agriculture

Hog lagoons must be tested periodically for nitrogen, phosphorus and heavy metals. When the feces and urine mix is sprayed on hayfields, excessive amounts of these chemicals can harm the crops, as well as contaminate groundwater, streams and even the drinking water supply. (File photo: Lisa Sorg)

Billy Houston got in over his head. His side hustle as a private “animal waste consultant.” His full-time job as a Duplin County Soil and Water Conservation District employee.

And so in his private business, he began lying to the farmers, to the Department of Environmental Quality, even to himself.

After a State Bureau of Investigation probe, Houston pleaded guilty to 28 counts of falsifying records, a Class 2 misdemeanor. Yesterday Superior Court Judge Henry L. Stevens, IV, sentenced Houston to two consecutive sentences of 30 days in jail, which were suspended. Houston is on supervised probation for 12 months, must pay a $500 fine plus court costs, and complete 50 hours of community service.

The judge also prohibited Houston from sampling lagoons or doing bookkeeping in the swine industry other than for his family farm.

Since Houston had no previous criminal record, state sentencing rules prescribe that he receive a suspended sentence for the misdemeanor charge.

The Duplin Times reported the sentencing yesterday.

Although Houston had worked for 35 years by the Duplin County Soil and Water Conservation District, the falsified hog lagoon records are related to his private consulting business. Houston retired from the district in June 2018, after the state began investigating him.

In June 2018, as Policy Watch reported, Houston filed record with state environmental officials showing he tested 35 farms and 55 lagoons in Duplin and Sampson counties — all on the same day, which, given the distances between the farms, is highly unlikely, if not impossible.

But, as his criminal pleadings revealed, Houston admitted to an SBI investigator that he falsified the testing records. The Duplin Times story reports that Houston told the investigator that he “would pull all of his samples from two or three different lagoons that were in good working condition and submit them as if they had been pulled from all of the lagoons.”

“Houston indicated that he had started out just trying to help out farmers in his area,” the story went on, “but had gotten overwhelmed with his full-time job with Duplin County and his part-time job of collecting samples. Houston further claimed to be helping his father-in-law who had significant health issues. Houston admitted that he was wrong and that ‘he had been stretched too thin and messed up.’”

Falsfiying this information can have serious consequences for farmers and the drinking water supply. The lagoons — which contain hog feces, urine, dander, feed, as well as water used to flush the confinement barns — must be periodically sampled, according to state permits, in order to measure levels of nitrogen, phosphorous and heavy metals before the material can be applied to spray fields.

Farmers grow Bermuda grass and hay on the sprayfields; excessive amounts of these chemicals not only harm the crops, but they can contaminate groundwater and nearby water ways, including drinking water supplies.

According to letters dated May 21, 2018, from DEQ to the farm operators, the sampling conducted by Houston produced consistently and drastically different results when compared with tests subsequently conducted by the state. For example, levels of zinc at one farm’s lagoon were 101,108 percent higher when sampled by the state than by Houston. At another farm, Houston underreported copper levels by 910 percent.

Although Houston was moonlighting as a private consultant when he lied about the lagoon records, the Duplin County Soil and Water Conservation District had long been concerned about the side jobs of several of its employees. In 1996, according to emails obtained under the Public Records Act, Tom Jones, regional coordinator for the Division of Soil and Water Conservation at what is now known as DEQ, wrote to Interim County Manager Judy Brown that the state had received concerns from legislators, district supervisors and state and federal agency personnel.

Jones stressed that the concerns were not about the conduct of the individual employees, but the perceived conflict of interest.

“The conflict itself involves the fact that services provided by Agriment are closely linked (although complementary, not identical) to those provided by the same employees while serving the SWCD,” Jones wrote. “Comments voiced include an unfair business advantage with private services offered based on public data and recommendations. The potential for graft is also raised and, while the truth proves otherwise, rumors can be damaging.”

It’s common for private consultants to fill gaps left by underfunded and understaffed counties. There are 2 million hogs being raised on more than 500 farms in Duplin County. The local Soil and Water District has just seven employees, and some of them are administrators who do not conduct fieldwork.

Source: Environmental Working Group

When a hurricane knocks on North Carolina’s front door, as Dorian is today, the seas start to churn, the winds begin to whip and the air Down East stinks worse than usual.

We often associate the pre-storm stench with swine farmers spraying their fields with hog waste in order to lower levels in the open-pit lagoons. But the poultry industry also presents an environmental threat, both because of the number of birds, an estimated 515 million in North Carolina — compared with 9 million hogs — and because it is largely unregulated.

The News & Observer published a story last week about a policy change at the NC Department of Environmental Quality that has resulted in a sharp increase in the number of violations based on complaints lodged against concentrated animal feeding operations:  In the six months from November 2018 to April 2019, the agency found 62 violations — twice as many as had been publicly documented in the previous 10 years.

(The article, written by Barry Yeoman, was produced by the Food & Environment Reporting Network, Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting and The Guardian, where it first appeared.)

The story included a list of the 37 farms cited by environmental regulators. Of these, 12 are swine, including one farm owned and operated by Murphy-Brown, the world’s largest pork producer and which contracts with most individual farmers in the state.

Four of the cited farms raise cattle, one is a horse farm — the esteemed Tryon International Equestrian Center in Polk County — and 21 are poultry operations.

The poultry operations are not apparent from the list. However, these farms had no permit number, which indicates they are “deemed permitted.” And most poultry farms fall under this classification. “Deemed permitted” means that a facility is considered to have a permit — and paradoxically, to be in compliance — even though it has not received an individual permit for its construction or operation.

These “deemed permitted” farms use a “dry litter” method of managing their waste, which supposedly reduces the ammonia odor and risk for pathogens and flies. But poultry farms, especially gigantic operations housing millions of birds, do stink, even if the manure is dry. And when the waste is spread on fields it can wash into nearby streams, just like manure from swine farms can.

Farms that use “wet litter” disposal methods are required to have a Division of Water Resources permit. Only 20 poultry farms in the state report disposing of wet litter.

Because there are no permits for dry litter operations, there are no statewide records of where the operations are located, of the exact number of birds or the amount of waste. Only when a natural disaster occurs, such as Hurricane Florence, and the industry releases the number of birds killed — 3.4 million — does the public begin to get an inkling of the enormity of these operations.

The Waterkeeper Alliance has estimated the number of birds in North Carolina at 515 million, based on the number of barns constructed. The Alliance, local waterkeepers, and the Environmental Working Group have been tracking these barns — building permits are public record — and calculated that since Hurricane Florence a year ago, 62 new farms have opened throughout North Carolina, with 519 barns. Each barn can hold at least 35,000 birds.

Sources: Lumber Riverkeeper, Yadkin Riverkeeper, Cape Fear River Watch and Broad River Alliance.

The lack of regulation over these poultry farms came up in the legislature earlier this session, when Sen. Harper Peterson, a Democrat from New Hanover County, proposed in a committee a benign recommendation to study the pros and cons of greater oversight. Sen. Brent Jackson, a farmer representing Duplin, Johnston and Sampson counties, put the kibosh on Peterson’s notion, claiming the poultry industry needs no further regulation because it’s in compliance. How would we know for sure? Jackson didn’t explain.

As for the swine operations, names of the farms with violations can be found by cross-referencing the permit numbers with the entire DEQ database of permitted farms. One of the cited farms is owned and operated by Murphy-Brown; the other farms are owned by individuals who are contracted by giant pork producers. Those contract farmers are required to adhere to strict operational requirements imposed by the companies, down to the type and amount of feed the pigs receive.

However, some farms with violations aren’t listed in the DEQ database nor on the agency’s map of permitted animal feeding operations. Given their location, western North Carolina, and the prefix on the permit number –AWD — these are likely dairy or beef cattle.