Within months of buying his Whiteville home in 2019, Larry Sparrow discovered what it meant to live across the road from a hog farm. One particular incident signaled the struggle ahead.
“I was in my backyard, and boy, [the stench] about ripped my toenails straight off!” he said.
From that moment on, Sparrow realized that it was going to be a challenge.
“The first [odor] encounter — that’s what forced me to start doing the documentation, doing the research and getting educated,” he said. “That was the beginning of where I am right now.”
After retiring from his job as a wastewater treatment facility manager in Virginia and moving to eastern North Carolina, Sparrow said he was looking forward to life in the slow lane.
“I wanted to go somewhere where I could go sit in my backyard, stick my head in the sand, and let the world move around me.”
But six years after moving to North Carolina, Sparrow said many of the same problems that neighbors cited in the high-profile nuisance trials a decade ago still persist—including foul odors and flies from nearby hog operations.
Sparrow’s frustrations reflect the broader struggles of many North Carolinians who live near industrial hog farms. These residents now have fewer options for having their complaints heard or addressed by state regulators in the wake of actions by the General Assembly that protect the industry.
Now there’s an added concern: A recent study found pig fecal matter outside and inside the homes of residents living near concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs).
Hog waste, human health concerns
North Carolina is the third-largest hog-producing state in the U.S., behind only Iowa and Minnesota, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In 2023, hogs generated $2.7 billion in cash receipts — making up 16 percent of the state’s nearly $17 billion in total farm income, and they are a significant contributor to the state's $111 billion agriculture and agribusiness sector.
Eastern North Carolina, where Sparrow moved in 2019 to enjoy retirement, is the epicenter of the state’s hog industry. About an hour and 20 minutes north of his home in Columbus County is Sampson County — one of the nation’s top hog-producing counties, along with neighboring Duplin County. In 2023, the two counties produced a combined total of nearly 4 million hogs.
Statewide, roughly 9.5 million hogs generate more than 10 billion gallons of waste, according to a 2020 document published by the Duke Nicholas School of the Environment.
All that waste has to go somewhere.
On farms, hog waste is funneled into lagoons — open-air ponds that collect liquid manure. Periodically, the waste is siphoned from the lagoon and sprayed onto nearby agricultural fields as fertilizer. But the practice has drawn criticism from residents and environmental advocates who say it contributes to runoff pollution and carries manure particles onto neighboring properties — including inside homes.
While spraying helps manage sludge buildup in the lagoons, it also adds nitrates to the soil and pollutes the air. Because nitrates are highly soluble, they can leach into groundwater. Elevated nitrate levels in drinking water have been linked to health risks, including long-term cancer concerns.
Beyond the odor of airborne pig waste, studies show that long-term exposure to fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) in spray droplets can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease.
Health concerns extend beyond air quality. A 2022 study found that people living near hog concentrated animal feeding operations are treated for acute gastrointestinal illness at higher rates than those living farther away. According to the report, exposure to drinking water contaminated by pathogens from hog waste — or inhaling airborne waste from sprayfields — can result in diarrhea, vomiting, nausea and other gastrointestinal distress.
Limiting measures
Mounting health and environmental complaints helped lay the groundwork for a wave of high-profile nuisance lawsuits. Between 2014 and 2019, nearly 500 North Carolinians sued Murphy‑Brown, a subsidiary of Smithfield Foods, over the odors, flies, dust and noise generated by neighboring hog operations.
After the plaintiffs prevailed in each of the 26 nuisance cases, in 2018, North Carolina General Assembly passed Senate Bill 711 — also known as the North Carolina Farm Act of 2018 — which limits the ability to bring nuisance laws against hog operations.
Among the bill’s provisions: Anyone wishing to sue a CAFO must live within a half-mile of the operation, own the affected property, and file the complaint within one year of the farm’s establishment. Even if those conditions are met, the law still limits potential relief.
“That plaintiff, if they succeed, cannot get what are called punitive damages unless the hog operation has been the subject of criminal enforcement or civil enforcement,” said Blakely Hilldebrand, Southern Environmental Law Center senior attorney. “It really raises the bar for any neighbor that is affected by the noxious odors, the buzzards and flies and everything that comes with living near a hog operation.”
David v. Goliath
Although in 2025 it’s more difficult for Larry Sparrow to get relief from the impaired quality of life he and many other eastern North Carolina residents experience, he hasn’t stopped trying. One of his main tools in this fight is his nose.
Sparrow gets up every morning and brews himself a cup of coffee. After inhaling that rich aroma, he steps outside and faces the hog farm. Then he takes a deep breath.
Sparrow assigns a numeric value to the odors he detects, using a scale of 1 to 5 based on a system that the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Air Quality used in the past. The division now uses olfactometers to quantify odors, according to a spokesperson.
“There are days when I don’t get an odor … that’s the way it works,” Sparrow said. “[If] I’m sitting outside, [an odor] could roll over here in a second, and I'd get my butt up and go in the house because it’s nasty.”
Over the years, Sparrow said he’s filed several complaints with DEQ and recently wrote a letter to Gov. Josh Stein.
“When I wrote the governor, he forced NC DEQ to do an inspection,” Sparrow said. “They came in and did a pre-inspection. Then they said, ‘Okay, we're coming back in 30 days and do a massive inspection.”
That preliminary inspection took place in May. However, Sparrow said he has not received any information about whether the follow-up inspection occurred.
Cape Fear Riverkeeper Kemp Burdette, who also is executive director of Cape Fear River Watch, said Sparrow’s frustration with the agency is common.
“I find that DEQ is slow to respond,” Burdette said. “They’re slow to issue notices of violation — if they issue them at all — and landowners, neighbors, advocates and citizens can’t get any information about the complaints they filed until a notice of violation is issued. That might take months. It’s a system clearly designed to protect CAFOs at the expense of the people who live near them.”
Sparrow said he agrees and doesn’t have much faith in a process that gives the farmer a 30-day notice. He noted that living near a hog farm has affected his and his wife’s quality of life — and has had an economic impact too.
“It costs me money, living across the street. I can never open a window in my house, ever, because you don't know when [the smell] is coming across the road,” he said.
Beyond the odor, there are the flies that Sparrow said can show up at any time — even in the winter months.
“I mean thousands and thousands of flies,” he said. “They get on your walls. I've had to wax my vehicles because anytime they poop, if you don't get that off, it almost becomes permanent.”
Suffering in silence
Reflecting on the battle he’s waged — with little success —for relief from nuisance issues stemming from the nearby hog operation, Sparrow said he believes that for every person who files a complaint, many more suffer in silence. Some feel hopeless, he said, while others don’t know who to contact or have simply resigned themselves to the conditions of living near a CAFO.
“I absolutely think that is true,” said Burdette in an email. He said there are several possible reasons why people don’t speak out.
“I think it's a combination of folks not knowing how to file a complaint, having tried once or twice with no response or resolution, intimidation, lives that are too consumed with just getting by, with no time or energy to navigate the system — a system which no one thinks is working.”
An attorney with knowledge of the nuisance trials said that Sparrow’s situation is like the plaintiffs in the Murphy-Brown lawsuits — it's a property rights issue. But now the state has made it harder for Sparrow and others to seek a legal remedy.
Nonetheless, Sparrow said he continues to document what he sees and smells — just in case the law changes.
“I understand that everybody's got to make a living,” he said. “But I'm not going to sit here and twiddle my thumbs and let you make money and me suffer.”
He stated, “Nobody should be able to affect my quality of life — anybody's quality of life — and put money in their pocket at the same time.”
This article first appeared on North Carolina Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.