It's hurricane season once again, with Hurricane Florence bringing home that reality loud and clear as she unleashed her fury across the Carolinas. Besides the wind and rain, and the destruction and flooding associated with those two evils, there is always the threat that rising waters can cause hazardous waste to leach out of holding pits or soils on contaminated sites and potentially pollute groundwater and surface waters that serve as a source of drinking water.

Recent reports are highlighting the extent of the problem, listing potential threats, which include hazardous waste from superfund sites, chemical factories, coal ash ponds collapsing, and potentially also nuclear power plants, as well as animal waste from hog farms.

A pig farm waste pit

North Carolina has a large concentration of hog farms, and where there are pigs there is plenty of pig waste. This animal waste is held in open pits dotted across parts of North Carolina that lie slightly inland from the coast. These pits are already overflowing due to heavy rainfall and flooding, with also drinking water sources potentially becoming contaminated with feces-laden wastewater.

Pilots for Waterkeeper Alliance document the effects of Hurricane Florence's flooding on concentrated animal feeding operations in North Carolina on September 17th, 2018.
(Photo: Rick Dove, Waterkeeper Alliance)

According to a study conducted by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and Waterkeeper Alliance, in 2016 there were North Carolina had more than 4,000 animal waste holding pits containing pig and/or chicken manure.

It is estimated that North Carolina generates around 10 billion gallons of wet animal waste every year. Picture 15,000 Olympic-size swimming pools filled with pig poo mingling with rising flood waters. Not a pretty sight.

Kemp Burdett from Cape Fear River Watch is very concerned about the swine lagoons breaching, and said he was "bracing for catastrophic impact" in Florence's aftermath.

"When you have a swine lagoon breach, it is going to have catastrophic impact on the river," Burdette said in an interview with CNN. "We are going to see serious water quality problems."

While some farmers have made efforts to reduce the animal excrement in their pits by spraying it onto their fields, this is not likely to be of much help should severe flooding occur. But, even with the best intentions and precautions it may be impossible to prevent animal waste from escaping the holding pits and leaking into the environment. Some runoff is inevitable.

According to Burdette, should animal waste be released by floodwaters, the region could suffer long-term water quality issues. But added to that, there is a very real risk to the animals themselves. Should they succumb to rising floodwaters, their carcasses can get washed away and end up in rivers, posing a further risk of contamination.

According to Soren Rundquist, Director of Spatial Analysis at EWG, during periods of heavy rainfall floodwaters will wash whatever has been sprayed onto the fields away, together with whatever overflows from the waste holding pits.

"Everything that's been sprayed on the fields is going to leave with the runoff anyway," Rundquist told CNN. "So pumping might move it from over here to over there, but it doesn't have a practical effect."

Besides the threat posed by animal waste, both North and South Carolina have several Superfund sites earmarked for cleanup by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), with at least nine of those locations posing a real concern to the EPA, who will be monitoring them during and after the storm for any indication that things are amiss.

If you believe your water source may be at risk from pig waste contamination or other forms of water contamination, please consider employing a filter system like a berkey water filter.