EPA to review permits at hog farms collecting gas

TURKEY — Federal regulators have agreed to investigate whether the N.C. Department of Environment Quality violated the rights of minority residents and poor people living near farms where it approved plans to capture gas from hog waste.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said it had accepted a complaint filed in October by the Southern Environmental Law Center for the Duplin County NAACP and the North Carolina Poor People’s Campaign.

The complaint alleges the state’s water quality permit modifications at four hog farms approved last March contained “inadequate” protections for nearby communities in Duplin and Sampson counties, violating civil rights laws.

Moving forward with the investigation doesn’t reflect any decision on the merits of the allegations, the EPA’s External Civil Rights Compliance Office wrote to an SELC lawyer.

The farms are among 19 operations set to provide methane to a natural gas facility near the Sampson-Duplin county line operated by a partnership between Smithfield Foods and Dominion Energy. The farms will capture methane and other gases in a digester and send the product to a processing facility.

At three of the farms, a new waste pit would be dug and covered with an anaerobic digester, effectively a large tarp that is welded together at the seams. As methane and other gases waft from the lagoon, they are captured in the digester and sent to a nearby processing facility. The fourth farm requested a permit to cover an existing pit.

Biogas is popular with pork producers, who argue that it cuts down on methane emissions from their waste pits while also turning the captured gas into a source of revenue for farmers. But nearby community members and environmental advocates argue that using waste pits to capture gases perpetuates a system where waste is stored in lagoons before being sprayed onto nearby fields, damaging air quality and with runoff impacting water quality.

A Department of Environmental Quality spokeswoman said the agency was reviewing a letter from EPA.