By Will Atwater
One evening in late September, standing at a podium in her Northampton community, activist Belinda Joyner shared questions she’d asked officials from the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.
“I was just on a call last month with the advisory board from [NC]DEQ, and my question to them was, ‘How much needs to happen? How many people need to die? And how much more information do you need to act on behalf of impacted communities?'” Joyner said.
Joyner’s community is dealing with air quality issues. It’s home to Enviva Northampton, a wood pellet producing plant, a papermill and a hog farm, and Interstate 95 is a 10-minute walk from her home, she said.
“We’re impacted by hog farms and chicken farms,” she added. “We pay taxes, but we’re not represented. Right now, I’m trying to figure out a way to hold DEQ and [the Division of Air Quality] accountable because they allow these permits to come without the consideration of the people who have been impacted.”
Joyner shared her thoughts at a community meeting attended by roughly 50 people at one stop on what organizers called the “People’s Tour.” Larry Baldwin is coordinator of North Carolina Pure Farms, Pure Waters, an organization that works, in part, to bring attention to the negative environmental impacts of concentrated animal feeding operations. They collaborated with other environmental groups and community partners to produce the tour.
Supporters of the People’s Tour contend that unlike many of the public comment meetings organized by the state Department of Environmental Quality, tour sessions are in locations and at times that made it easy for community residents to attend.
“[Public comment] hearings start at six o’clock in the evening,” Baldwin said. “If you’re two hours away, you’re not going to take the time to go.” In addition to the time and location of events, Baldwin said that people only have three minutes to share comments and often feel intimidated to speak.
“The purpose of the People’s Tour was to give people the opportunity where they live to go on record and send it to the state as their formal statement,” said Rick Dove, Baldwin’s chief collaborator and senior adviser to Waterkeeper Alliance, a global network of waterkeepers who work to protect waterways from environmental harm.
Public comment period
The People’s Tour provided a forum for community residents to comment on the 2024 Animal Feeding Operations General Permit process. Six draft general permits are up for renewal, and applications are due by early April. The permits cover animal feeding operations (swine, cattle, poultry) and farm digester systems, according to the NCDEQ.
These permits are up for renewal every five years and involve a public comment period — when state residents can attend meetings and make statements on the record about proposed regulations. During the public comment period, NCDEQ’s Division of Water Resources provided a phone number people could use to leave messages, and they publicized mailing and email addresses for people to direct their comments.
Additionally, the division hosted in-person meetings in Kenansville, Goldsboro and Stateville to hear public comments on the draft permits, and there was a virtual meeting in October. The comment period opened on Aug. 4, 2023, and closed on Nov. 3, 2023.
However, those living in affected communities often rely on riverkeepers, environmental attorneys and other activists — who attend the meetings and are comfortable speaking to people who may oppose their position — to represent them.
In an email to NCHN regarding an inquiry about the public comment process, a NCDEQ spokesperson stated, in part:
“Our work is guided by the DEQ Public Participation Plan and Language Access Plan, but we welcome suggestions on how the Department can improve facilitation of public input as part of these processes.”
Public intimidation
For instance, during the public comment meeting in Kenansville, State Rep. Jimmy Dixon, a poultry and vegetable farmer who represents Duplin and Wayne counties and is chair of the House Agriculture Committee, chastised the environmentalists who were there.
After stating that he’d been in the agricultural industry for 41 years, Dixon looked toward where Baldwin, Dove and other environmental advocates were seated as he spoke.
“I do not question your passion. I do not question your sincerity. I know that you’re sincere. And I admire that,” he said. “But you’re also very biased because you haven’t looked at the other side. Please inform yourself and listen to both sides of the story.”
Before Dixon offered his remarks, Dove had spoken about how in his 30 years of covering agricultural issues in the state, he hadn’t seen many changes to the way CAFOs are run. Before leaving the podium, Dixon responded to Dove’s earlier comments.
“The statement was made, ‘[I’ve] been in it for 30 years and [there] hasn’t been any changes.’ You’ve got to be an idiot if you’ve been in the business for [30] years and you haven’t seen the changes that have taken place.”
Advocates say such tense interactions can cause folks from affected communities to not speak up for fear of being singled out. They say that creates the need for the People’s Tour.
At the meeting with more than 50 people in attendance, the only ones who spoke were environmental advocates, farmers and agricultural industry representatives.
Access + information
Unlike the public comment period for the six draft permits, which provided three locations where people could offer thoughts in person, the People’s Tour held several public comment sessions during a 10-day period in September, including the one in Gaston where Joyner spoke on the 19th. Other stops included Jacksonville, Warsaw, Pembroke (UNC-Pembroke) and Goldsboro, where local residents and representatives from environmental groups came together to share their thoughts.Video and audio files containing public comments from the meetings were delivered to NCDEQ.
While NCDEQ provided multiple ways for people to comment on the draft permits, the tour offered venues near where they live and a less pressured time period for people to share their thoughts. It also informed people about environmental issues affecting their communities that they may not have known about and removed the need for folks with limited or no access to a computer or reliable internet service from depending on that mode of communication to express themselves.
“[Some] people don’t feel comfortable going online to leave a comment,” Joyner said. “I’d rather have in-person [opportunities] than going online and typing a comment.”
Riley Lewis, Coastal Carolina Riverwatch’s White Oak waterkeeper, informed community residents about environmental issues facing the White Oak River Basin during the tour’s first stop in the Onslow County seat of Jacksonville. Lewis said the river basin covers Onslow and Carteret counties and includes the White Oak River, the New River, the Newport River and the North River.
“Onslow County is pretty much surrounded on the northern side with CAFOs — a lot of hog and poultry,” Lewis said. “Under the general permit, the hog CAFOs use the wet waste system of the lagoon spray fields. Those are the ones that were targeted with this round of permitting.”
Lewis said the goal of the tour stop was to get people to comment and make them aware that the “lagoon spray field system is an issue — it causes a lot of pollution in our local waterways.”
She added that there is more work needed to increase awareness.
“We, unfortunately, didn’t get a lot of participation. But that’s really opened up [our] eyes to realize that we needed to do more education,” she said. “More outreach, to get the community more involved with these facilities because they’re everywhere. They’re all over the place and right on our rivers, but a lot of people don’t know.”
Permit renewal packets will be mailed to those that apply in this month, and applications are due by April 3. The general permits will go into effect on Oct. 1, according to NCDEQ’s Division of Water Resources.
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Update: The story now includes a response from the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.
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