Funding Shortfalls Hamper North Carolina's Program to Buy Out Hog Farms in or Near Floodplains

[littlemissmartypants]

Now that hurricane season has arrived, hundreds of waste lagoons could be flooded by climate-amplified storms, threatening yards, drinking water wells, rivers, creeks and wetlands.

By Lisa Sorg
June 8, 2025

An industrialized swine farm in Wayne County, N.C., is covered in flood water during Hurricane Matthew in 2016. Credit: Rick Dove

As soon as the skies clear after a hurricane hits eastern North Carolina, Larry Baldwin climbs in the passenger seat of a single-engine plane, usually with his friend and pilot Rick Dove, and surveys the industrialized swine farms inundated with flood water.

“It’s almost indescribable. You look down and see that they’re either flooded or sides of a lagoon—we call them cesspools—are completely blown out,” said Baldwin, the Waterkeeper Alliance’s coordinator for Pure Farms Pure Waters, a nonprofit that advocates for stronger regulations over factory farms.

Meteorologists are predicting an above-average hurricane season, which began June 1. If a storm hits eastern North Carolina this year, flooding could jeopardize the structural integrity of hundreds of industrialized hog farms, whose massive open-air waste lagoons are vulnerable to hurricanes and heavy rain, an Inside Climate News analysis of publicly available flood maps and a state permit database shows.

As of March, there were 8.1 million hogs in North Carolina concentrated animal feeding operations*, also known as CAFOs.
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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08062025/north-carolina-hog-farm-flood-program-funding/

*PDF Link to MARCH 2025 HOG REPORT