Advocacy

Cape Fear River Watch Fix to DEQ’s Press Release on the Turnbull CAFO Spill

(February 1, 2023)
Last Friday a 4,000 head Murphy-Brown Hog farm in Bladen County reported a spill of hog waste into Little Turnbull Creek, which runs next to the feces and urine lagoon at the facility. NC Department of Environmental Quality inspectors visited the facility Friday. The state issued a press release and it was, in a word, pathetic. It didn’t say where the spill happened and it didn’t list the name of the creek the spill entered. It didn’t warn the public about the dangers of bacteria and pathogens that were in the water. And finally, it suggested that a beaver dam had contained the spill. For those of you reading this who are unfamiliar with beaver dams, they are made from sticks and mud. Water runs over and through them continually. They cannot and do not stop bacteria, pathogens, nutrients, antibiotics, heavy metals or any of the other dangerous constituents of untreated hog waste.

The facility estimates the spill was 30,000 gallons. They reported it on a Friday evening. We will leave it to readers to judge how accurate that estimate is likely to be given the industry’s history of underreporting spills.

After we found out about the spill, we took water samples Monday morning above and below the facility. This was three days after the spill was reported and after the facility attempted to recover the waste by pumping it out of the stream. We had those samples analyzed by a state certified lab. The upstream samples showed 19 colonies of fecal coliform bacteria per 100 milliliters of water, well within safe levels. The downstream sample showed 220 colonies of fecal bacteria per 100 milliliters of water. Almost 12x more bacteria than upstream, and more bacteria than is deemed safe by NC DEQ. Samples taken earlier would certainly have showed much higher levels. The state has not released their sample results yet.

We tried to edit the state’s press release below to make it a bit more accurate, a bit more descriptive, and a bit more focused on protecting people downstream of the spill. We sure hope they do a better job next time – because there will definitely be a next time.

This industry is an environmental and public health disaster. Despite promising to clean up their act over twenty years ago the industry continues to use the antiquated lagoon and sprayfield system to manage waste. They refuse to invest in proven and available technology because they value profits over people and the environment. And last weekend like so many times over the three decades North Carolinians paid the price. Little Turnbull Creek flows quickly into Turnbull Creek which winds past homes, schools and churches, then through Bladen Lakes State Forest, past Jones Lake State Park, and finally into the Cape Fear River just below Elizabethtown. Our rivers are being fouled and our communities are suffering.