Posted in BROWNFIELDS, ECOLOGY, ENERGY, ENVIRONMENT, ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE, HEALTHY COMMUNITIES, POLLUTION, REGION, REGULATIONS, RESEARCH, RESILIENCE, SHORELINE, SOIL, Uncategorized, UNIVERSITY, WATER, tagged African American, agricultural waste, agriculture, algal blooms, biofuel, black soldier fly larvae, buffers, CAFOs, class, concentrated animal feeding operations, Connie Migliazzo, cotton, ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE, fecal sludge, flood, forest, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, hog farm, Hurricane Florence, Hurricane Floyd, Hurricane Matthew, industry, infant mortality, kidney disease, Kofi Boone, lagoon, landfill, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, low-income, methane gas, North Carolina, North Carolina State University in Raleigh, Penny White Project Fund, pollution, pork, Portland State University, Prato, prison, race, Rachel Carson Council, seepage, Shocca, Smithfield, soil, storage tanks, storm, Streams, The Netherlands, Timothy A. Schuler, tobacco, toxic, tuberculosis, U.S. Agricultural Census, U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Program, vegetable cover, water quality, water supply, wetland, WH Group on May 2, 2019|
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BY TIMOTHY A. SCHULER
In North Carolina, history, industry, and climate change work in tandem to create landscapes of toxic waste.
In Houston, it was the petrochemical plants. In North Carolina, it was the hog farms. In both places, churning floodwaters caused by recent storms were turned into a toxic stew that endangered local water resources and public health. In September 2018, Hurricane Florence made landfall in North Carolina, where seven million gallons of hog waste overtopped the region’s ubiquitous open-air lagoons and quickly made its way into neighbors’ yards and nearby streams.
As by-products go, the fecal sludge of an industrial-scale hog farm is far from benign. The waste can carry viruses, parasites, nitrates, and bacteria such as salmonella. Even in the best circumstances, the odors from these open-air lagoons, which number some 3,300 across the state but are concentrated in the heavily African American counties of eastern North Carolina, are noxious enough that in August 2018 a jury awarded six families $473.5 million for having to live near a hog farm in Pender County. Combined with a severe storm, however, these lagoons become all the more dangerous, threatening the water supply of entire communities and far-flung ecosystems.
Hurricane Florence was just the most recent example of how severe weather events, strengthened by a warming climate, can interact with industrialized landscapes to create new threats to public health and safety. If landscape architects are to grapple with the environmental and human health impacts of climate change, they will have to educate themselves about agricultural waste. (more…)
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