matthew’s record-breaking East Coast jaunt was largely drowned out by last week’s presidential debate and that resulting shit storm, but Civil Eats reminded us this morning that a lot of North Carolina is still very much underwater.

Christina Cooke reports that an estimated 1,300 hogs and anywhere between 2 and 5 million birds (or more) housed in the state’s Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) have already drowned in the flooding.

Related Post
Ribbons of the lagoons’ trademark bright pink color have made their way into the adjacent Neuse River.

Beyond loss of livestock, the flooding has serious environmental implications. CAFOs dispose of hog waste in nearby lagoons, and those ammonia and nitrate-rich, fecal bacteria-breeding waste repositories are vulnerable to flooding. Cooke spoke with Waterkeeper Alliance founder and advisor Rick Dove, who says he flew over some of the lagoons this week and saw evidence that the waste is leaking into surrounding bodies of water.

How could he tell? Ribbons of the lagoons’ trademark bright pink color have made their way into the adjacent Neuse River, while some of the (formerly pink) lagoons have taken on the color of the surrounding floodwaters. Cooke reports that Waterkeeper plans to release photographic evidence of the seepage in the coming days.

H. Claire Brown
Share
Published by
H. Claire Brown

Recent Posts

Grist acquires The Counter and launches food and agriculture vertical

Grist, an award-winning, nonprofit media organization dedicated to highlighting climate solutions and uncovering environmental injustices,…

6 months ago

Is California giving its methane digesters too much credit?

Every year, California dairy farms emit hundreds of thousands of tons of the potent greenhouse…

3 years ago

Your car is killing coho salmon

Highway 7 runs north-south through western Washington, carving its way through a landscape sparsely dotted…

3 years ago

The pandemic has transformed America’s dining landscape into an oligopoly dominated by chains 

One of the greatest pleasures I had as a child growing up in the Chicago…

3 years ago

California is moving toward food assistance for all populations—including undocumented immigrants

Undocumented immigrants experience food insecurity at much higher rates than other populations, yet they are…

3 years ago

Babka, borscht … and pumpkin spice? Two writers talk about Jewish identity through contemporary cookbooks.

Writer Charlotte Druckman and editor Rebecca Flint Marx are both Jewish journalists living in New…

3 years ago