DEQ settles civil rights complaints over hog farm permits

The state Department of Environmental Quality and several environmental groups have settled a dispute over the state's permitting process for large-scale hog farms.

Posted 11:22 p.m. May 3, 2018 — Updated 11:22 p.m. May 3, 2018

Matthew Burns

, WRAL.com senior producer/politics editor

RALEIGH, N.C. — The state Department of Environmental Quality and several environmental groups have settled a dispute over the state's permitting process for large-scale hog farms.

The groups filed civil rights complaints against DEQ in 2014 and again two years later, alleging that the hog operations were harming minority communities and that DEQ was approving permits without doing any sort of analysis on their impact.

Under the settlement, DEQ plans to update the state’s animal operations general permit to provide closer regulatory oversight and stronger measures for environmental protection. The general permit is up for renewal this year, and the agency will seek public input on it in the next month.

DEQ will also design and implement an air quality study in Duplin County and expand its existing water quality monitoring program in Sampson and Duplin counties to determine what impact the farms have in the region and how to best eliminate those impacts.

"The agreement underscores DEQ’s commitment to strengthening environmental protection and public engagement in communities that are impacted by industrial swine facilities," DEQ Secretary Michael Regan said in a statement.

The North Carolina Pork Council said it plans to provide input on the new permit.

"We have always maintained, and now the parties agree, there were not violations of the civil rights law in the permitting of hog farms in North Carolina," Pork Council officials said in a statement. "It is without question that this is the proper conclusion to this unfounded allegation."

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