This reporting was made possible by a grant from the Fourth Estate Fund.
The lagoon-and-spray system for hog waste was developed with help from North Carolina State University. In the 1980s, it helped speed a shift away from small farms to big CAFOs — thousands of hogs confined in huge barns. At one point, the state had more than 10 million hogs, many raised under contract to big corporate processors. Now the number's closer to 8 million. In the past 20 years, the poultry industry has evolved in the same way — with most chickens and turkeys now being raised indoors on huge farms. North Carolina now has at least a billion birds laying eggs or being raised for meat.
"The livestock industry has been transformed into really a corporate agricultural industry dominated by huge multinational corporations," says James Merchant. He's the former dean of public health at the University of Iowa and co-editor of the 2024 book "Industrial Farm Animal Production, the Environment and Public Health," with Robert Marti.
"Up to about 1960, these were independent farmers. The chickens were raised in coops, open coops, so they had access to the outside world. Pigs were all raised in pasture and in small sties," Merchant says.
As big farms multiplied, environmental groups and farm neighbors have argued that raising so many animals in smaller spaces threatens water and air quality and public health. They cite numerous environmental and public health studies, including work done by the late Dr. Steve Wing, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina. He died in 2016 and is often mentioned as the father of a state and national movement against CAFOs.
Blakely Hildebrand is a lawyer with the Southern Environmental Law Center, which has represented environmental and community groups in lawsuits seeking cleaner farming practices.
"CAFOs present a pollution problem. They present a human health problem and a justice issue, right? Because the folks who are most impacted by this industry are communities of color," Hildebrand says.
Multiple studies back up what she says. The federal EPA has expressed concern and the state Department of Environmental Quality reached a settlement with environmental and social justice groups in 2018. It promised to study air quality and to develop an environmental justice mapping tool.
In 1997, North Carolina lawmakers acknowledged these concerns — at least about hog farming. That year, they passed a moratorium on new or expanded lagoon-based hog farms. They made the ban permanent in 2007 with unanimous votes in both houses. That ended the hog industry's rapid growth in the state.
"In '97 North Carolina adopted what really were some of the most stringent, and still remain the most stringent environmental regulations in the country," says Roy Lee Lindsey, CEO of the North Carolina Pork Council. "And one of the things that was included in that was essentially a moratorium on building new farms. Unless we were going to fundamentally change the technologies that we use to manage manure, you couldn't build a new farm."
Environmental and community groups applauded the 2007 law. They said the move would lead to more environmentally friendly hog farming. But little has changed.
Hog farmers dispute the idea that living near a farm can be unhealthy or that people of color are disproportionately affected. They argue their farming practices are sound. They say they have to follow strict rules — both government regulations and under their contracts with big food companies. Lindsey says farmers have been caring for the environment for centuries — and run their farms sustainably.
"Our folks overwhelmingly live on their farms. They're not going to create an environment where they don't want to live. They raise their kids there," Lindsey says.
North Carolina's 2007 law envisioned that hog farmers eventually would come up with something better. But existing farms weren't required to change how they handle waste. Eighteen years later, the question remains - what might replace the lagoon-and-spray system?
The primary alternative is what's called biogas. We saw plastic-covered waste ponds while flying over Sampson County recently with Cape Fear Riverkeeper Kemp Burdette.
"That is a covered lagoon," he says, pointing below. "It captures methane, sends that methane to an upgrading station, where the methane is basically scrubbed of impurities."
That purified gas goes into a commercial gas pipeline to be burned as fuel. But this remains a mostly experimental technology, used at only a handful of hog farms. A 2025 EPA map shows fewer than 10 in North Carolina, out of more than 2,000 hog farms.
Burdette says he doesn't think covered ponds will eventually replace the current system.
Instead, he wants better enforcement of existing rules for hog and poultry operations — and more attention to public complaints.
When he sees waste running off into waterways, Burdette reports it. Most of those complaints go nowhere. But every once in a while, authorities act on one. As we flew over, he spotted a site where the Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ, did penalize one riverside farm after his complaint last year.
"This is Goshen Swamp, one of the biggest tributaries of the northeast Cape Fear [River]. You see the field down there? I actually reported a violation here that did get issued. They had dug a ditch that was connecting their field to the waterway," says Burdette.
Seeing violations from above requires regular monitoring. In many cases, environmental groups are the only ones keeping an eye on things.
Meanwhile, it's impossible to know much about complaints by Burdette or other members of the public. A 2014 state law prohibits the state Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ, from making individual complaints public unless they result in a violation notice. Over the past two years, the water quality division got 72 complaints, which resulted in just seven violations. Penalties averaged no more than a couple of thousand dollars each. XXX
Altogether, if you include required annual inspections, complaint-driven visits, and other inspections, DEQ found 121 deficiencies or violations last year in 2,146 inspections. That equates to violations at about 5.6% of all facilities, according to annual reports sent to the General Assembly about animal feeding operations. (The Department of Agriculture also does some inspections, but far fewer.)
The DEQ has just 16 people on staff to carry out annual inspections and investigate complaints at more than 2,000 hog farms and the limited number of egg-laying poultry operations that it oversees. Under North Carolina law, poultry operations that raise birds for meat aren't required to get permits. So there's no public list or map of farms and no annual inspections, as there are with hogs.
Burdette says his complaints about poultry farms go unheard.
"Our organization has made hundreds of referrals on poultry over the years, and to the best of our knowledge, the state has never issued a notice of deficiency or notice of violation for improper storage of poultry litter," he says.
"And the state has essentially acknowledged that. They haven't said zero, but the last meeting I had with them in Raleigh, I asked, 'How many violations have you issued for improper management of poultry litter and, and where can I find those?' And they said we don't know where you can find them, because they're not associated with a permit number, because they don't require a permit."
DEQ says on its website it has the nation's strongest permit program for swine CAFOs, including annual inspections of every facility. But Burdette says farmers get several weeks' notice, and inspectors often don't find much when they arrive.
DEQ offered only a boilerplate statement saying it investigates complaints. They declined to make anyone available for an on-the-record interview and did not comment directly on inspections. In the statement, spokesman Sam Chan said:
"North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Division of Water Resources staff will investigate complaints for compliance with state water quality rules. Division of Water Resources staff can pursue enforcement on those facilities for violations."
Poultry farms are growing not only near hog farms in the eastern part of the state, but also in other areas, such as western North Carolina. Catawba Riverkeeper Brandon Jones, based in the Charlotte area, estimates there are 1,200 poultry facilities with 60 million birds in the Catawba basin.
"This is a huge source of nitrogen, phosphorus, pathogens, and it is under-regulated and really unmonitored in a way that we don't see for any other type of industry," Jones says.
He'd like North Carolina to require poultry permits, more public disclosure of farm locations, and stricter enforcement.
Like other environmentalists, Jones does regular flyovers, and spots what he believes are violations - both uncovered piles of dry litter and runoff from the fields where poultry poop is spread. He says state officials don't accept his complaints as evidence of violations, and typically only warn the farmers.
He's concerned the violations can lead to chemical pollution, bacterial contamination, and algae blooms — all of which can affect public health.
"It's difficult for us as an organization to effectively work on this issue because of the political climate, to be honest," Jones says. "It's something where we have spent a tremendous amount of resources over the years, and we'll continue to do so to measure and monitor these areas, but that we know that it's an uphill battle."
State Rep. Pricey Harrison (D-Greensboro) would like to fix the problem. Every legislative session in recent years — including this year — she has filed a bill to require permits for large poultry farms. It also calls for poultry waste management plans, like those required for hogs. And it would ban poultry waste operations in 100-year floodplains.
Every year it dies in committee, and it will again this year, says Harrison.
"It's just hard to take on an industry like that, and it's become more and more corporatized," Harrison says. "It's just not the environment that's impacted. It's really the neighbors that, honestly, whose lives are impacted by not well-run operations.
