Story by Anna Mudd
As Danielle Koonce drives the roads of Sampson County, most of sees is familiar. The green fields bring memories of backyard barbeques, the warm sun melting the ice in her yellow plastic cup, her family spread out across the lawn in metal folding chairs.
There’s the church her grandfather helped build, and her childhood home next door to aunts, uncles, and across the street from her grandparents. There’s the Magnolia Mt. Zion AME Church she went to every Sunday, where her father is a pastor.
The woods that stretch behind her grandparents’ house remind her of the evenings she and her sister ran out back to feed scraps to their family pigs.
“That was the community,” Koonce says. “In almost every other house someone had a hog in the backyard. That was common in the 80’s. No one has hogs anymore. If you come to my community now, you’re not gonna see any family farms, you’re gonna see Smithfield with thousands and thousands of pigs hooked up in tight quarters.”
Memory lane stops when Koonce reaches the Smithfield Hog Production Division just beyond her grandparents’ wooded backyard or when she sees the two hog farms situated on either side of her family church. Worst of all is the ever-present stench from the lagoons of hog waste on these farms and the daily spraying of hog waste onto fields for fertilizer.
The smell is one of many reminders for Koonce that large-scale industrial hog farming has redefined “normal” in her community. While the smell is impossible to escape, the unseen effects are more concerning to locals. According to a study from the North Carolina Medical Journal, communities around these industrial hog farms have higher mortality and disease rates.
North Carolina is the second largest hog-farming state, behind Iowa. Almost half of these hog farms are located in the southeastern counties of Duplin, Sampson, and Bladen.
In Sampson County, a large portion of the population are minorities. African Americans make up 26.6 percent with Hispanics at 20.6 percent. Additionally, the poverty rate is 20.9 percent–with Hispanics and African Americans accounting for the highest percentage of poverty in the county. Lawsuits such as Mcivor vs. Murphy-Brown LC have addressed health issues, injustice, and other damages.
But, in the past few years, the hog industry has come up with a new – and profitable – way to circumvent activists’ efforts.
By emphasizing renewable natural gas (BioGas), the hog farm industry – and some government officials – divert attention from issues that will continue to plague communities.
In 2019, Smithfield Foods and Dominion Energy announced a joint venture: Align Renewable Natural Gas (RNG). Their plan – convert methane emissions from the hog waste into renewable natural gas on farms specifically in Sampson and Duplin counties.
In a press release, Gary Courts, Dominion Energy’s general manager of the RNG development, said that “With renewable natural gas, everyone wins. It’s good for the environment and our planet. It’s a huge win for the farmers. And it’s around-the-clock renewable energy for consumers.”
False portrayal
A few months ago, Koonce’s father handed her a flyer, one of many that Smithfield delivered to his church. She looked down at the glossy paper with a photo of a grassy field, the words “future” and “transforming” in bold white letters. She says she assumes they chose her father’s church to pass out these flyers because of the close proximity to the hog farms that will be participating in the biogas venture.
“It really makes you think ‘well this is going to be a great option for our community,’” she said. “That flyer was one of the first ways that I saw that greenwashing was going on because it’s been touted as a clean energy source that’s going to lower methane levels.”
Buzzwords like renewable, eco-friendly, and clean mask the reality that many in Sampson County and neighboring areas fear will come with BioGas.
“Whether it’s online or in public, the industry leaders are repetitive about the renewable energy source that biogas is potentially going to be,” Koonce says. “You would think like, this is the best thing since sliced bread for the hog industry in particular.”
Industry leaders and some government officials portray biogas as a savior to the environmental issues that have plagued communities surrounding major hog farms.
“Not only is renewable natural gas good for the environment, it also benefits consumers and family farmers,” says Lucy Rhodes, communications associate at Dominion Energy, referring to the Align Project. “This single innovation reduces emissions from farms, provides clean energy for consumers and generates new income for family farmers. That’s a huge win for the environment and for North Carolina’s economy,”
But, many in these communities and beyond believe these claims are hollow.
Farm Sanctuary reports biogas still relies on hog excrement to produce methane. This waste is the issue at the root of health problems as it seeps past the storage lagoons, polluting the groundwater, land and air.
Covering these hog waste lagoons with digesters that turn the methane into renewable energy does not fix the issues of flooding, according to the Southern Environmental Law Center.
It’s more than the hogs
Industrial “greenwashing” has become increasingly more common over the past 10 years–especially in areas where companies have already faced criticism for harming the surrounding community and environment.
The hog industry isn’t the only business latching onto the green message.
Northampton County has dealt with a similar issue since 2013, when the Enviva wood pellet plant began operations there. The plant produces wood pellets to burn as a renewable energy source for the UK.
“It happens over and over again,” Northampton resident Richie Harding says. “In communities where people are poor and there are people of color, industries know our fight is only going to last so long.”
He says Enviva’s wood pellet production is next. Northampton County has had everything from hog farms contaminating its water to hazardous waste disposal systems.
But what makes the wood pellet plant different is Enviva’s claims its product does minimal harm to the environment. Enviva says wood pellets are a sustainable alternative to coal energy.
But critics point to studies that paint a different future for these communities.
A SELC study found, “Instead of enhancing forest carbon and decreasing emissions, policies that subsidize large-scale burning of forest biomass undermine global efforts at addressing climate change.”
And, like all the industries that have come to Northampton before it, Enviva is still causing issues for the community–a majority of which is African American.
The most visible being the dust. It fills the air, coating the homes and cars near the Enviva plant like a thin, grimy bedsheet of sawdust.
Silverleen Alst lives on Lebanon Church Road, a quarter-mile from the Enviva plant. She grew up on a farm down the road, where she said she spent most of her days outside, with the cows, pigs and chickens.
Now, the dust from Enviva piles up on her car within hours–and leaves her nose stopped up constantly.
“We can’t even enjoy grilling out or cooking outside as much anymore, we have to cover the food even when we are only out for an hour or so,” she says.
Shawn Taylor, public information officer at the Division of Air Quality, responded to questions about the dust complaints. “From June 2021 to February 2022, staff from our Raleigh Regional Office also performed unannounced weekly or biweekly visits to the facility and surrounding areas to check for dust issues and take photos. Staff did not observe dust leaving the property boundary at any point.”
Enviva’s presence is more than an inconvenience. According to a study from the Rachel Carson Council, “21 U.S. wood pellet mills combined emit 16,000 tons of detrimental air pollutants annually. North Carolinians are particularly at risk because up until 2018, the government has allowed Enviva facilities to operate without any VOC or hazardous air pollutant controls. This has left community members at risk from air-borne pollutants which can cause or worsen cardiovascular and respiratory issues and cancers.”
“Green-energy” claims lull many into a false sense of security and provide cover for local politicians. And, the fact that the impact is on a small population of homeowners near the plant, leaves a small group left advocating for themselves–with little help.
In a 2019 press release, Enviva CEO and Chairman John Keppler said, “As we grow to meet the increasing global demand for sustainable biomass fuel, we will continue to make substantial investments in environmental control technology, reflecting our continued strong commitment to having a positive impact on the environment and our local communities.”
Harding says donations Enviva makes to the county are also a distraction tactic.
“About three years ago our high school was playing in the state championship and Enviva provided a charter bus to go there, then they immediately began to publicize–telling you how great they are for our county,” Harding said.
Group-led response
Many groups around the state have organized over the years to fight the environmental racism taking hold in counties like Sampson and Northampton. Many of them, like Sol Nation and North Carolina Environmental Justice Network, are led by women of color who come from affected communities.
Now, these groups are tackling greenwashing.
Tiffany Fant is a co-executive director of SOL Nation, a group working toward climate justice and helping BIPOC communities. She says she has begun to see greenwashing in the wood pellet industry in particular.
“You see greenwashing from the logging industry as they claim that this is a form of clean energy. However, they fail to mention how clear-cutting forests destroys ecosystems and leads to coastal erosion,” Fant says. “They also do not talk about how the processing of these pellets also pollutes the air which can lead to long-term generational health conditions.”
N.C. Environmental Justice Network is led by BIPOC women. Acacia Cadogan is the communications manager. She says NCEJN works solely for the community.
“There are groups that claim to be environmental groups that still support biogas, adhering to it being renewable energy. They don’t ever talk about the fact that this issue preys on people that are harmed–which are primarily people of color,” Cadogan says.
N.C. Conservation Network is an umbrella organization comprised of over 60 groups aiding communities that face environmental justice issues.
Brian Powell, communications director, discusses the issues that are still present with the move to biogas from hog farms.
“The process leaves in place a system of waste lagoons and spray fields that continue to harm nearby communities in deadly ways. It also leaves behind higher concentrations of other pollutants that may make their way into ground and surface waters that communities depend upon. The technology exists to do it all in a truly cleaner way, but instead of making those investments the industry seems content to make claims about positive environmental impacts that don’t hold up to scrutiny.”
All three of these nonprofits agree that the best way to combat the rise in greenwashing is through education–both for communities affected, and people who are unaware of the issue.
Powell says that “N.C. Conservation Network tries to counter greenwashing campaigns with fact-based public education efforts aimed at informing decision makers, impacted communities and other stakeholders.”
Often communities impacted by industries aren’t sure of the steps to take to advocate for themselves, says Cadogan.
“Not everybody is comfortable going to a public meeting and sitting in front of a bunch of white people and explaining this thing that they don’t even understand,” she said.
NCEJN hopes to aid communities through empowerment, Cadogan said. “We find ways to amplify their voices, empowering them to have a platform because they are the experts. Even as a black person, I have had to go into these communities checking myself and my privilege because I am not impacted by these environmental issues.”
In a similar way, Fant says SOL Nation educates communities they work with so that when they are presented with potentially false information or advertisements that greenwash, they are equipped to refute it.
Conclusion
Danielle Koonce became involved in environmental activism when she moved back to Sampson County a few years ago–in part sparked by her getting her Ph. D in sociology at the University of Maryland with a focus on racism and the environment.
She began advocating for environmental justice for the community by going to county commissioners’ meetings–speaking up about clean water and contamination from hog farms. She also sends emails out to community members explaining environmental issues affecting them, as well as relaying governmental meeting summaries.
The first few meetings she spoke at, there were only four or five other people in the room, she said.
“At the last meeting they had standing room only, communities within our county are starting to advocate for themselves and band together, it’s nice to see those efforts and see people from different parts of the county show up. It gives me a lot of hope,” Koonce says.
Her hope pairs with the memories of her childhood, sparking a fire to continue working to bring back the days when her family could go outside without being reminded of the hog farms and concerned about their health. This pushes her to keep advocating and speaking up against tactics like greenwashing.
“This is my home and I’m serving my community,” Koonce says.
