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National Observer
9 hours ago
- Politics
- National Observer
Why calling the Texas flooding an 'act of god' is a dangerous form of political denial
This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration In the aftermath of the catastrophic flooding in Texas last week, government officials from President Donald Trump to the governor of Texas to county representatives have sought to deflect blame and shift public focus away from questions of responsibility. The White House press secretary called the flooding 'an act of God': 'It's not the administration's fault that the flood hit when it did,' Karoline Leavitt said. Gov. Greg Abbott said that asking about blame was for ' losers.' And Trump himself told the media that 'nobody expected it, nobody saw it.' To understand more about how governments communicate with the public in the wake of a tragic loss of life, and how to interpret the Trump administration's messaging on Texas, Inside Climate News spoke to Eric Klinenberg, a sociologist and the author of the book Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago. Heat Wave investigates the government response during and after the deadly 1995 Chicago heat wave — the 30th anniversary of which begins Saturday — and the social, political and institutional causes that ultimately led to more than 700 deaths. Klinenberg catalogs the typical strategies used by governments when they are seeking to evade accountability, from euphemism and denial to silencing experts and trying to paint an event as uniquely unprecedented. He used this framework to analyze the way that Mayor Richard Daley and his staff talked about the heat wave and its victims. Today, Daley's comments sound eerily similar to Trump's: 'Let's be realistic,' Daley said at a press conference as the death toll rose. 'No one realized the deaths of that high an occurrence would take place.' A Chicago health department official said that 'government can't guarantee that there won't be a heat wave.' Later, the heat wave was officially described as a 'unique meteorological event.' As a disturbing trend repeats in the wake of the Texas floods, the question begs to be asked: how can people learn from history if they deny it even happened? 'This kind of rhetoric promotes complacency, since it signals there's nothing anyone could do to make a difference,' Klinenberg said. When it comes to what happened in Texas and in Chicago, he said, we know that's not true. KILEY BENSE: I read your book Heat Wave a few months ago, and I've been thinking about it a lot ever since, but especially in the last week, reading the news about what happened in Texas and reading everything that some of our politicians and government officials have been saying. What was your initial reaction to hearing that type of messaging from government officials in the wake of what just happened? ERIC KLINENBERG: It's totally predictable and totally familiar. And it's a total cop out. It's a strategy that political officials have used for ages to deny accountability after failing to do their jobs. We know by now that there's no such thing as a natural disaster. First of all, the weather is no longer natural in our climate-changed world. Second, the reason some people are especially vulnerable has far more to do with social and political factors than with Mother Nature. And this is by now so well known, it's a cliche, but if you're a political official, calling a disaster 'natural' absolves you of responsibility, makes it seem inevitable. BENSE: Especially the phrase, 'an act of God.' KLINENBERG: We already know there are countless decisions that people and political officials made that turned the floods into a human catastrophe: the decision to settle and develop a vulnerable riverfront area. The decision to expand in harm's way, even when scientists warned about the risks. The decision to ignore environmental reviews. The decision to fire government officials who track the weather and communicate with local officials. The decision by local officials not to invest in emergency warning systems. Up and down the line, we see human causes of a catastrophe that, at minimum, made this significantly more lethal than it should have been. God didn't ordain that. BENSE: The camp that was most affected had expanded and built more cabins about six years ago. And they built right in the floodplain. KLINENBERG: The camp was aware of the dangers on the river and concerned about the dangers on the river. Yet it did it anyway. Texas is a state that's notoriously in denial about climate change, notoriously hostile to environmental review and notoriously unwilling to regulate in the name of public health and safety. BENSE: In your book, you write about the 1995 Chicago heat wave and the messaging used in the aftermath of that event by the mayor and his administration. What were the results of the communication about the heat wave? KLINENBERG: Unfortunately, that kind of rhetoric worked in Chicago. It confused the public. It generated a media debate about whether the deaths were really real, because the mayor challenged the medical examiner's mortality findings, and it also generated a debate about who was responsible, because the city government's position was that people died because they neglected to take care of themselves. During a time of crisis or uncertainty, leading political officials and big media organizations have an outsized influence on our interpretation of the situation. I think the rhetoric of the natural disaster, of blaming the victim, made it far more difficult for Chicago to make sense of what happened in 1995 and made the world far less likely to learn from their failures. BENSE: To come back to Texas, what are your concerns with this being the immediate reaction from not just federal officials, but also on the local level? KLINENBERG: My concern is that by calling this 'an act of God,' and obfuscating the social and political causes of the disaster, they make the next one inevitable. It's especially sad because so many young people lost their lives, and it's been a horrific week to track their stories and to learn about the families, unsure of their children's fate. It's been a terrifying week, and I don't know a single climate scientist who believes that we'll have less of this in the future, right? Everyone knows we're just going to see more dangerous weather systems like this one, and as long as we deny the ways that we're making them worse, we're doomed to repeat them.
Miami Herald
4 days ago
- Business
- Miami Herald
Florida's home insurance crisis hits hardest in some of the state's poorest counties
Steve Cates was walking back to his house from his mailbox, flipping through a clutch of newly delivered letters, when one envelope stopped him in his driveway. It was from his insurance company. His home felt sturdy, but he knew getting insurance in this bucolic community on the north side of Lake Okeechobee was a struggle. His fiancée and several friends had had their policies canceled. His was dropped, too, the year before, although a few weeks later the insurance company had renewed the policy at a rate of a few hundred dollars more. The annual rate had jumped by 180 percent in six years, to $4,742, but he sent a check right in anyway. Now, standing in his driveway, staring at yet another non-renewal letter, his hand shook. He still owed $30,000 on his mortgage. Going without insurance, as some people he knew were doing, would be difficult, because his mortgage company required insurance. He feared the life he had built in this home over two decades was about to end. Insurance experts have warned repeatedly that rising economic losses from extreme weather events driven by climate change threaten the industry with collapse—and with it, housing markets and families' finances. Together with Louisiana and wildfire-wracked California, Florida, threatened by tropical cyclones barreling into its coasts, is where the crisis is hitting hardest. The risk is driving insurance companies to raise rates and withdraw from markets entirely, a situation that itself represents a crisis threatening to destabilize what for many Americans is their most important asset, their home. Much attention has focused on the threats to pricey real estate and resulting high premiums along the coast of South Florida. But an Inside Climate News analysis of data on home insurance non-renewals shows that already disadvantaged inland rural communities around Lake Okeechobee are an overlooked epicenter of the state's insurance crisis. That finding stems from data released in December by the U.S. Senate Committee on the Budget. The Senate committee asked large insurance companies to disclose the number of policies that were not renewed each year from 2018 to 2023. Committee staffers received data from 23 companies, collectively accounting for about two-thirds of the home insurance market across the nation. (The committee said it focused on non-renewals because industry experts say high non-renewal rates represent an early warning sign of market destabilization.) The committee's report drew a direct connection to climate change, noting that spiking non-renewal rates in 2022 and 2023 were concentrated in the counties facing the highest risk of climate-related disasters. 'The stuff that scientists have predicted for decades about climate change is now starting to come true, and the leading indicator of that is the insurance industry,' Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), chairman of the committee at the time of the report's release, told Inside Climate News. Insurance companies 'look at places like Florida—which is seeing a combination of sea level rise and worsened storm activity and warming oceans around the state on three sides of it and more moisture held in the warmer air above it so that rain bursts are more dangerous—and they are starting to realize, 'Wow. That's going to be more risk than we can bear, and it's also really hard to predict,'' he said. 'So that makes Florida—as they used to say in the movies—the preview of coming attractions.' Poorer Inland Residents Are Most Vulnerable to Losing Coverage Florida had the highest rates of home insurance non-renewal in the nation, rising to around 3 percent of policies statewide in each of 2022 and 2023. But within the state, Inside Climate News found a more complex picture that could not be explained simply by the risk of financial losses from hurricanes and other tropical storms: The highest non-renewal rates were not in coastal counties like Miami-Dade, Monroe, Lee and Broward that are in the direct firing line of landfalling storms. Instead, they were concentrated inland, in the four rural counties around Lake Okeechobee: Glades, Hendry, Highlands and Okeechobee. To make sense of this finding, Inside Climate News turned to data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency's National Risk Index, used to identify the U.S. communities most severely threatened by natural hazards. We found no relationship between county-level non-renewal rates and the Expected Annual Loss Rate for Buildings, a measure of the percentage losses in building values anticipated each year. Where the counties around Lake Okeechobee stood out was in a measure of risk that also accounted for social vulnerability and resilience in the face of natural disasters. In other words, non-renewals were highest in the Florida counties where climate-related hazards are compounded by poverty and other factors that make it harder to withstand and recover from extreme weather events. Glades County, with a median household income of less than $39,000 a year compared to the statewide figure of around $72,000, had the highest non-renewal rates and is the state's poorest county. The counties south of Lake Okeechobee constitute a region known as the Everglades Agricultural Area, which was set aside as the Everglades were drained for farming. The region is among the nation's most bountiful, raising rice, sod, vegetables such as lettuce and sugarcane, making Florida the country's top producer of the crop. Vast ranchlands stretch north of the lake, where Okeechobee County is situated. That county had the second-highest non-renewal rate in the state in 2022 and there too, insurance is a common worry. 'It's kind of like always in the back of your mind, that you're just waiting for that shoe to drop,' said Okeechobee Mayor Dowling Watford, whose own policy has doubled in cost in recent years to some $6,000 annually. 'We didn't even think about not paying it or trying to find another insurance company. When you have insurance, you don't want to do anything to jeopardize that.' Even though they're farther from the coast, Okeechobee and its neighboring counties have by no means avoided the consequences of severe storms. In the 1920s an unnamed hurricane caused Lake Okeechobee to overflow, killing thousands. The catastrophe prompted a massive federal effort to drain and contain the Everglades, including the construction of the earthen 143-mile Herbert Hoover Dike around the entire lake. In 2004 the region was battered again by Frances and Jeanne, two of four hurricanes that menaced the state that year within the span of six weeks. Last year Hurricane Milton spawned at least 45 tornadoes across central and south Florida. 'What we're seeing here is a recognition of the risk of these storms causing damage anywhere in the state. I don't think there is any part of Florida that is safe from storms,' said Chuck Nyce, a professor of risk management and insurance at Florida State University. 'I think you're seeing that companies really made a conscious effort to reduce their risk from central Florida, south.' Meanwhile, a growing scarcity of insurance is but one aspect of the crisis facing Florida, especially the underserved counties of the state's heartland. Policies also are increasingly unaffordable. The situation means that the homeowners who are most at risk of losing insurance are those with the least resources for dealing with disasters, and with no insurance they are even more exposed. Paying Premiums or Dropping Coverage Inside Climate News also looked at changes in home insurance premiums, using data provided by Philip Mulder of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Benjamin Keys of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. The pair have shown that, across the nation, premiums are rising fastest in communities facing the greatest threats from natural disasters. While premiums have risen in the counties around Lake Okeechobee, they remain lower and have risen somewhat less steeply than in wealthier coastal counties like Monroe, which includes the Florida Keys. There, the median annual premium exceeded $7,600 in 2023, compared to around $2,800 in Glades County. This makes sense, according to Ishita Sen, an assistant professor of business administration at Harvard Business School who has studied the Florida insurance market. While the counties around Lake Okeechobee face lower risks of losses than wealthier coastal counties, their poorer residents are likely to respond to proposed premium hikes by switching from the large companies surveyed by the Senate Budget Committee to smaller local carriers. If they can't find an insurance company willing to provide coverage, they will end up insured by Citizens Property Insurance Corp., the state-backed insurer of last resort—and if they have already paid off their mortgage and are no longer required to have insurance, may forgo coverage altogether. 'Poorer communities have lower coverage to begin with, and they tend to drop coverage in response to premium increases,' Sen said. The Senate Budget Committee aimed to gather data on non-renewals driven by insurers' decisions to stop providing coverage. But the survey may also include non-renewals caused by homeowners deciding they can't afford to pay increasing premiums. Doc Thrift, 69, initially put his Okeechobee house up for sale after receiving a renewal notice for $14,500. Thrift, who is experienced in construction, has lived for the last 20 years in a 2,000-square-foot stucco home his late wife designed and he built almost entirely himself. His wife suffered from a neuromuscular disease and died five years ago. He now lives here alone with his dog, Jake. He eventually decided he could not part with the home and took out a personal loan to pay off the mortgage so that he can go without insurance, as many people he knows are doing. 'You can't build something—design something and build it—and then walk away and not have feelings about it. Because my wife's memory is here,' said Thrift. 'Your whole world has been snatched away, and you have to start all over again.' Even Citizens can cancel or decline to renew insurance if homeowners don't meet the conditions of coverage. Monica Clark and her husband had the private insurance policy on their home canceled after the 2004 hurricane season and ended up insured by Citizens. The state-run insurer sent multiple cancellation letters through the years, each basing coverage on different contingencies Clark felt were unreasonable, such as undergoing another inspection or making additional upgrades to the property. Monica Clark estimates she spends up to 20 percent of her time thinking about insurance. Credit: Amy Green/Inside Climate News This spring they received yet another cancellation letter from Citizens, and the most affordable policy they could find was with a private company for $10,000 a year. Two of Clark's relatives who live nearby received renewal notices for roughly $16,000 in recent years—her nephew is opting to pay for the policy by working overtime, while her brother is going without. Problems obtaining insurance from large, established providers will drive homeowners into the arms of companies vulnerable to insolvency. In her research into the Florida insurance market, Sen has tracked the withdrawal of major insurance providers from the state and their replacement by smaller firms that have proved vulnerable to insolvency. 'Insurers are leaving, and they are in no means wanting to come back,' Sen said. 'The ones that are replacing them are of low quality.' Seven Florida insurers became insolvent in the 13 months between January 2022 and February 2023. The problems faced by smaller companies, together with rising premiums being charged by those that remain, likely explains why Inside Climate News found that data from Citizens showed a surge in new policies from the state-backed provider even before the spike in non-renewals with large traditional insurers documented by the Senate Budget Committee. The industry blames the collapse of so many insurers on a tide of lawsuits filed against them by law firms that have marketed their services to policyholders in the wake of major storms. Mark Friedlander, spokesman for the Insurance Information Institute, an industry group, criticized the Senate Budget Committee's report for its focus on the risks posed by climate change. 'It just touched the surface and certainly didn't explain why non-renewal rates were so high in Florida compared to other states,' said Friedlander, himself a Floridian. 'Blaming it all on climate change is really a shallow way to look at this problem.' Florida's insurance consumer advocate, Tasha Carter, declined multiple requests for comment. Her staff referred inquiries to the state's Office of Insurance Regulation, which did not respond to requests for comment. Citizens, meanwhile, has shifted policies back to private-sector insurers through what it calls 'depopulation,' offering financial incentives for companies to take over its policies. This leaves the state-backed provider holding the riskiest policies. 'If there is a big hurricane, Citizens is not going to be able to make those payments,' Sen said. 'It isn't looking good.' After the January fires in Los Angeles County, Citizens' California counterpart, known as the FAIR Plan, faced a similar predicament and had to be given a $1 billion buyout. That money will come from private-sector insurers, who are expected to pass the cost onto their customers by hiking premiums. Citizens wouldn't need to seek a specific buyout, however, because existing Florida law allows it to issue bonds to raise the necessary funds and then recoup the money over a number of years by imposing surcharges on the premiums paid by Florida homeowners—not just its own customers. It has already done so once before, after the severe hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005, recovering the money it paid out over the following decade. 'Citizens can never go broke,' said its spokesman, Michael Peltier. But the same can't be said of the customers who ultimately foot the bill. For his part, Steve Cates still is holding out hope his insurance company will renew his policy. If not, he is not sure whether he would pay off the mortgage and go without insurance or try to sell the house. Parting with the home would be difficult. Cates had thought about leaving the house to his son. 'What I really don't understand is how they can drop so many people around the lake and not down on the coasts,' he said. 'I'm just sitting here, and I don't know which way to go. It's unstable times for me right now.'
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Melting glaciers may lead to more volcanic eruptions
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Climate change is likely to have an explosive consequence: volcanic eruptions. Antarctic glaciers have been slowly melting as temperatures rise, unearthing hidden volcanoes in the process. The eruptions of these could further worsen climate change and disrupt global ecosystems. But melting glaciers will only continue without the proper intervention to curb emissions. Lava locked away As warming temperatures cause glaciers to melt, that melt raises sea levels, which in turn tampers with the oceans' saltwater ecosystems and can lead to flooding. Melting glaciers may also lead to an increase in volcanic eruptions, according to a new study presented at the Goldschmidt Conference in Prague and set to be peer reviewed later this year. "Hundreds of dormant subglacial volcanoes worldwide — particularly in Antarctica — could become more active as climate change accelerates glacier retreat," said a news release about the study. Evidence suggests that the "thick ice caps act as lids on volcanoes," said Inside Climate News. Once the weight is removed, there is no longer pressure on the magma chamber underneath, allowing for eruptions to occur. "When you take the load off, it's just like opening a Coca-Cola bottle or a champagne bottle," Brad Singer, a geoscientist at the University of Wisconsin who led the research, said to Inside Climate News. "It's under pressure, and the dissolved gases in the melt come out as bubbles." The researchers analyzed six volcanoes in Chile to investigate how the Patagonian Ice Sheet's changes over time affected volcanic behavior. While the link between glaciers and volcanoes had been previously observed in Iceland, this study is one of the first to "show a surge in volcanism on a continent in the past, after the last ice age ended," said The Guardian. The same processes could occur in Antarctica, parts of North America, New Zealand and Russia as the ice sheets melt. A glacial pace Increased volcanic activity will likely have detrimental effects on the climate and global ecosystem. "The cumulative effect of multiple eruptions can contribute to long-term global warming because of a buildup of greenhouse gases," Pablo Moreno-Yaeger, who presented the research at the conference, said in the news release. "This creates a positive feedback loop, where melting glaciers trigger eruptions, and the eruptions in turn could contribute to further warming and melting." Unfortunately, the world's glaciers are now melting faster than ever before. Over the past approximately ten years, "glacier losses were more than a third higher than during the period 2000-2011," said the BBC. And the potential consequences go beyond just volcanic eruptions. Eruptions "release sulfate aerosols that reflect sunlight back into space," and this has led to "cooling events following past eruptions, some of which have triggered major famines," said Live Science. One study even found that melting polar ice is causing Earth's rotation to slow. Without intervention, the melting is going to continue. The "amount of ice lost by the end of the century will strongly depend on how much humanity continues to warm the planet by releasing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases," the BBC said. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The Supreme Court said no, but this legal battle lives on
A major mining project in Arizona remains on hold this month even after the Supreme Court declined to consider a faith-based plea to block it. The justices said on May 27 that they wouldn't hear a religious freedom case aimed at preventing federal officials from transferring Oak Flat, a site that's sacred to the Western Apache, to Resolution Copper. At first, that announcement seemed like the end of the road for the mining project's opponents. But then on Monday, they secured a small but potentially significant victory in a federal court in Arizona in separate but related lawsuits on the future of Oak Flat. According to Inside Climate News, one of the ongoing lawsuits was brought by the San Carlos Apache Tribe and argues that the land transfer would violate a treaty between the tribe and the government, as well as environmental and historic preservation laws. The other lawsuit was brought by a group of environmental activists, who claim the government has failed to fully study the environmental impact of the proposed mining project. In Monday's ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Dominic W. Lanza said the government can't transfer the land until at least 60 days after the publication of the Environmental Impact Statement on the mining project and promised to revisit the transfer during that 60-day period to consider implementing an injunction that would block it. The battle over Oak Flat dates back to 2014, when Congress removed the federal protections that were preventing mining in the area, as the Deseret News previously reported. That legal shift made it possible for the land to be transferred to a private company, although seven years passed with no major developments along those lines. But then, in 2021, the federal government published an Environmental Impact Statement on Oak Flat, signaling that mining was soon to begin. That's when a group of Native Americans filed a religion lawsuit to block the land transfer, arguing that destroying Oak Flat would violate their religious freedom rights. While the lawsuit, called Apache Stronghold v. United States, delayed the mining project, it didn't restore land protections. Apache Stronghold lost at the district and circuit court level, where judges said destroying Oak Flat would not violate the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. With its May 27 announcement, the Supreme Court allowed those decisions to remain in place. Justice Neil Gorsuch criticized the court's refusal to take up the case in a strongly worded dissent, which was joined by Justice Clarence Thomas. 'Just imagine if the government sought to demolish a historic cathedral on so questionable a chain of legal reasoning. I have no doubt that we would find that case worth our time. Faced with the government's plan to destroy an ancient site of tribal worship, we owe the Apaches no less,' Gorsuch wrote. Although the Supreme Court's announcement brought an end to the religious freedom case, it did not end the battle. Two other lawsuits aimed at blocking the mining are ongoing, as Inside Climate News reported. By ensuring that the land transfer won't happen before late August, Judge Lanza in Arizona created time for those lawsuits to move forward. The mining project's opponents present the judge's move as significant, noting that they haven't given up hope. 'We are grateful that Judge Lanza has provided us an opportunity to be heard,' San Carlos Apache Tribe Chairman Terry Rambler said in a statement provided to the Deseret News. But the mining project's supporters believe their plan is still on track. 'The court correctly found no legal basis for a preliminary injunction, and its order is consistent with prior decisions about this project at every level, including the Supreme Court's recent decision to deny further review in Apache Stronghold v. United States,' said Vicky Peacey, president and general manager of Resolution Copper, in a statement. 'The order simply gives the parties time to review the (Environmental Impact Statement) within the timeframe Congress directed for the land exchange. We are confident the project satisfies all applicable legal requirements.' The statement is expected to be published by June 20, Inside Climate News reported. Once it's released, the 60-day countdown will start.
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Funding shortfalls hamper North Carolina's program to buy out hog farms in or near floodplains
A hog CAFO in eastern North Carolina. (Photo: Rick Dove) This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here. As soon as the skies clear after a hurricane hits eastern North Carolina, Larry Baldwin climbs in the passenger seat of a single-engine plane, usually with his friend and pilot Rick Dove, and surveys the industrialized swine farms inundated with flood water. 'It's almost indescribable. You look down and see that they're either flooded or sides of a lagoon—we call them cesspools—are completely blown out,' said Baldwin, the Waterkeeper Alliance's coordinator for Pure Farms Pure Waters, a nonprofit that advocates for stronger regulations over factory farms. Meteorologists are predicting an above-average hurricane season, which began June 1. If a storm hits eastern North Carolina this year, flooding could jeopardize the structural integrity of hundreds of industrialized hog farms, whose massive open-air waste lagoons are vulnerable to hurricanes and heavy rain, an Inside Climate News analysis of publicly available flood maps and a state permit database shows. As of March, there were 8.1 million hogs in North Carolina concentrated animal feeding operations, also known as CAFOs. Of the 129 permitted swine operations in Bladen County, about 20 percent lie less than 1,000 feet from flood-prone areas. Closer to the coast, in Pender and Craven counties, the figure is 40 percent. Removing farms from the 100-year floodplain is critical for the environment and public health. If lagoons overtop, millions of gallons of urine and feces can contaminate residents' yards, private drinking water wells, rivers, creeks and wetlands with E. coli and other harmful bacteria. But complex USDA requirements, delays related to the COVID pandemic and underfunding have hampered the state in finishing its voluntary swine farm buyout program. The program receives funding from the USDA's National Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and the state legislature. President Trump has proposed cutting the NRCS budget by 88 percent, from $916 million to $112 million, part of his plan to shrink the federal government. The state Department of Agriculture uses the money to purchase permanent conservation easements on properties within the 100-year floodplain that are currently used for swine production. Farmers bid on an amount they would accept to relinquish their permit to operate a concentrated animal feeding operation, known as a CAFO, in the 100-year floodplain and to allow the state to establish a conservation easement on the property. Applications are ranked based on several criteria: the facility's history of flooding, distance to a water supply or high-quality waters, structural condition of the lagoons and the elevation of the hog barns and lagoon dikes in the 100-year flood plain. If accepted into the program, farmers can still use the land for other agriculture, such as pasture-based beef, row crops, hay and vegetable farming, but it would prohibit using the easement area as a spray field for swine waste. This disposal system sprays liquid waste from the lagoons onto nearby farm fields as fertilizer. The lagoons are also closed when the conservation easements are put in place. Demand for the program has exceeded funding. A total of 149 swine operations have bid in at least one of the five buyout rounds. The state has purchased easements on 45, at a cost of nearly $20 million, according to Department of Agriculture figures. Of that amount, USDA has contributed over $1 million. The purchases total 1,288 acres of easements and represent the removal of 62,300 hogs and 108 lagoons from the floodplain. Will Summer is executive director of the state's Land and Water Fund, which awards grants to the state Agriculture Department for the buyout program. He said 'the timing and availability of federal matching funds have further delayed project implementation.' The USDA did not respond to repeated requests for comment. David Williams, director of the state's Soil and Water Division, who has run the program since its inception, said the USDA has been cooperative, but 'it's been challenging' to make specific conditions at the farms fit with federal requirements. For example, USDA limits the percentage of concrete or asphalt—impervious surface—on a farm that has applied for a buyout. It was difficult for a smaller operation to meet that requirement because it had less acreage, Williams said, so that farm's easement was purchased solely with state funds. The state legislature funded the first round of buyouts in 1999, after North Carolina was hit by a trifecta of strong hurricanes within two months. Hurricane Floyd dropped 17 inches of rain on the eastern part of the state, where floods overtopped waste lagoons and killed at least 100,000 hogs. After four successful buyout rounds, the legislature stopped funding its share of the program in 2007. That stranded dozens of CAFOs in the flood plains and left a backlog of roughly 100 farmers who had applied for a buyout. The value of the program became apparent during the 2016 storm Hurricane Matthew. State agriculture officials reported that 32 farms, accounting for 103 lagoons, would have been inundated had they not been removed from the flood plain. Then came Hurricane Florence in 2018, which inundated eastern North Carolina. Six lagoons were damaged, another 32 overtopped and nine were flooded, state records show. Without a dedicated funding source, the state Department of Agriculture cobbled together $5 million to restart the program. The legislature later kicked in another $5 million. Recently, the state Agriculture Department received two more grants to purchase easements: $2.5 million from USDA and an additional $719,000 from the state's Land and Water Fund. That's only a small portion of the $20 million it would cost to purchase easements on the remaining swine farms that have applied for the program, Williams said. That doesn't include the hundreds more farms located next to the flood zones. Some barns and lagoons are as close to a floodway as the distance between home plate and first base on a Major League Baseball field. The risks also don't account for the enormous poultry operations and the millions of birds that farmers co-locate with their swine operations. 'You see a poultry farm, and right across the field there's a swine farm, and sometimes there are cattle grazing in the same fields,' Baldwin said. With a few exceptions, the location of those poultry farms and their waste disposal sites aren't public record under state law. The only way to locate the poultry CAFOs is to fly over them, consult aerial maps or plow through building permits. 'The poultry issue has become as big, if not a bigger, problem,' Baldwin said. In flood-prone Robeson County, one poultry farm has 48 barns, holding a total of nearly 1.7 million birds. Baldwin said post-storm flooding is significantly problematic. 'Millions of gallons of hog waste, plus poultry waste and in some cases, waste from treatment plants. The water quality is just horrendous,' he said. 'I like to use the term 'petri dish,' because that's what it is.'
