Reprinted from N.C. Health News

The squealing and grunting grew louder. The pigs stomped the ground with their hooves and, as dust rose through the air, banged their snouts against a metal grating.

As the rattling and shrieks grew more insistent, Mildred Betancourth stepped aside.

“I need to feed them,” she said. Moments later, a yellowish meal came streaming to the ground from a series of Y-shaped pipes hanging from above. “They’re always hungry.”

The pigs grew quiet. With their faces dipped toward the cold floor, they began to eat, content for now. The tour continued.

Betancourth was leading the way through a series of large hoop houses, each filled with pigs being raised for pork. The pigs varied in age, color, size and spotting patterns, and by all outward appearances they acted conventionally, with their squeals and snout-driven foraging. Yet their living conditions were anything but conventional.

The five hoop houses are part-research facility, part-demonstration project for the Center for Environmental Farming Systems, a research center run by three partners: N.C. State University, N.C. Agricultural & Technical State University in Durham and the state’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

The goal of the 142-animal operation is to show how hogs can be raised without antibiotics in a way that grants them enough space to roam – and that keeps their waste out of open-air pits called lagoons.

Managing hog waste isn’t just a regular chore for farmers like Betancourth, who oversees the swine project. Hogs’ feces and urine, in fact, have wide-reaching political ramifications in North Carolina, the U.S.’s second-largest pork producer, behind Iowa.

North Carolina is home to some 8.8 million pigs, most of which live on farms in the eastern portion of the state. To raise such a large number of pigs, many farms rely on concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs.

These facilities raise animals efficiently and economically. Yet with such large numbers of animals, they can also produce an abundant amount of feces and urine.

Many large-scale farms store this waste in open-air lagoons or in pits and then spray the treated waste on nearby fields. But this practice has raised researchers’ and residents’ concerns.

For one, researchers have found that lagoon and spray systems can cause increases in harmful airborne pollutants, as well as spikes in asthma symptoms among nearby residents. Residents living near hog farms have also complained about the persistent stench.

And in an ongoing legal complaint, environmentalists have claimed that the state’s hog regulations are racially discriminatory, in that they allow farms to operate with waste-control technology that puts nearby minorities’ health at risk.

Researchers have also raised concerns about the widespread use of antibiotics in CAFOs, which they say have the potential to develop antibiotic-resistant pathogens that could harm humans.

CAFOs may be prevalent among North Carolina’s pork industry. But in Goldsboro, the Center for Environmental Farming Systems is looking to show that there’s another way to produce good pork and fill the growing demand for smaller-scale meat production.

A broad focus

The Center for Environmental Farming Systems was launched in 1994, a time when North Carolinians found themselves reading news stories about polluted state rivers and their connection to agriculture, according to Nancy Creamer, the director of the center.

Facing pressure from sustainable-agriculture groups, deans from agricultural colleges at N.C. State and N.C. A&T, as well as the state’s agricultural commissioner, brought together a committee to look for solutions. The committee included sustainable-agriculture advocates, conventional farmers and researchers.

After deliberating, the committee had one clear recommendation: the development of a research center focused on sustainable agriculture, Creamer said.

Soon the Center for Environmental Farming Systems was born.

What began as an idea in the mid-’90s has since grown into a large, distinctive research center. Alongside its hog research, the center runs a roughly 200-acre research farm. The center has also helped create a statewide supply chain for small-scale meat producers and runs workshops for farmers, among other activities.

In its research, the center covers a wide terrain.

“Our plots [in Clayton] are five-acre plots and are multi-disciplinary,” said Andy Meier, superintendent of the Goldsboro farm, “which means faculty from animal science, faculty from soil science, water quality, biology, entomology, crop science.”

The center’s researchers closely study the environmental footprint of their projects – whether they’re growing crops with conventional techniques or raising cattle on open grasslands.

Their research looks at “what happens in the soil, what happens in the air, what happens in the water over time,” Meier said.

A warm bed to rest on

These kinds of considerations are significant for the state’s hog industry.

With heightened attention placed on the nation’s meat industry via documentaries and books, consumers have grown increasingly interested in buying meat that they view as sustainably produced. Whether the concern stems from animal welfare or antibiotics, consumers have shown an interest in small-scale animal farms.

But at the farm in Goldsboro, raising these kinds of animals – antibiotic free, plenty of space to roam – requires close attention to the animals, not to mention significant human labor.

Take the straw, which is laid out in thick mats throughout the hoop houses, and which serves several purposes.

“It adds a bedding for them, it’s more comfortable, it helps give them heat in this season,” Betancourth said.

“One thing you’ll notice about straw,” Meier added, “is that it’s very absorbent.”

Which is a key feature: The straw is used to soak up the pigs’ urine and feces. It’s how the farmers manage the animals’ waste, and it serves as an alternative to a lagoon system. Eventually, it can also be used as a fertilizer for crops.

But managing this waste takes time and labor, since Betancourth has to regularly clean out the fouled straw.

And those two elements – time and labor – are no small portion of a product’s overall cost.

‘All of us’

North Carolina’s conventional pork farmers often don’t practice this kind of labor-intensive waste management. And in using lagoons, the industry has received its share of critical media coverage.

But the industry’s trade group defended its farmers’ practices.

“North Carolina hog farmers work hard to protect our environment,” Ann Edmondson, a spokeswoman for the N.C. Pork Council, wrote in an email. “Our farmers carefully follow state regulations and manage their farms – no matter how big or small – in a responsible way.”

And Douglas Meckes, North Carolina’s state veterinarian, in a December interview with North Carolina Health News, disputed the concerns about antibiotic use in animals.

“I understand and appreciate the concern about … resistance and the implications for all of us,” he said. “But it’s my understanding there’s never been a direct link between the use of antibiotics in animal agriculture and antibiotic resistance in humans.”

Meier admitted that the model used at their farm has its drawbacks. For one, it’s less efficient than a conventional, concentrated farm. This raises the cost of its meat.

But competing by price with conventional farms isn’t the point. Rather, the center’s swine operations demonstrate a viable model for small-scale farms, those that might serve a farmer’s market, he said.

“This is an alternative to the conventional system, which raises high-quality pork,” Meier said. “For folks that are concerned about that kind of production system, this is an alternative.”

Nor could this smaller-scale model produce enough pork to meet the country’s demands, he added.

Meier acknowledged the critical coverage of the conventional pork industry, as well as the public’s growing demand for meat produced on a smaller scale. But he argued against polarized views of hog farming.

“It’s not ‘us or them,’” he said. “I think it’s ‘all of us.’”

This story is provided courtesy of N.C. Health News, a website covering health and environmental news in North Carolina. Coastal Review Online is partnering with N.C. Health News to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest about our coast. You can read other stories about health care here.

Learn More

• Center for Environmental Farming Systems
• Understanding CAFOs and their impact on communities
• CAFOs and antibiotic resistance to infectious disease

Reprinted from N.C. Health News

At a recent hearing in Raleigh, residents called on state officials to adopt a strong response to climate change and argued that such a response would have large benefits for North Carolinians’ health.

The hearing held Dec. 17 allowed residents to comment on North Carolina’s response to the federal Clean Power Plan. That plan, finalized Aug. 3 by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, seeks to limit the U.S.’s contribution to climate change.

It does so by requiring states to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from their power sectors, in part by reducing the use of coal-fired power plants.

This reduction in coal power would offer several benefits for the public’s health, the EPA estimates. Coal-fired power plants not only produce carbon dioxide, they also emit air pollutants with more immediate health effects. These include nitrogen oxides, which contribute to the formation of smog, and sulfur dioxide, which can form fine particles that damage human lungs.

Under the Clean Power Plan, each state can craft its own plan in order to meet minimum federal requirements. North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality has done just that.

But in the public hearing, residents and health advocates berated state officials for the plan they drafted. Several speakers argued that the plan should be more protective of the public’s health.

“The effect of greenhouse gases, leading to a change in climate, impacts our health through degraded air quality, wildfires, drought, heat waves and more,” said Alison Jones, a project manager for Mothers and Others for Clean Air, a program of the American Lung Association. “We need a strong Clean Power Plan in place for North Carolina to cut carbon pollution and lessen the burden on the health of our citizens.”

Other speakers echoed these concerns.

“Climate change raises the ambient temperatures and makes air pollution worse, impacting our lung function, our circulation and our immunity,” said Manijeh Berenji, an assistant professor at Duke University’s school of medicine. “This phenomenon affects all of us, but especially the young, the old, the poor and the ill.”

Why it’s limited

North Carolina environment officials say they drafted a limited response to the EPA’s rule. The current state plan only requires efficiency improvements in the state’s coal-fired power plants, not at plants powered by natural gas, a cleaner-burning fuel source.

In September 2015, North Carolina produced 3.2 gigawatt-hours of electricity from natural gas-fired plants. The state produced 3.14 gigawatt-hours from nuclear power and 3.12 gigawatt-hours from coal.

The EPA’s rule envisions a national move toward less carbon-intensive sources of energy, such as natural gas and wind energy.

But North Carolina’s environment officials say there’s a reason they drafted such a limited response. The EPA’s Clean Power Plan, they argue, is legally unsound. According to state officials, the EPA issued the rule under a flawed reading of the federal Clean Air Act, the law that sets national standards for air quality.

“The proposal approved Nov. 5 to go to public notice and hearing is the only choice for DEQ and the Environmental Management Commission to submit a legally viable plan,” Charlie Carter, a member of the state’s Environmental Management Commission, wrote in an op-ed for the News & Observer.

At the same time, North Carolina joined 24 other states in a lawsuit that aims to prevent the rule’s implementation.

Environmental groups and others at the public hearing criticized this approach and said that it neglects the large health benefits that North Carolinians stand to gain from the Clean Power Plan.

Yet pinpointing these potential health effects in North Carolina can be difficult. Academic research has limited information on the subject. And though the EPA says that its plan would reduce air pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, the agency didn’t estimate the health benefits of these reductions in North Carolina.

Even without the Clean Power Plan, North Carolina will continue to reduce its carbon emissions, according to a former state environment official.

State policies already on the books “have North Carolina on a path to achieve much (if not all) of the necessary reductions through increased renewable energy generation, greater energy efficiency, and transition of power plants from coal to natural gas,” Robin Smith, who served as an assistant secretary for the environment from 1999 to 2012, wrote in a blog post.

But Smith still questioned DEQ’s plan. The limited plan – focused entirely on coal plants’ efficiencies – doesn’t take advantage of the state’s existing resources, she added.

“A state with significant advantages in renewable energy, energy efficiency and already on the road to transitioning power plants from coal to natural gas seems to have settled on a policy that throws those advantages away,” Smith wrote.

Next steps

The fate of the Clean Power Plan in North Carolina depends on several moving parts.

• A possible lawsuit victory. North Carolina could prevail in its federal lawsuit, along with other states. The Clean Power Plan could be ruled illegal, which would free North Carolina from having to comply with its requirements.
• A possible lawsuit loss. On the other hand, the states may lose their suits, and the EPA would be allowed to continue implementing its plan.
• A federal takeover. If the EPA can go forward with the Clean Power Plan, it may decide that North Carolina’s plan is inadequate. EPA has the power to overrule state agencies, and it could implement its own plan throughout North Carolina.
• A backup plan. To prevent this kind of federal takeover, state environment officials say they are also developing a backup plan.
• The deadlines. States must submit at least their initial plans to EPA by Sept. 6.
• A new president and partners in Congress. The Clean Power plan is a slow-moving development, with 2030 as its final target for emissions reductions. Between now and then, Congress could pass legislation intended to nullify the rule. It has already done so, though President Obama vetoed the legislation. But with a new ally in the White House, that legislation could become law.

North Carolina residents can continue to weigh in on the debate. The Raleigh hearing was the second of its kind, and the N.C. Environmental Management Commission is holding a third hearing on the plan in Wilmington on Jan. 5. Residents can also comment in writing on the rules until Jan. 15.

This story is provided courtesy of N.C. Health News, a website covering health and environmental news in North Carolina. Coastal Review Online is partnering with N.C. Health News to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest about our coast. You can read other stories about health care here.

Learn More

• Clean Power Plan
• N.C. response
• Charlie Carter’s News & Observer column

Reprinted from N.C. Health News

North Carolina is on track to meet new federal limits on the air pollutant ozone, according to environment officials’ recent assessments of the state’s air.

Numerous counties throughout the U.S. will initially struggle to meet the limits, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Yet environment officials in North Carolina say the state shouldn’t have any trouble, even in urban areas like Charlotte that have historically battled ozone pollution.

Carteret and New Hanover are the only two counties on the coast that are monitored for ozone pollutant. Both should meet the new standard.

The EPA’s new rules cap ground-level ozone at a concentration of 70 parts per billion in the air. That cap, finalized Oct. 1, is more stringent than the 75-parts-per-billion cap used since 2008.

Ozone is one of six pollutants regulated under the federal Clean Air Act’s National Ambient Air Quality Standards. The pollutant can cause a variety of health problems and can particularly harm children, the elderly and people with respiratory ailments, according to the EPA.

When breathed, ground-level ozone can cause acute lung damage. It can also lead to an increased number of asthma attacks and an increase in asthmatic symptoms, among other problems.

According to the EPA, by 2025 the new limits will lead to drastic national improvements in the public’s health, including 230,000 fewer asthma attacks and 28,000 fewer missed days of work.

North Carolina may already be reaping the benefits of clean air. The state’s counties have already met the EPA’s new limits, based on measurements taken between 2013 and 2015, according to Tom Mather, a spokesman at the state’s Department of Environmental Quality.

“Ozone levels have been steadily declining across North Carolina for the past 15 years, and we expect that trend to continue, so we do not anticipate any problems complying with the new standard,” he said in an email.

The state’s air monitors support Mather’s confidence. Throughout the state, most counties measured ozone between 60 and 65 parts per billion, or ppb, a map of the monitors shows.

The highest measurement comes from Mecklenburg County, which includes Charlotte. Yet even there, ozone averaged 68 ppb, a level that still falls below the EPA’s new threshold. Levels in Carteret County averaged 60 ppb and in New Hanover 61 ppb.

What Is Ozone

Ground-level ozone is a colorless gas and the product of chemical reactions among nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds and sunlight. These reactions are sped up by warm weather, which is partly why ozone can be a problem in areas like Los Angeles, which has a warm climate and a large population of car drivers.

Humans do much to create ground-level ozone. Cars and power plants, among other pollution sources, emit nitrogen oxides. Humans are also partly responsible for volatile organic compounds, since solvents and paints, in addition to other products, evaporate and release the compounds into the air.

But North Carolina’s greenery is also partially to blame, according to Chris Frey, an engineering professor at N.C. State University.

“Vegetation, like trees, produces some volatile organic compounds that are photochemically active,” he said. “So in North Carolina, because we have fairly lush green vegetation statewide, we tend to have plenty of organic compounds.”

What helps keep ozone levels low then is our ability to minimize nitrogen oxide emissions, Frey said.

In North Carolina, that work largely fell on the Clean Smokestacks Act. The law, signed in 2002 by Gov. Mike Easley, required power plants to dramatically cut their emissions of nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide, another air pollutant.

To meet these requirements, Duke Energy and then-Progress Energy installed pollution-control technology on their coal plants. The companies also closed older, inefficient plants or converted plants to burn natural gas, a cleaner fuel source, Mather said.

But the law wasn’t the only cause of the state’s declining ozone levels.

At the federal level, the EPA adopted more stringent pollution standards for cars and trucks, as well as diesel fuel and diesel engines.

“All these things together have led to the declines in (nitrogen oxides) emissions and improvements in air quality with regard to ozone and particle pollution,” Mather said.

That has been the case even as North Carolina’s population has grown, he said.

State data bear out this point. Fifteen years ago, North Carolina had roughly two million fewer residents than it has today. And yet between 2001 and 2003, 20 counties violated the EPA’s ozone standard, which at the time was 80 parts per billion, as opposed to today’s more stringent standard.

Mather said this trend of increasingly clean air will likely continue.

As residents continue to buy newer cars, North Carolina’s auto fleet will continue to get cleaner, he said. And the EPA’s proposed climate plans, if implemented and held up in court, would improve air quality, he added.

Not Good Enough?

But some health advocates and researchers say the EPA’s new standard isn’t strong enough.

Though the EPA’s new standard “is an improvement, it falls short of what is necessary to safeguard healthier, longer lives for our children and for all Americans at risk,” said Vickie Patton, general counsel at the Environmental Defense Fund, in a press release.

An independent advisory committee to the EPA echoed those sentiments. The Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, in a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, wrote that “based on the scientific evidence, a level of 70 (parts per billion) provides little margin of safety for the protection of public health, particularly for sensitive subpopulations.”

Frey led the panel that reviewed academic literature and made these recommendations. The group recommended that EPA choose a limit between 60 and 70 parts per billion. But the upper limit still raised panel members’ public health concerns, he said.

“There was a general feeling that 70 parts per billion might not provide the margin of safety that’s called for in the Clean Air Act,” he said. “It’s just barely below the level that, in clinical studies, led to effects in healthy adults.”

But McCarthy countered that assessment, and concluded that the 70-parts-per-billion standard would be strong enough to protect health.

The EPA says that by October 2017, it will designate counties as being in or out of compliance with the new standard. Some U.S. counties will have until 2037 to meet the new ozone standard, depending on the severity of their pollution.

Learn More

• EPA’s new ozone standard
• Critics’ letter to EPA
• Health effects of ozone
• N.C. Clean Smokestacks Act
• N.C. monitoring data

This story is provided courtesy of N.C. Health News, a website covering health and environmental news in North Carolina. Coastal Review Online is partnering with N.C. Health News to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest about our coast. You can read other stories about health care here.

Reprinted from N.C. Health News

North Carolina is home to some 2,500 permitted sources of air pollution, ranging from power plants to peanut roasters to lumber mills. More than half would no longer need permits under a state proposal. Dozens of those polluters are on the coast.

The proposal, from the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources, would exempt more than 1,400 facilities deemed to be low-level polluters. To qualify, these facilities could emit no more than 10,000 pounds per year of a single pollutant or 50,000 pounds of a combination of pollutants before requiring a permit.

Facilities operating at about this level include concrete plants, rock quarries and furniture and auto body shops, among numerous others, according to Tom Mather, a spokesman for DENR’s Division of Air Quality.

The proposal could be significant because industrial air pollutants can cause immediate and long-term harm to people’s health. Among the pollutants addressed in air permits are nitrogen oxides, which contribute to the formation of smog, a respiratory threat; volatile organic compounds, which can be carcinogenic; and sulfur dioxides, which react in the atmosphere to form fine particles that can damage humans’ lungs.

DENR, in documents presented earlier this month to the N.C. Environmental Management Commission, said the proposal would affect only a small proportion of the state’s total air pollution. The potentially affected facilities make up, in total, less than 1 percent of these pollutants from stationary sources, while the polluters account for more than half of the state’s permits.

DENR staff have had to manage the paperwork for these permits while operating with fewer funds in recent years, Mather said.

“Our revenues have been declining pretty much across the board,” he said.

The loss of funds stems in part from lower statewide gas-tax revenues and declines in the power industry’s air pollution and consequent pollution fees, Mather said.

The proposal is “all part of our efforts to make our organization more efficient, given the changes in both the federal requirements that we have to enforce and the revenues we have coming in from different sources,” he said.

DENR says its proposal would free up staff to focus on larger, more significant sources of air pollution. It also estimates the proposal would save $768,225 in permit fees for businesses. DENR’s Division of Air Quality would also lose an estimated $280,425 from these fees, though DENR officials say it will no longer face the administrative costs from managing the permits.

In an apparent affirmation of the proposal, the Environmental Management Commission, which writes state regulations, on Sept. 10 agreed to go forward with a public hearing on the proposal, a required step before the EMC can change state rules.

Concerns About Monitoring

Environmentalists and public health advocates criticized the proposal, saying it would harm the state’s ability to monitor pollution.

For facilities without permits, “there can be no inspection process; there’s no secondary follow up for what they say they’re doing in their actual emissions,” said Terry Lansdell, the program director at Clean Air Carolina. “That’s a big red flag for me.”

Lansdell added that, despite their small contribution to overall state pollution, these facilities tend to be located in densely populated areas.

“These small sources are not isolated sources in the middle of nowhere,” he said. “They might be the paint and body shop on the corner.”

Myra Blake, an attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, said the proposal “does seem unwise” given that the General Assembly is considering a statewide reduction in air-quality monitors.

But DENR’s Mather said that with their small level of air pollution, the affected facilities don’t warrant a major concern about the public’s health. He also said that state and federal rules will still apply to facilities, even if they don’t have permits.

Mather did acknowledge though that North Carolina uses air permits to ensure facilities follow state rules, since permits require facilities to monitor and report their emissions to the state.

But if a facility is operating without a permit, the responsibility will likely fall on residents to complain about increases in air pollution, Mather said.

Counting Pollution

Under current state rules, small facilities only require air permits if they emit more than 10,000 pounds of a single pollutant per year, the same threshold included in DENR’s proposal. But under the proposal, facilities could also emit up to 50,000 combined pounds of different pollutants each year before requiring a permit.

In addition to this new combined threshold, DENR is asking permission to use actual data when deciding whether a permit is necessary. Currently, when a business applies for a permit DENR estimates pollution by using models.

But the current models exaggerate pollution, Mather said, since they assume that facilities operate all day, throughout the year.

As for facilities that haven’t yet been built, DENR would still have to estimate air pollution. It would base its permit requirements on these projections.

But DENR would use a new method, one that would consider the actual operating hours of a facility, Mather said.

This story is reprinted from North Carolina Health News

The EPA’s 180 days are up.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is expected to announce today how it will address allegations over North Carolina’s hog industry, which environmentalists say is harming the health of racial minorities.

The EPA’s actions could have wide-reaching effects on the industry and public health near hog farms. But despite its deadline, the agency doesn’t appear ready to make a decision, according to an environmental group that lodged the formal allegations.

The possibility of a missed deadline comes as the EPA faces national scrutiny over its handling of civil rights cases. A recent investigation by the Center for Public Integrity and NBC News found that the EPA’s Office of Civil Rights, the office handling North Carolina’s hog case, has repeatedly lagged in its action – sometimes more than a decade at a time – and has rejected almost all public claims.

In North Carolina, environmentalists – including the N.C. Environmental Justice Network and the Waterkeeper Alliance – believe they have a strong case against the hog industry. In their legal complaint, filed last September, the groups alleged that hog farms are allowed to operate with substandard technology, which puts the health of nearby minorities at risk.

Many of the state’s large, concentrated hog farms treat animal feces in open-air pits, which the industry calls lagoons, and dispose of that waste by spraying it onto nearby fields. These practices have raised concerns among health researchers.

In published studies, researchers have found increases in potentially harmful air pollutants, such as hydrogen sulfide and ammonia, near hog farms. Additionally, residents near hog farms have complained of headaches and intense malodors, and researchers have associated the farms’ air pollution with increases in asthmatic symptoms among nearby school children.

In addition to these fears, researchers like Steve Wing, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, say hog farms disproportionately affect racial minorities. Racial minorities live in large numbers in the eastern part of the state, the region where North Carolina’s hog farms are densely clustered.

“For so long, people have been talking about the problem in terms of environmental justice,” said Marianne Engelman Lado, a lawyer with the group Earthjustice, which is representing the environmental groups. “That eastern North Carolina is disproportionately low income, that it’s disproportionately people of color, that the facilities are disproportionally near people of color.”

Disagreements About Science

North Carolina’s legislators in 2007 permanently banned new lagoons and spray systems. But the law left an exception: Older farms could continue to use the systems. So the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources has continued to permit older farms that use the systems for hog feces and urine.

The state’s pork industry denies that farmers willingly threaten the health of nearby residents.

“More than 80 percent of North Carolina’s hog farms are owned and operated by individual farm families, almost all of whom live in close proximity to their swine or in communities where their swine operations are located,” Ann Edmondson, a spokeswoman for the N.C. Pork Council, said in an emailed statement. “It strains credibility to believe our hog farmers are risking the health of their own families, along with their neighbors’ health, in order to make a living.”

Edmondson also questioned the validity of scientific studies, which she said failed to establish a direct link between hog farms and health problems.

But Engelman Lado countered that the science is clear. “We know that the density of hog facilities in eastern North Carolina is polluting people’s waters, it’s affecting the air, it has a relationship with asthma and other health problems for people who live in proximity to the facilities,” she said.

Complaining to EPA

In their complaint to the EPA, the groups charge that DENR has effectively ignored residents’ complaints for years by continuing to permit farms that use lagoon and spray systems.

That’s why the environmentalists turned to the EPA. Under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, state agencies that receive federal funds, such as DENR, cannot act in a racially discriminatory way.

It’s possible EPA may not find that DENR intentionally discriminated against minorities. But it may not matter, because if it finds that DENR’s actions had the effect of discrimination EPA could rule that DENR is in violation of federal law, according to a guide from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Jennifer Colaizzi, a spokeswoman for EPA, declined to comment on this question, citing the pending investigation.

She did say that EPA first seeks voluntary changes from those it finds to have violated the law. It has other means to enforce the law too, she said.

“If voluntary compliance cannot be achieved, pursuant to the regulation, (the Office of Civil Rights) may use any means authorized by law to achieve compliance or enforce the laws, including initiating proceeding to terminate federal financial assistance from EPA or referring the matter to the Department of Justice for judicial enforcement,” she said in an email.

For DENR, a loss of funding could be significant. In its 2013-14 budget, DENR received $111.2 million from EPA, roughly 16 percent of its $701.2 million budget.

Of course, such an action will require that EPA finish its investigation. Engelman Lado said that based on her conversations with the Office of Civil Rights, she does not believe it will meet its deadline today.

Colaizzi did not respond to recent requests for comments about the status of the investigation. And, just as it has delayed its action for communities across the United States, the Office of Civil Rights has offered several delayed responses to questions from News North Carolina Health, sometimes missing deadlines weeks at a time.

Still, Engelman Lado expressed optimism about the work ahead. “I believe EPA would like to do a better job,” she said, adding that her case is receiving attention at the agency.

But if the EPA’s civil rights office does stall, Engelman Lado’s group will not sit still. “We wouldn’t let it languish for 20 years,” she said. “We can go to court.”

A bill that passed the N.C. House will overhaul the process for state-funded projects. We reprinted this breakdown from North Carolina Health News.

In the recent rush to approve bills before a self-imposed deadline, N.C. House lawmakers approved legislation that could transform a decades-old environmental law.

The bill, HB 795, would rewrite central provisions of the State Environmental Policy Act, or SEPA, by potentially cutting the number of projects addressed by the law.

What is SEPA? And how would HB 795 affect the health of North Carolinians?

To help readers navigate the divisive debate, North Carolina Health News has put together a primer on this complex piece of public policy.

What are SEPA’s origins?

In the 1970s, the U.S. enacted several sweeping environmental laws. Among those was the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires that federal agencies review their activities’ environmental effects. In 1971, North Carolina followed suit and passed its own version. SEPA functions like its federal counterpart but only applies to state agencies and state-funded projects.

The law’s authors included high ideals in their legislation. SEPA says that “to assure that an environment of high quality will be maintained for the health and well-being of all … it shall be the continuing policy of the State of North Carolina to conserve and protect its natural resources and to create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony.”

SEPA’s authors, in describing the legislation’s purpose, also pointed to the ideal of transparency. The authors stipulated that state agencies should publicly report on the environmental effects of taxpayer-funded works.

When does SEPA apply to a public project?

Currently, SEPA reviews begin when an activity hits three main criteria: It must involve a state agency’s action, such as a pollution permit or a roads-construction project; it must involve the use of public money (state or local) or state land; and it must have the potential to negatively affect the environment or public health.

Who’s involved?

State agencies run the SEPA-review process. The “lead” agency is the one performing the activity – issuing a permit for a landfill, for example. But other agencies are also involved and review the lead agency’s assessments. This allows state specialists, with expertise in, say, transit planning or agriculture, to weigh in on a state activity.

What’s an ‘activity’ under SEPA?

A state agency could be issuing a permit for a wastewater treatment plant. A local government could be building a sewer-line extension. Or a state agency could be issuing licenses for solar-energy plants. The possibilities are many, so long as they touch on the three criteria listed above.

How does SEPA involve human health?

The public’s health is an explicit consideration for SEPA reviews.

SEPA reviews consider air quality, groundwater quality, drinking-water supplies and the potential to create hazardous wastewater.

How many SEPA reviews take place each year?

From 2013 to 2014, the state processed 323 SEPA reviews, according to Crystal Best, an official in the state’s Department of Administration. Of those, 288 reviews covered solar-energy projects, which require state licenses.

What benefits do people highlight in SEPA?

Municipal projects often must secure environmental permits, such as air-pollution permits. Applying for those permits can be a complex process, but SEPA can help, according to Lyn Hardison, the SEPA coordinator at the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources, or DENR.

“It’s kind of a permit assistance tool,” she said. “When they get all this information together and they get a final [SEPA] document … from there the application and the permitting process should be a breeze.”

SEPA is not a regulatory program; it doesn’t set legally enforceable limits on air pollution, for example. That’s what permits are for. Yet some environmental permits lack the comprehensive scope of SEPA, according to Robin Smith, who served as DENR’s assistant secretary for the environment from 1999 to 2012.

If a proposed plant will emit toxic air pollution, for example, its pollution permit may require the installation of technologies to control the pollution, Smith said. But the permit won’t take into account local conditions.

“A site-specific evaluation really isn’t the way the Clean Air Act works,” she said. “And it is something that SEPA can do…. You’re supposed to look at all of the impacts of the project, not just on air quality but also on human health, on the community, on a whole range of impacts.”

What about SEPA’s drawbacks?

As environmental science grows more fine-tuned and as legal requirements have increased, SEPA reviews have grown increasingly expensive, according to Kenneth Waldroup, an assistant director in Raleigh’s public utilities department.

Waldroup, who works on SEPA reviews, noted that projects already face numerous, complex environmental regulations.

“There is a need for [SEPA],” he said. But the combination of SEPA and other state and federal laws, he said, “has made the permitting and development of new projects extremely complicated.”

SEPA requires that agencies consider alternatives to their proposals. But Waldroup said this can lead to “analysis paralysis.” The process also allows outside agencies to request resource-intensive studies, some of which can be unrelated to the project. This happened when Raleigh was considering using Falls Lake as a hydroelectric power source, nearly closing the door on the project before the city could consider its financial viability, he said.

What does HB 795 do?

The bill, which is now before the Senate, would set a monetary threshold for SEPA review. Projects costing less than $10 million would be excluded from review. It would also exclude projects that affect less than five acres of upland property.

Additionally, HB 795 would limit the scope of SEPA, requiring that agencies only consider direct environmental impacts. Currently, agencies also consider indirect and cumulative impacts.

How many projects would HB 795 affect?

It’s unclear. SEPA currently does not address projects based upon their cost. At DENR, the department doesn’t require financial information about projects it reviews under SEPA.

Rep. Chuck McGrady, R-Hendersonville, a vice chairman of the House Environment Committee, said that a $10 million threshold would exclude many projects from SEPA review. Hardison echoed McGrady, and said that while she didn’t have an average cost of SEPA-reviewed projects, a monetary threshold would reduce the number of projects facing SEPA scrutiny.

What do proponents of HB 795 say?

In a column in the Raleigh News & Observer, Lew Ebert, the chief executive officer of the N.C. Chamber, said that HB 795 would help cut legal red tape, which is stifling job creation.

Rep. Chris Millis, R-Hampstead, a primary sponsor of the bill, argued that the state now has enough environmental regulations on its books.

What do critics say?

McGrady said that HB 795 is essentially a repeal of SEPA.

Robin Smith, the former DENR official, argued that a project’s cost is not a good proxy for its environmental impact.

Any other opinions on the matter?

Waldroup, from Raleigh’s utilities agency, said that SEPA fills gaps left by federally required environmental permits. But, he added, there’s still a need to debate the law.

“I think there is some reasonable argument that some of the thresholds in SEPA, as it exists today, may be overly complex for small projects,” he said. “I think there’s a reasonable discussion about, should the SEPA thresholds change based on our experience for these projects? Are these projects truly impactful to the environment?

“I do not know if $10 million is an appropriate threshold, or whether we should go back and look at the size of the stations and the size of the pipes that are being replaced, and the length of pipes, and reconsider it from that standpoint.”