Flood toxins watched by sky eye
NEW BERN: Rick Dove is an environmental watchdog operating at more than 300m above the ground.
The senior adviser with the Waterkeeper Alliance circles floodwaters from Hurricane Florence in the back of a tiny plane, gripping his camera, searching for toxic problems.
Like a shutterbug hunting for a scandalplagued celebrity, he points the pilot towards a pig farm near the overflowing Trent River in eastern North Carolina. There are two lagoons where waste from the animals is deposited, and one appears to have been inundated.
Some of the manure may have escaped, seeping into the river and contributing to hazards environmentalists have been warning about since before Florence made landfall.
‘‘They said they fixed it so it wouldn’t happen again,’’ Dove (79) said.
‘‘Well, Mother Nature had different ideas.’’
Pig farms are one of the most problematic environmental challenges after Florence dumped a historic amount of rain on the region, but they are far from the only one. Advocates have been keeping a close eye on coal ash basins, where the residue from power plants is stored, and toxic sites across the state. Floodwaters can rise high enough to mix with contami nants then deposit them back into rivers and wetlands that provide drinking water and natural habitats.
These fears have existed for years in a lowlying state with a network of rivers that can disperse pollutants for miles. Climate change is increasing concerns that storms like Florence will strike more often.
‘‘This is a time to recognise there’s a new normal in environmental protection right now,’’ said Thomas A. Burke, an associate dean at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
In 1999 Hurricane Floyd battered the state and dead pigs floated in the floodwaters.
Pig farmers were barred from building new lagoons in 1997, but they were not required to close the old ones. North Carolina has 9 million hogs. —TCA.