• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
  FEATURED
Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing January 23, 2023
Extreme Warming Ahead Even as Worst-Case Scenarios Grow ‘Obsolete’ January 23, 2023
Notley Scorches Federal Just Transition Bill as Fossil CEO Calls for Oilsands Boom January 23, 2023
IRON OXIDE: New Battery Brings Long-Duration Storage to Grids, 750 Jobs to West Virginia January 23, 2023
BREAKING: GFANZ Banks, Investors Pour Hundreds of Billions into Fossil Fuels January 17, 2023
Next
Prev

Industrial Hog Farm Biogas Projects Ignore Community Impacts

February 8, 2021
Reading time: 3 minutes

/PxHere

/PxHere

 

Many Black and low-income communities in the U.S. have long played unwilling hosts to industrial hog farms and their sub-par waste-treatment processes. Now, efforts to turn hog-generated methane into renewable natural gas are doing little to improve the quality of life in these communities—and may even be making it worse.

Like many of their ilk across the U.S., the large-scale hog farms of southeastern North Carolina have tended to use two vastly inadequate means to manage the considerable tonnage of animal waste they produce, writes Grist. Spraying it on fields, and storing it in lagoons.

  • Concise headlines. Original content. Timely news and views from a select group of opinion leaders. Special extras.
  • Everything you need, nothing you don’t.
  • The Weekender: The climate news you need.
New!
Subscribe

The former involves spraying adjacent crop fields with nutrient-rich hog manure, a fine-mist application that is highly unpleasant to smell and worse to ingest, while the latter involves simply corralling (if not always containing) the remaining animal waste. Grist notes that unless these lagoons are carefully managed, they quickly become factories for methane, ammonia, nitrates (which have been linked to birth difficulties), and hydrogen sulfite—a serious (and noxious smelling) irritant to the eyes, skin, and lungs.

While there has not seemed to be much interest in finding ways to reduce the olfactory and physiological assault these hog farms deliver to the largely minority communities that surround them, hog-generated methane has become another matter entirely—particularly since 2007, when North Carolina mandated that 0.2% of the power generated by local utilities had to be sourced from renewable natural gas (RNG).

This mandate proved difficult to achieve until 2018, when a company called Optima KV produced the state’s first successful hog biogas venture. “This project collected methane from five hog farms and turned it into energy for Duke Energy, the state’s primary electric utility,” explains Grist.

And now, Smithfield Foods—the largest pork producer in the country—is partnering with Virginia-based Dominion Energy to link 19 North Carolina hog farms with a pipeline and ultimately produce “enough RNG to heat 4,500 homes, or the equivalent of taking 36,000 cars off the road,” according to Smithfield’s sustainability department. More RNG projects are in the works; Smithfield celebrated the completion of a system in Utah late last year, and has plans to spread into Virginia in 2022.

Such an expansion will make utility giants like Duke happy, as they can then count the RNG purchased from industrial hog farms toward the carbon offsets that will help them achieve “carbon neutrality”.

But environmental advocates are crying foul, noting that the rush to RNG does nothing at all about the enduring problems of hog farm pollution, or for the communities languishing downwind from these meat-and gas-producing initiatives.

Of the many toxins released into the air from hog farms, the RNG projects alleviate none but methane, said Ryke Longest, co-director of Duke University’s Environmental Law and Policy Clinic. Such greenwashing, he added, makes these ventures just a way to “make money off one problem” while leaving the others literally blowing in the wind.

When they are not contaminating the water, that is. While Smithfield’s lagoons are lined, unlike some older hog lagoons in North Carolina, they still do overflow during heavy rains or storms, a flooding that can lead to nitrate-heavy waste seeping into groundwater systems.

And there are concerns that these biogas operations, which require the lagoons to be covered, may actually increase concentrations of ammonia. Grist notes that ammonia was implicated in damage from two lagoons spills in North Carolina last year, with major fish kills reported in watersheds adjacent to or downstream from the associated hog farms.

As for the spraying of hog manure on local fields, a Smithfield spokesperson told Grist that “it is not pollution,” as there is “nothing in manure that hasn’t already gone through the digestive system of an animal.”

But to local residents and environmental groups, Smithfield’s rejection of stronger pollution controls “is proof that its biogas plans are really about profit, not community protection,” writes Grist.

“If the industry just tried to treat people who live in those communities like human beings, that would help,” said Sherri White-Williamson, environmental justice policy director for the NC Conservation Network.

Continue Reading



in Biodiversity & Habitat, Climate & Society, Climate Denial & Greenwashing, Climate Impacts & Adaptation, Community Climate Finance, Environmental Justice, Health & Safety, Jurisdictions, Legal & Regulatory, United States

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

United Nations
Air & Marine

Salvage of $20B ‘Floating Time Bomb’ Delayed by Rising Cost of Oil Tankers

January 27, 2023
12
RL0919/wikimedia commons
Finance & Investment

Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing

January 23, 2023
2.1k
@tongbingxue/Twitter
Ending Emissions

Extreme Warming Ahead Even as Worst-Case Scenarios Grow ‘Obsolete’

January 23, 2023
270

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

RL0919/wikimedia commons

Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing

January 23, 2023
2.1k
@tongbingxue/Twitter

Extreme Warming Ahead Even as Worst-Case Scenarios Grow ‘Obsolete’

January 23, 2023
270
Rachel Notley/Facebook

Notley Scorches Federal Just Transition Bill as Fossil CEO Calls for Oilsands Boom

January 23, 2023
255
James Vincent Wardhaugh/flickr

Canada Sidelines Ontario’s Ring of Fire, Approves Separate Mining Project

December 4, 2022
379
Weirton, WV by Jon Dawson/flickr

IRON OXIDE: New Battery Brings Long-Duration Storage to Grids, 750 Jobs to West Virginia

January 23, 2023
493
United Nations

Salvage of $20B ‘Floating Time Bomb’ Delayed by Rising Cost of Oil Tankers

January 27, 2023
12

Recent Posts

EcoAnalytics

Albertans Want a Just Transition, Despite Premier’s Grumbling

January 23, 2023
188
Sergio Boscaino/flickr

Dubai Mulls Quitting C40 Cities Over ‘Costly’ Climate Target

January 24, 2023
84
hangela/pixabay

New UK Coal Mine Faces Two Legal Challenges

January 24, 2023
43

Gas Stoves Enter U.S. Climate Culture War, Become ‘Bellwether’ for Industry

January 22, 2023
73
Jeff Hitchcock/flickr.

BREAKING: GFANZ Banks, Investors Pour Hundreds of Billions into Fossil Fuels

January 23, 2023
494

Exxon Had the Right Global Warming Numbers Through Decades of Denial: Study

January 17, 2023
223
Next Post
Global Climate Action Summit 2018/Wikimedia Commons

Veteran Negotiators, ‘Dream Team’ of Advocates May Bode Well for COP 26 ‘Moment’

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}