"Only a third of factory farms have permits to discharge waste into water, soil, and air. A new legal effort from environmental groups seeks enforcement of the Clean Water Act."

"The first time he caught a fish riddled with sores and boils, Devon Hall didn’t immediately draw the connection to the hog farms located near his home in Duplin County, North Carolina. But it didn’t take long for him to realize that the fish he had grown up catching and eating were no longer safe, likely due to the manure running off the hog lagoons located just upstream.

With more than 500 concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) housing millions of pigs, Duplin County is known as the “hog capital of the world.” And its residents are paying the price: Hall hasn’t gone fishing in more than 20 years. He doesn’t even drink his own tap water for fear of contamination.

“It’s unbearable,” said Hall.

A petition filed today from the environmental nonprofit Earthjustice aims to help residents like Hall by changing the way CAFOs are classified under the Clean Water Act. A mountain of research over the past couple decades has shown the human and environmental health impacts of water pollution stemming from CAFOs. And yet, as many as two-thirds of the more than 20,000 CAFOs across the country are unregulated under the Act, leaving them with little to no regulatory oversight in their pollution discharge."

Dana Cronin reports for Civil Eats October 26, 2022. [2]