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FILE – On September 24, 1999, employees of Murphy Family Farms with friends and neighbors float a group of dead pigs on a flooded road at Rabon Maready Farm, near Beulaville, North Carolina. Northeast of the Cape Fear River, after the heavy rains of Hurricane Floyd, the area was flooded. Heavy rains expected from Hurricane Florence could flood hog pits, coal ash dumpsites and other industrial sites in North Carolina, creating a load of harmful wastes that could spill into homes and homes. threaten the supply of drinking water. (AP Photo / Alan Marler, File)
The heavy rains of Hurricane Florence could cause an environmental disaster in North Carolina, where slurry waste, coal ash dumps and other industrial sites could seep into the water. homes and threaten the supply of drinking water.
Computer models predict more than 3 feet of rain in the eastern part of the state, a fertile lowland plain veined by brackish rivers that tend to escape from their shores. Long-time residents should not force their imagination to predict what rain can do. It happened before.
In September 1999, Hurricane Floyd ran aground near Cape Fear as a Category 2 storm that dumped about 2 feet of water into an area already destroyed by Hurricane Dennis a few days earlier. The result was the worst natural disaster in the history of the state, a flood that killed dozens of people and left entire cities under water, their residents being stuck on the roofs.
The swollen carcasses of hundreds of thousands of pigs, chickens and other animals drenched in the soup of faeces, pesticides, fertilizers and gasoline were so toxic that the fish collapsed on the surface to escape. Rescuers spread Vick's Vapo-Rub under their noses to try to numb their senses against the stench.
Florence should touch land in the same region as a much stronger storm.
"This one is pretty scary," said Jamie Kruse, director of the Natural Hazards Research Center at the University of East Carolina. "The environmental impacts will come from concentrated animal feed operations and coal ash wells, until the system is evacuated, there will be a lot of waste in the mine." water."
North Carolina has about 2,100 industrial-scale hog farms with over 9 million pigs – typically housed in long metal sheds with grated soils designed to pass urine and faeces. animals in open pits containing millions of gallons of untreated wastewater.
During Floyd, dozens of these lagoons broke or were overtaken by floods, spilling the contents. State taxpayers eventually bought and closed 43 farms in flood-prone areas.
To prepare for Florence, the North Carolina Hog Council said its members had lowered the level of lagoons to absorb at least 2 feet of rain. Lowland farms have moved their hogs to higher ground.
"Our farmers and other members of the pork industry are working together to take precautions that will protect our farms, animals and environment," said Brandon Warren, Pork Council President and Pork Producer. . "Preparations for a hurricane began well before the last hours or days and our farmers are taking hurricane threats very seriously."
The Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday it will monitor nine toxic waste sites near the Caroline coast for potential flooding. More than a dozen sites of this type in and around Houston were flooded last year as a result of Hurricane Harvey, and spills of potentially hazardous materials were reported at two hours.
More than two dozen massive ashes of coal ash operated by Duke Energy, the state's leading electricity supplier, are also of concern. Gray ash remaining after burning coal contains potentially hazardous amounts of mercury, arsenic and lead.
Because power plants require large amounts of water to generate steam, their unpaved waste pits are located along lakes and rivers. Some of the pits were flooded during past storms, especially during Floyd and Hurricane Matthew in 2016.
After a spill in 2014 on a Duke plant covered with poisonous gray mud 70 miles from the Dan River, state regulators forced the Charlotte-based company to phase out its ash mines by 2029. Ashes are down, said Duke Energy spokesman Bill Norton on Tuesday.
"We are more prepared than ever," said Norton, adding that teams will monitor the water levels in the pits throughout the storm.
The company is also preparing for a potential shutdown of nuclear reactors at least two hours before the arrival of hurricane force winds. Duke operates 11 reactors at six sites in the Carolinas, including the Brunswick nuclear plant south of Wilmington, near the mouth of the Cape Fear River.
The two reactors at the Braunschweig plant have the same design as those in Fukushima, Japan, which exploded and fled in the aftermath of an earthquake and tsunami in 2011. As a result of this disaster, Federal regulators have demanded that all US nuclear power plants upgrade to better withstand earthquakes and floods.
Duke Energy has not responded to inquiries regarding specific modifications made to Brunswick, if it is that the generators and the emergency pumps would evacuate the rainwater from the plant in case of failure. 39; flooding. The company promised this week that it was ready for Florence, which should contain winds of up to 140 miles an hour and a 13-foot storm surge.
"They were safe at that time, they are even safer," said Kathryn Green, a spokeswoman for Duke, referring to post-Fukushima improvements. "We have backups for backups for backups."
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Associated Press authors Seth Borenstein in Washington and Alex Derosier in Raleigh, North Carolina, contributed to this report.
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Follow Michael Biesecker, an AP investigative journalist, at http://twitter.com/mbieseck.
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To learn more about Hurricane Florence, visit https://www.apnews.com/tag/Hurricanes.
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