N.C. floods, hog lakes raise no stink with Trump’s EPA

OK, I know you’re obsessed about sex and the Supreme Court. But the hurricane flooding in North Carolina has been terrible. Let’s give it some serious thought right now.

Particularly when it comes to ways the government screwed up. First lesson is easy. Coastal flooding is getting way, way worse because of global warming. So obviously we’ve got to join other nations in combating this universally recognized threat. Hahahahaha.

Yeah, yeah. President Donald Trump does not believe in climate change. Who among us can forget the time he claimed the whole idea was a Chinese plot to ruin American manufacturing?

Maybe he’ll evolve. After all, Trump does occasionally show some concern for nature. When he visited North Carolina on Wednesday, he particularly inquired about the well-being of the state’s Lake Norman. Well-informed observers did note that there happens to be a Trump golf club on Lake Norman’s shores.

If we’re not going to do anything to keep the waters from encroaching, the least the government can do is to stop developers from building housing on the flood plain.

North Carolina seemed to be thinking along these lines when it commissioned experts to figure out how much the sea level was likely to rise over the next century. They concluded the water could go up by as much as 39 inches by 2100.

“We were ready to step up to the plate and take a hard look at this long-term problem ...” one scientist told New York Times reporters.

Go, North Carolina! “... and we blew it,” he concluded.

Whoops. State lawmakers basically ordered the government to ignore the study.

Finally, we’re getting to the moment — a high point in all stories about the environment in North Carolina — when we discuss the hog lagoons.

Hog lagoons are huge bodies of pig poop. The waste is treated with bacteria that turns it pink.

The good news on the hog-lagoon front is that North Carolina farmers, officials, and even some of the Big Pork corporations that created the whole system, have been working to get it under control.

A lot more could probably be done faster if, say, the federal government put big money into closing down hog farms in flood plains. The farmers are pretty enthusiastic about getting compensation to transition into some new crop that does not create lakes of manure in their neighborhood.

The Department of Agriculture has actually been some help. But what are the chances we’ll see the Environmental Protection Agency spring into action? The EPA, you may remember, was until recently headed by Scott Pruitt, the guy with the affinity for first-class air flights and using siren-and-policelight motorcades to get through traffic when he was on his way to dinner.

God, will we never get a Cabinet member who likes to take the occasional bus? Now Pruitt is gone and the EPA is run by Andrew Wheeler, a former coal industry lobbyist who was also an aide to Sen. James Inhofe, the biggest global warming denier in the history of the U.S. Congress.

Not much to hope for there. How the hell do you get these people to focus on the environment, even if it’s just for flood-prevention purposes? Maybe North Carolina could declare the entire state a Donald Trump golf course.

She writes for the New York Times.