Welp, Hope NC Residents Enjoy Liquid Pig Shit: Fund To Close/Relocate Flood-Prone CAFOs Out Of Money

[hatrack]

EDIT

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. Of the 129 permitted swine operations in Bladen County, about 20 percent lie less than 1,000 feet from flood-prone areas. Closer to the coast, in Pender and Craven counties, the figure is 40 percent. Removing farms from the 100-year floodplain is critical for the environment and public health. If lagoons overtop, millions of gallons of urine and feces can contaminate residents’ yards, private drinking water wells, rivers, creeks and wetlands with E. coli and other harmful bacteria.

EDIT

The state legislature funded the first round of buyouts in 1999, after North Carolina was hit by a trifecta of strong hurricanes within two months. Hurricane Floyd dropped 17 inches of rain on the eastern part of the state, where floods overtopped waste lagoons and killed at least 100,000 hogs. After four successful buyout rounds, the legislature stopped funding its share of the program in 2007. That stranded dozens of CAFOs in the flood plains and left a backlog of roughly 100 farmers who had applied for a buyout.

The value of the program became apparent during the 2016 storm Hurricane Matthew. State agriculture officials reported that 32 farms, accounting for 103 lagoons, would have been inundated had they not been removed from the flood plain. Then came Hurricane Florence in 2018, which inundated eastern North Carolina. Six lagoons were damaged, another 32 overtopped and nine were flooded, state records show. Without a dedicated funding source, the state Department of Agriculture cobbled together $5 million to restart the program. The legislature later kicked in another $5 million.

EDIT

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08062025/north-carolina-hog-farm-flood-program-funding/

[Orrex]

1. Are you kidding? The voted for liquid pig shit in semi-humanoid form.

[PJMcK]

2. So, when the hurricanes hit NC...

… and they will, people will be living in pig shit.

Sounds like an apt metaphor for life under Trump.

[we can do it]

3. FAFO

[multigraincracker]

4. Just have to pray harder.

Chop some wood, it'll do you good. Pray and live on hay. There'll be pie in the sky when you die,,,,,,THAT'S A LIE.

[mopinko]

5. pet peeve of mine. anaerobic digesters

cd b powering whole cities instead of polluting them. it’s not even that much money. they’re simple machines.

[hatrack]

6. No solutions allowed. None. None At All. Like changing roofing colors to reflect more heat . . .

EDIT

Industry groups have questioned the decades-old science behind cool roofs, downplayed the benefits and warned of reduced choice and unintended consequences. “A one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t consider climate variation across different regions,” wrote Ellen Thorp, the executive director of the EPDM Roofing Association, a DC-based national group that represents an industry built primarily on dark materials.

But the weight of the scientific evidence is clear: on hot days, light-colored roofs can stay more than 50 degrees cooler than dark ones, helping cut energy use, curb greenhouse gas emissions and reduce heat-related illnesses and deaths. One recent study found that reflective roofs could have saved the lives of more than 240 people who died in London’s 2018 heatwave.

EDIT

Elsewhere, the industry’s lobbyists have notched victories. They lobbied successfully to water down a cool-roof ordinance in Denver and to block stricter standards by the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), a professional organization that creates model standards for city and state regulations. The current ASHRAE standard recommends reflective roofs on commercial buildings in US climate zones 1, 2 and 3, the country’s hottest regions. Those include most of the south, Hawaii, almost all of Texas, areas along the Mexican border and most of California.

Said Thorp in a recent interview: “We’ve been able to stop all of those … mandates from creeping into climate zone 4 and 5.” Another group headed by Thorp, the Coalition for Sustainable Roofing, worked with the lobbyist to propose the bill that eliminated Tennessee’s cool-roof requirement. That rule once applied to commercial buildings in just 14 of the state’s 95 counties, but an update to climate maps in 2021 expanded the requirements to 20 more counties, including its most populous urban area, Nashville.

EDIT

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jun/01/dark-roof-lobby

[mopinko]

7. nope. cant have that.

i have a white roof on my 2flat, and a silver roof on my home, which i didnt need the zoning committee to tell me about. also a big solar array on both. didnt get much incentive for that, either, cuz my taxes arent that high. did get some. but it’s paying for itself.
such simple shit. hopefully homeowners will do it anyway. roofing companies wd b smart to market this. cuz ‘free enterprise’ is all we have left.

but shame on cafo owners anyway. (almost called them farmers, but…)
the whole town of amana, iowa is powered by 1 dairy farm. iirc, it cost about $20m, but most of that was to build a sewer system to send the manure to the digester w/o shoveling. what’s the roi on that?
y r they just throwing money away? do we rly need the feds to strong arm ppl into doing smart things?

i was disappointed the the new green deal was dumped. there is sooooo much low hanging fruit in ag. i believe there was money for manure digesters, but i cd b wrong.

[Firestorm49]

8. Unfortunately you can almost count on it happening with little to no federal leadership or conflict resolution.