The N.C. Division of Air Quality granted Smithfield Foods and Dominion Energy one of the permits they need to move forward in completing a controversial project to create natural gas by using hog waste in Sampson and Duplin County.
With the air quality permit, the two companies will build a gas-conditioning facility to trap biogas, or hog feces, and process it to inject the gas into a 30-mile-long pipeline that will run between Turkey and Warsaw. This is the first step in their joint Align RNG project.
“This is great news for the environment, consumers and family farmers across North Carolina,” said Kraig Westerbeek, the senior director of Smithfield Renewables at Smithfield Foods. “Renewable natural gas is a transformational opportunity to reduce farm emissions, generate clean energy and provide economic opportunity for family farmers.
Elsie Herring said she is thrilled by a federal appeals court ruling last month that rejected most of the arguments presented by Smithfield Foods in a case that has pitted the world’s largest hog producer against its mostly low-income Black neighbors.
Herring, 72, said she has been fighting how Smithfield raises its hogs since the 1990s. She said she has watched farmers spray fecal matter onto her mother’s home in Wallace to the extent that “it rained down on us just like it was raining, and the smell was like nothing I have ever experienced.”
Over the years, Herring said, she wrote letters to everyone she could think of state and federal regulators, the governor, the attorney general, state lawmakers, the county health department. Anyone who might be able to stop the spraying, the awful smells, the flies and the potential health hazards coming from the industrial hog farm next door.
Environmental News For The Week Ending 13December 2019
This is a collection of interesting news articles about the environment and related topics published last week. This is usually a Tuesday evening regular post at
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New US Covid cases were at a record 247,737 on Friday on the worldometers site that I watch; that would be nearly 40% of all the new infections reported worldwide on that day as per that site.However, the Johns Hopkins dashboard is showing a record 1,489,000 new Covid infections worldwide on that date, more than double any previous one day total..I have to assume that s in error, and my best guess would be that somehow the data was entered twice, and they ll eventually correct it.Regardless, whatever the a
The North Carolina hog industry s answer to pollution: a $500m pipeline project msn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from msn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.