STANTONSBURG — Don Webb of Wilson County used to own 4,000 hogs in Northampton and Hertford counties. But he said he got out of the industry after he realized the polluting effect it had on his neighbors.
“I got out because two people came to me,” he said, “and begged me to stop stinking up the place.”
One was a country store owner that said his small business was hurting because of the stench. Another said he couldn’t sit on his porch or hang clothes out to dry.
“I got to thinking about my mom and daddy,” Webb said. “… How would I feel if that happened to them?”
He shut down his farm, sold his interest in the land and closed another hog operation on land he leased.
In the late 1980s, he bought a fish camp, now called Lake Wylie, that was in operation as a recreational center for years prior. The camp has about a dozen lakes, including Lake Wylie and Lake Irene, named after Webb’s parents.
The Greene County camp borders Stantonsburg Farm, a hog farm owned by Murphy Family Ventures that has been issued violations in the past — including one in March — for spilling hog waste into a waterway. The hog farm was started in 1991.
The spills from Stantonsburg Farms have occurred in a blue line waterway that flows into Contentnea Creek and on into the Neuse River.
Webb, who founded the Waterkeeper Alliance in 1992, has concerns that effluent spilled into the waterway will eventually contaminate the two lakes named after his parents at his fishing camp where as many as 40 members go to relax, stay in a cabin and fish.
“I don’t want this to get polluted,” Webb said about the lakes, two of which are connected to each other and to the Contentnea by ditches.
Webb said the Contentnea could back up and spread contaminants to those two lakes. But if the creek floods over, all of his lakes could be contaminated. That happened in 1999 when Hurricane Floyd hit.
About 11 years ago, Webb experienced a fish kill because of a hog farm spill that occurred upstream from his camp between Stantonsburg and Black Creek. The television series “60 Minutes” did a program on the pollution created by that spill and included excerpts about the camp, he said.
Web said on that occasion he found hypodermic needles on his property — the same type that was used at his own hog farms.
Contamination of his lakes and fish is not the only problem Webb said he’s concerned about. He worries about the camp’s members relaxing at the edge of one of the lakes as they fish and chat —then the wind changing direction — and them having to contend with the stench of hog feces and urine.
“The last two or three weeks,” he said, “it’s been worse than it’s ever been.”
Webb said he’s worried about airborne ammonia. In 1999, the N.C. Division of Water Quality began monitoring ammonia because of its capability of forming pollutant ammonium-based fine particles that are of concern to human health and because of the growth of hog farms in Eastern North Carolina, according to a report produced by the Division.
The Division selected three sites for monitoring ammonia in the air — Lenoir Community College, Martin County about 50 miles from LCC and Sampson County. Those sites were selected because they lie in the predominant wind corridor of southwesterly winds, the report states.
“I feel like airborne ammonia is going to destroy my place here,” he said.
On March 22, Webb stood in two connected buildings he moved from another location in Greene County onto higher ground on the property and fixed them up for guests. One building had been a tobacco grading barn that’s now a cabin and the other a pack house that has become a recreation room.
“When I sit over there,” Webb said, pointing to a comfortable chair in the cozy cabin that looks out on one of the lakes, “I don’t want that man’s flies to come over here, and I don’t want that man’s (hog) feces to come over here and bother me and my friends.”
Lake Wylie members and school and church groups, including special education students, visit the camp to fish and enjoy recreation, he said.
“I want them to be responsible Americans,” he said about Stantonsburg Farm. “I feel that an American, a good American, would never stink up another American’s home with feces and urine.”
In response to a telephone message left for A.J. Linton, environmental manager for Murphy Family Ventures, Linton responded with an email. He said the farm received the notice of violation for the March 15 hog waste spill.
“The farm very much regrets that this accidental discharge occurred,” he wrote, “and worked diligently to contain the majority of the effluent that left the field. The farm is currently in the process of developing a response to the N.C. Department of Water Quality in regard to the violation, as well as taking other actions as needed to prevent a reoccurrence of a similar event.”
Margaret Fisher can be reached at 252-559-1082 or Margaret.Fisher@Kinston.com. Follow her on Twitter @MargaretFishr.