State fines Wayne County farm for food and hog waste spill from anaerobic digester

A Wayne County farm’s failure to properly operate a system meant to capture methane for power generation likely contributed to the system failing and thick gray foam spilling into nearby Nahunta Swamp, the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality has determined.

In a document assessing one of its largest fines of 2022, DEQ’s Division of Water Resources said White Oak Farms in Fremont, North Carolina, continued to add hog carcasses and cast-off deli meat to the so-called anaerobic digester despite an earlier spill.

The environmental regulators fined White Oak Farms $34,520, one of DEQ’s largest fines of the year for a water violation. The fine is connected to an incident in May in which the digester’s thick black cover bust, sending gray foam oozing across the farm, with some reaching nearby waterways.

White Oak Farms had a permit to add a mixture of hog waste, liquified pig carcasses and leftover meat to what’s called an anaerobic digester. As the mixture decomposed, it gave off methane, which was captured and converted into electricity.

But on May 30, the thick black cover on the digester failed, with thousands of gallons of gray foam consisting of various pig parts spilling toward the nearby Nahunta Swamp. More than 800,000 gallons spilled from the digester, with about 10,745 reaching nearby wetlands, according to the N.C. DEQ investigation.

The May spill was at least the second from the digester in 2022. During a routine inspection in February, DEQ staff discovered an unreported spill. The unsuspecting inspector sank more than four inches into a hay-covered field near the operation, a DEQ official wrote in a July notice of violation.

While the farm’s permit said that manure should be the main “ingredient” in the digester, White Oak Farms had largely depopulated its hogs, something it said in letters to DEQ was a result of market conditions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, dead pigs and cast-off meat were the main additives to the digester, items that could result in higher levels of gas than the manure that White Oak’s permit said should be the main additive.

Despite the February spill, DEQ found, White Oak Farms continued to add hog carcasses, deli meat and other material to the digester. That “likely contributed” to the system failing, Michael Pjetraj, the Division of Water Resourcs’ acting permitting chief, wrote in a penalty assessment.

As investigators probed the May spill, they alleged that the farm was not maintaining records of ammonia emissions, did not submit documentation about phosphorus leaching from the discharge, and had failed to operate the system in a manner that protected the environment. Regulators also determined that the digester’s operators had failed to manage the sludge that builds up in the digester.

All of those factors contributed to the $34,520 penalty, which is among the largest assessed by water regulators in North Carolina this year.

“The facility has operated beyond the scope of what is approved under the facility’s permit, including introduction of unapproved products. The covered anaerobic earthen-lined digester cover failed resulting in the release of wastes into the environment and waters,” Pjetraj wrote.

White Oak Farms has until Jan. 4 to pay the fine, request that regulators cancel the fine or contest the penalty by requesting an administrative hearing. The farm’s owners, Todd and Deborah Ballance, declined to comment for this story because they are consulting with their attorneys.

“We are grateful that White Oak Farms, a facility with a longstanding history of permit violations and mismanagement, is being held accountable for the major pollution event they caused,” Samantha Krop, Sound Rivers’ Neuse Riverkeeper, said in a written statement.

White Oak Farms is seeking a renewed permit that would allow it to operate an updated anaerobic digester.

“Enforcement should be swift and strong in instances like this where the polluter misled the public and harmed our waterways. We look forward to hearing more about DEQ’s approach to this facility moving forward,” Blakely Hildebrand, a Southern Environmental Law Center attorney, wrote in a statement.

So far, DEQ has been skeptical of the farm’s application for a new permit. In an October letter, DEQ staff asked the farm to investigate how its lagoons could be impacting groundwater in the surrounding area due to high levels of ammonia, nitrate and other pollutants.

DEQ also asked the farm to provide information about how it plans to prevent future foaming incidents from its digester, what it plans to do with its existing digester if it builds a new one, and to conduct sludge surveys of both the digester and nearby nitrification/denitrification basins to show that they would be able to adequately treat the materials put into them.

The farm responded in mid-October, but labeled the full document of more than 500 pages confidential.

In a Dec. 6 letter, DEQ asked the farm to clarify which specific parts of its response should be confidential and why. If the farm fails to respond within 30 days, DEQ wrote, it could determine that the document is not eligible for confidentiality.

This story was produced with financial support from 1Earth Fund, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work.

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