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Articles by Kemp Burdette
Lawsuit offers solution to worsening Cape Fear River pollution crisis Original
Few places on earth are as tightly concentrated with factory farms as North Carolina’s Cape Fear River Basin, home to roughly 2.4 million people and more than 36 million confined animals. The Cape Fear is North Carolina's largest river basin and its most polluted: industrial animal farms’ waste is to blame. Factory farms are famously under-regulated. North Carolina is home to nearly 8,000 industrial animal farms; only 14 have federal water pollution permits.
Guest commentary: Where plastic flows into the ocean
A paddler and cleanup volunteer encounters plastic waste and other man-made debris in a tributary of Greenfield Lake in Wilmington. Photo courtesy of Cape Fear River Watch While many extoll the benefits and virtues of recycling, we have become a nation of complacent recyclers. Each week we sort the things that can be recycled from the things that cannot, and roll our bins out to the street where they are collected and further sorted before being hauled off to commercial recycling facilities.
Riverkeeper: Smithfield ‘biogas’ plan maintains risk to soil, air, water
By Kemp Burdette Wednesday Jul 29, 2020 at 7:00 PM Smithfield Foods, a $15 billion company, has a plan to profit from hog waste. That plan would give it cover to keep its antiquated, polluting system of storing waste from 9 million North Carolina hogs, a system that puts our soil, our air and our water at risk. Currently, Smithfield’s contractors store the nearly 10 billion gallons of hog waste the company’s hogs produce each year in giant, unlined cesspools, then spray it on nearby cropland.
The industrial meat industry says its feeding America, but it’s also feeding the COVID-19 crisis
“Picnic line” workers cut pork from shoulder bones in the Smithfield Foods processing plant in Tar Heel, N.C. NYT The industrial meat industry exacts a high cost on human health under normal circumstances. It exacts an even worse cost in a crisis. We’ve seen that in hurricanes, where cesspools of hog waste have overflowed into our public trust waterways, and we’re seeing it now as COVID-19 sweeps through slaughterhouses and processing plants.
The industrial meat industry says its feeding America, but it’s also feeding the COVID-19 crisis
“Picnic line” workers cut pork from shoulder bones in the Smithfield Foods processing plant in Tar Heel, N.C. NYT The industrial meat industry exacts a high cost on human health under normal circumstances. It exacts an even worse cost in a crisis. We’ve seen that in hurricanes, where cesspools of hog waste have overflowed into our public trust waterways, and we’re seeing it now as COVID-19 sweeps through slaughterhouses and processing plants.
The industrial meat industry says its feeding America, but it’s also feeding the COVID-19 crisis
“Picnic line” workers cut pork from shoulder bones in the Smithfield Foods processing plant in Tar Heel, N.C. NYT The industrial meat industry exacts a high cost on human health under normal circumstances. It exacts an even worse cost in a crisis. We’ve seen that in hurricanes, where cesspools of hog waste have overflowed into our public trust waterways, and we’re seeing it now as COVID-19 sweeps through slaughterhouses and processing plants.
Gisler, Burdette: Chemours cleanup plan falls short
By Geoff Gisler and Kemp Burdette Tuesday Mar 24, 2020 at 4:12 PM Because the company’s contamination has reached historic proportions, Chemours asserts it should not be held to its commitments. For more than two years, residents in southeastern North Carolina have grappled with the reality that the Chemours Company, and before it DuPont, knowingly contaminated their air, water, soil and groundwater with GenX and other per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).
KEMP BURDETTE: Waterways already are in peril; don’t make them worse
By Kemp Burdette For GateHouse Media Coastal NC Friday Apr 12, 2019 at 2:01 AM The Trump administration’s proposal to strip waterways around the country of Clean Water Act protection puts our drinking water at risk. The proposal would strip Clean Water Act protection from entire categories of U.S. waterways. Closed-basin lakes, interstate waters, and streams that only flow in direct response to precipitation would all lose protection.
KEMP BURDETTE: Waterways already are in peril; don’t make them worse
By Kemp Burdette For GateHouse Media Coastal NC Friday Apr 12, 2019 at 2:01 AM The Trump administration’s proposal to strip waterways around the country of Clean Water Act protection puts our drinking water at risk. The proposal would strip Clean Water Act protection from entire categories of U.S. waterways. Closed-basin lakes, interstate waters, and streams that only flow in direct response to precipitation would all lose protection.
KEMP BURDETTE: Waterways already are in peril; don’t make them worse
By Kemp Burdette For GateHouse Media Coastal NC Friday Apr 12, 2019 at 2:01 AM The Trump administration’s proposal to strip waterways around the country of Clean Water Act protection puts our drinking water at risk. The proposal would strip Clean Water Act protection from entire categories of U.S. waterways. Closed-basin lakes, interstate waters, and streams that only flow in direct response to precipitation would all lose protection.
KEMP BURDETTE: Swine, poultry industries not trying to improve waste handling
By Kemp Burdette For StarNews Media Monday Apr 8, 2019 at 7:05 AM Tommy Stevens, a paid consultant for the N.C. Pork Council, made some contentions in a recent op-ed piece about contaminants in Hurricane Florence floodwaters that do not hold up to scrutiny. His point seems to be that contamination from flooded cesspools of untreated swine feces and urine was a less significant source of water pollution after the hurricane than human waste from overwhelmed waste treatment plants.
KEMP BURDETTE: A dangerous game of chicken with N.C. environment
By Kemp Burdette For StarNews Media Saturday Feb 23, 2019 at 2:01 AM Poultry operations are now the largest and fastest growing source of livestock nutrient pollution in North Carolina, endangering our water, especially here in the Cape Fear River Basin. Through my work as Cape Fear Riverkeeper, I know that in Duplin and Sampson counties, hogs already outnumber people by two to one.
OPINION: Restore water-quality standard for Lower Cape Fear
By Kemp Burdette and Will Hendrick | For StarNews Media Sunday Jan 20, 2019 at 2:01 AM Jan 20, 2019 at 11:05 AM Imperiled 15-mile stretch of river is not swamp water; its simply been choked by animal waste. What do you do when a stew of poultry litter and hog waste smother a river, sending its oxygen level plummeting and its acidity climbing? Well, if you’re North Carolina, you deem its waters “swamp waters,” and move on. The North Carolina Environmental Management Commission did just that in 2015.
OPINION: Why we support the Chemours consent order
Officials with Cape Fear River Watch, Southern Environmental Law Center lay out their case for settlement over GenX contamination For Cape Fear River Watch, Wilmington is our home. We and our families drank contaminated water and we share the worries about what GenX and similar chemicals have done to our health. We hear the questions raised about the proposed consent order reached as a result of our lawsuits and we understand the concerns.
OPINION: Water woes require action, not just research
On Oct. 20, the StarNews published an opinion piece by Duke professor Lee Ferguson touting the North Carolina legislature as “visionary” for funding research on GenX and other PFAS -- toxic chemicals found in the state’s drinking water. But the people of the Lower Cape Fear region, from Fayetteville to Wilmington, need action.
OPINION: EPA, DEQ must act against Chemours
On Tuesday, Aug, 14, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is coming to Fayetteville to hear from the community. On Tuesday, Aug, 14, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is coming to Fayetteville to hear from the North Carolina community about GenX and other perflourinated chemicals that have contaminated our drinking water for decades.
OPINION: N.C.'s 'pork-smell' politics stink
By Kemp Burdette & Krissy Kasserman | For StarNews Media The recently announced $50 million verdict against Murphy-Brown/Smithfield Foods means justice has finally been served for the people living next to Kinlaw Farms in Bladen County. A jury agreed that Murphy-Brown “substantially and unreasonably interfered” with the plaintiffs’ use and enjoyment of their properties.
UPDATE: Black River Still at Risk, Hog Industry Still Peddling Deception
About a month ago, I took a trip out to the Black River basin after seeing television ads paid for by the hog industry that talk about how the Black River is “pristine.” Well, the results of my water sampling on January 22, 2016, the day those ads began running, showed otherwise: 100% of the samples exceeded the State standard for fecal coliform bacteria.
The Black River Is Not "Pristine"
On Friday, January 21st, I woke up to learn of an advertisement that was making the rounds that was attempting to discredit environmental groups like mine that want to put an end to pollution from industrialized animal production. This slick commercial, paid for by the hog industry, pointed to the Black River, a tributary of the Cape Fear, as an example of a “pristine” waterway in hog country proving that the waste from millions of hogs in my river basin doesn’t flow downstream.
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