Kinston Sewage

Waste spills, busted hog lagoons, and angry citizens are prompting stateenvironmental leaders to call for tougher pollution penalties. This week,two spills at the Kinston sewage treatment plant are fueling theinferno.

City leaders say that two sewage pumps failed after a power outage, causedby a storm that blew through this week. The city's utility director saysthat these were not big spills, and they did not make it into the NeuseRiver. However, some environmentalists and city workers think otherwise.

Neuse River Keeper Rick Dove surveyed the situation in Kinston. Cityleaders said that the spill was contained to about 1,500 gallons lost.Dove disagreed.

One city worker, who asked not to be named, said that one of the pumpingstations failed for hours, spewing forth 2,700 gallons every minute. Thatadds up to hundreds of thousands of gallons of raw sewage emptied into aNeuse River tributary.

EasternNorth Carolina has become a battlefield. In itstrenches are citizens, hog farmers, municipalities, and state officials. A recent advertising campaign by hog farmers tries to point thefinger at city treatment plants for pollution problems.

Manymunicipalities now conceded that the farmers' costly ad campaign haseffectively shifted thespotlight. Ellis Hankins with the N.C. League of Municipalities said thatthe public may scrutinize city treatment plants too harshly.

State investigators say that they should have more information by Monday. City leaders from across the state say that there are tens of millions ofdollars worth of waste treatment construction improvements underway todeal with the problems.

As far as hog farms' contribution to the pollution, a freeze on expandingthe hog industry is still being debated in the legislature.