Pollution fears: Swollen rivers swamp ash dumps, hog farms

RALEIGH, N.C. — Flooded rivers from Florence’s drenching rains have swamped coal ash dumps and low-lying hog farms, raising pollution concerns as the swollen waterways approached their crests Monday.

North Carolina environmental regulators say several open-air manure pits at hog farms have failed, spilling pollution. State officials also were monitoring the breach of a Duke Energy coal ash landfill near Wilmington.

Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Michael Regan said Monday that the earthen dam at one hog lagoon in Duplin County had been breached. There were also seven reports of lagoon levels going over their tops or being inundated in Jones and Pender counties.

Regan said state investigators will visit the sites as conditions allow. The large pits at hog farms hold feces and urine from the animals to be sprayed on nearby fields.

The Associated Press published photos of a hog farm outside Trenton on Sunday with long metal buildings ringed by dark water. Satellite photos of the same farm taken before the storm show the location of a hog waste pit completely submerged under flood-

waters in the AP photos.

The N.C. Pork Council, an industry trade group, emphasized Monday that the hog waste pits flooded by Florence represented a comparatively small number when compared with the total number statewide.

“While there are more than 3,000 active lagoons in the state that have been unaffected by the storm, we remain concerned about the potential impact of these record-shattering floods,” the pork council’s statement said.

An AP analysis of location data from hog waste disposal permits shows at least 45 active North Carolina farms are located in 100year and 500-year floodplains.

Federal forecasters predicted several rivers would crest at record or near-record levels by Monday, and high water could linger for days.

Duke Energy said the flow was stopped Monday from the weekend collapse of a coal ash landfill at the L.V. Sutton Power Station near Wilmington, N.C., and that cleanup work had begun.

Duke spokeswoman Paige Sheehan said a full assessment of how much ash escaped from the waterslogged landfill is ongoing. The company initially estimated Saturday that about 2,000 cubic yards of ash were displaced, enough to fill about 180 dump trucks.

The coal-fired Sutton plant was retired in 2013 and replaced with a new facility that burns natural gas. The company has been excavating millions of tons of leftover ash from old waste pits at the site and removing it to a new lined landfill constructed on the property. The gray ash left behind when coal is burned contains toxic heavy metals, including arsenic, lead and mercury.

Photos from the site provided to AP by Cape Fear River Watch, an environmental advocacy group, show cascades of gray-colored water spilling from at least two breaches at the landfill and flowing toward Sutton Lake, the plant’s former cooling pond which is now used for public recreation, including fishing and boating.

Sutton Lake drains into the Cape Fear River. Sheehan said Duke’s assessment is that there was minimal chance any contaminants from the spill had reached the river.