More than two dozen environmentalist and social justice groups signed a petition detailing concerns about the potentially harmful impacts of biogas projects in rural North Carolina communities of color and are calling for their elimination.
The document, signed by 26 groups including the NC Sierra Club, the NC Conservation Network and the Poor People's Campaign, also criticizes Smithfield Foods for not upholding a promise the company made to create safer technologies to manage hog waste on swine farms in the state.
In the 2000 agreement, Smithfield Foods vowed to spend $15 million to get rid of the lagoon and spray-field system which showers hog waste onto crops, contributes to the pollution of the air and groundwater, and has adverse health effects on communities living around the industrialized hog farms, according to environmentalists.