-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Fw: Sierra Club press release on Floyd, CAFOS (fwd)
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1999 12:19:13 -0400 (EDT)
From: Environmental Resource Program <erp@sph.unc.edu>
Reply-To: checchogs@listserv.oit.unc.edu
To: checchogs@listserv.oit.unc.edu
Subject: Floyd's Floods Intensify Health Risk From Factory Farms
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
CONTACT:
September 20, 1999 Ed Hopkins, 202-675-7908
Megan Fowler,
415-977-5627
FLOYD'S FLOODS INTENSIFY HEALTH RISK CREATED BY HUGE HOG AND POULTRY
OPERATIONS
Sierra Club Calls For EPA Ban on Open-Air Animal Waste Cesspools;
Strengthening
of Public Health Protections
Washington, DC - In the aftermath of Hurricane Floyd's environmental
devastation in North Carolina and Maryland's Eastern Shore, the Sierra
Club
today called
upon the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to prevent massive
amounts of animal waste from entering rivers by banning "lagoons" - the
giant
cesspools used to store animal waste - and prohibiting the construction
of
factory
farms in floodplains.
Hurricane Floyd has created unprecedented contamination in North
Carolina's
waterways. It is reported that 100,000 hogs and 1 million chickens are
dead and Neuse Riverkeeper Rick Dove has estimated that breached lagoons
have
discharged an excess of 100 million gallons of hog waste. On Maryland's
Eastern Shore,
massive amounts of chicken waste has washed into the Chesapeake Bay
threatening to destroy fish and wildlife habitat.
"The Sierra Club extends its deepest sympathy to the victims of this
terrible disaster. While we cannot keep hurricanes from happening, we
can
reduce the
damage they cause," said Carl Pope, Executive Director of the Sierra
Club.
"Recovering from a hurricane is tough enough without this major water
pollution crisis."
"Disastrous leaks and spills from these animal waste cesspools have
occurred
during far less severe storms in North Carolina and other states," Pope
stated.
"The environmental disaster caused by the inundation of hog lagoons and
massive hog and chicken farms in North Carolina and Maryland is a
wake-up call
for
tough national rules on industrial livestock operations. It's time for
the EPA
to
prohibit this antiquated and inherently unsafe technology and require
the
phase-out of existing lagoons."
Animal waste is responsible for polluting 35,000 miles of rivers in 22
states and contaminating groundwater in 17 states, according to a 1998
EPA
study.
U.S. EPA is currently requesting comments on new guidance for issuing
Clean
Water Act permits for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs).
This is the first action the Clinton Administration has taken since the
EPA and
USDA
released a strategy for dealing with animal waste pollution problems in
March.
"EPA's proposal is pitifully weak and fails to address the water
pollution
problems factory farms cause across America," said Ed Hopkins, Sierra
Club's
Senior Washington Representative. He also noted that the agency's
proposal
fails even to take obvious steps to protect water, such as prohibiting
the
construction of factory farms in floodplains, requiring governmental
review of manure management plans, and phasing out the use of open-air
lagoons
for
waste storage.
"Regulations should be designed to protect our waterways and ensure that
factory
farms are not located in areas subject to flooding and other periodic -
and
predictable - natural disasters," Hopkins concluded.
###
To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command
"unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest".
To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"subscribe sanet-mg-digest".
All messages to sanet-mg are archived at:
http://www.sare.org/htdocs/hypermail