Hog Farm

After moving to North Carolina, a Columbus County resident found himself downwind from a billion-dollar industry. Now he’s documenting the odors, flies and frustration — even as state laws limit neighbors’ ability to seek relief.

Riverkeepers say a 2014 law calls into question whether the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality is thoroughly investigating their complaints against the state’s industrial hog and poultry farms. In one 11-month stretch, only eight of 85 complaints resulted in the DEQ citing a farm.

The lagoons were supposed to be gone by now.Nearly 20 years ago, North Carolina faced a reckoning. Hurricane Floyd inundated the state, flooding the open…

North Carolina officials are resolving a complaint of environmental racism by promising tougher oversight of industrial swine operations blamed for…