Lawsuit offers solution to worsening Cape Fear River pollution crisis | Opinion

Few places on earth are as tightly concentrated with factory farms as North Carolina’s Cape Fear River Basin, home to roughly 2.4 million people and more than 36 million confined animals. The Cape Fear is North Carolina's largest river basin and its most polluted: industrial animal farms’ waste is to blame.

Factory farms are famously under-regulated. North Carolina is home to nearly 8,000 industrial animal farms; only 14 have federal water pollution permits. Meanwhile, new U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) data finds that the industry’s pollution threat continues to grow. Federal action is needed now more than ever. This is why we sued the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to put a stop to unchecked factory farm pollution in North Carolina and nationwide.

The Cape Fear River Basin is home to roughly four times as many confined hogs as people. A Food & Water Watch analysis found that North Carolina’s factory farms of all sizes produce a whopping 36.5 billion pounds of waste a year. As the largest, most polluting factory farms get bigger, our lawsuit hones in on their threat to clean water. Unlike human waste which is treated in sewer systems, factory farm waste goes from cesspools or waste piles straight onto fields. From there it runs off into our rivers, carrying pathogens, pharmaceuticals, excess nutrients, heavy metals, and other pollutants into public waters.

Factory farm water pollution endangers the Cape Fear River ecosystem. The river provides critical habitat for a variety of threatened and endangered species, and a nursery for fish, crab and shrimp species, which facilitate a robust fishery system and flourishing tourism economy. Pollutants found in animal waste drive algal blooms that choke out native plants and animals and render water recreation unsafe.

This pollution also poses serious human health risks. One in five North Carolinians, including residents of Wilmington, Fayetteville and Greensboro, get their drinking water from the Cape Fear River Basin, yet a 2022 report named the lower Cape Fear River among the top five most polluted waterways nationwide. Nitrates, found in animal waste, and linked to cancers, birth defects, and developmental delays are the leading culprit. Research out of Duke University shows that people who live near factory farms get sick more often, stay sick longer, and die sooner than those that do not. Rural, impoverished communities and communities of color bear the brunt of those impacts.

The disastrous impact of North Carolina’s factory farm water pollution came to a head in 2018, when Hurricane Florence swept millions of gallons of waste across the state, flushing manure into rivers and homes. We cannot wait for another natural disaster to act on this crisis.

Our lawsuit aims to force EPA to take responsibility for the mounting factory farm water pollution crisis they have spent decades enabling. EPA must strengthen its regulation of large factory farms in North Carolina and nationwide under the Clean Water Act. It’s a straightforward solution to a serious problem — and it’s time to get this done.

Kemp Burdette is the Cape Fear Riverkeeper, a position he has held since 2010. He lives with his family along a tributary of the Cape Fear River. Emily Miller is a Colorado-based Staff Attorney with the national advocacy organization Food & Water Watch.