The two-year moratorium on all new construction and expansion of hog farms is effective in North Carolina retroactively to March 1997. However the worst fears of the North Carolina Pork Council (NCPC) didn’t come true.
– Existing hog farms are not affected by the Clean Water Responsibility and Environmentally Sound Policy Act.
– Permits issued for construction or expansion at the time of the bill’s signing will be effective and projects who were in the process of building prior to March 1st can proceed with the construction.
-Counties are enable to zone hog farms above 600 000 lb. steady state liveweight (average inventory) but they can completely zone hog operations out of their counties, thus protecting existing farms (can rebuild after natural catastrophe and can’t be amortized).
– A 2500 ft setback from outdoor recreational facilities was approved.
– Construction or expansion construction projects can be excluded of the moratorium if they include innovative animal waste management system and don’t use an anaerobic lagoon.
The municipalities will also have to meet the nitrogen and phosphorus limits in drinking water.
This bill mandates watershed management studies and plans that have to be implemented by everybody around the table, cities and agriculture. A companion bill of $1 billion in funding is called.

Those drastic measures must be coupled with realistic measures for the existing farmers (education, easily implementing techniques) in order to find solutions to the actual problems. Otherwise the moratorium won’t give the expected results in only stopping the expansion.