Billy Ball’s blog, “Cardinal & Pine,” tells the horrifying story of the poisoning of people in Sampson County, North Carolina, and the malign neglect of the state’s officials. Most of those poisoned by the foul environment are Black and poor.

He writes:

NORTH CAROLINA — A dead vulture hangs by its feet, tied to a street sign on Chesters Road in Sampson County.

It’s there because locals believe the decomposing scavenger will deter other vultures. Sometimes, especially in the summer, the carrion birds descend like a plague on the Snow Hill area of Sampson County, a predominantly Black community that’s within retching distance of the largest landfill in NC. When it’s hot and humid in the summer, the vultures are so thick that the trees look black.

The birds are the least of locals’ worries.

The 85-acre landfill smells like hell. It gets in your lungs and steals your breath. On a bright, clear day, it can give you a headache and make you nauseous. When it’s hot, humid, or rainy, the smell is overwhelming.

Worse still, the landfill—which ranks second in the nation for emissions of the greenhouse gas methane—is contaminated with PFAS. PFAS are synthetic compounds used in nonstick pans, firefighter foam, cosmetics, and other products. It’s linked to cancers, birth abnormalities, high cholesterol and other ailments, but until this year, the US Environmental Protection Agency was silent on regulating it.

In March, EPA Administrator Michael Regan, who’s from NC, called it “one of the most pressing environmental and public health concerns in the modern world.”

The federal regulations, which wouldn’t go into effect until 2026, are late but not unwelcome. Testing in almost 50 water systems in NC has reportedly found high levels of PFAS over the last five years. That’s the case in about 45% of the nation’s drinking water, according to federal regulators. It attacks your thyroid, your liver, and your kidneys. And it’s an open question what treatment systems are best for filtering out this “forever chemical,” so named because it doesn’t break down in the human body or the environment.

PFAS pollution is just one of the crises here. Sampson County—population 58,000— is beset by environmental nightmares, locals say. There’s the landfill, the poultry and pork farms (including the massive Chinese-owned Smithfield Foods plant), and multiple industrial operations that locals say are noisy, ugly, and making them sick.

There are a few dozen hogs per person. To dispose of the waste, farms have been spraying it onto fields. Neighbors say it’s giving them respiratory problems. There’s science behind it, including studies from 2018 and 2022 that found people living close to animal farming operations are more likely to get sick, sometimes very sick.

A small UNC-Chapel Hill study published in 2020also found PFAS in surface water around the landfill.

The well water that thousands of people here depend on—particularly in the poorer, rural areas—is making them sick too, locals say. But unlike other areas of the county, which have gradually been connected to the county water system, most of the low-income folks have been left to protect themselves against rust, iron, arsenic, and other harmful things that are turning up in their well water.

Michigan has Flint. North Carolina has a lot of Flints, and the biggest might be Sampson County.

‘You can’t win for losing’

“We have a story to tell in Sampson County and nobody’s paying any attention to us,” says Sherri White-Williamson.

White-Williamson is a native of the area, the daughter of two high school teachers—one a World War II veteran who taught her to get involved in her community. She worked for the EPA and other federal offices before returning to Sampson County. Now, she leads a local nonprofit called Environmental Justice Community Action Network (EJCAN). She has her work cut out for her.

EJCAN is helping state officials find locals in the Snow Hill area—not to be confused with the incorporated town of the same name in nearby Greene County—who could benefit from a $1 million grant from President Biden’s administration. The grant’s meant to test the well water and, possibly, help find a solution. If anything, it’s just a start.

Testing in this broad, eastern NC county has been slow. State officials are looking for volunteers. They’ve gone door-to-door. But many don’t trust the scientists and regulators showing up. They also don’t trust what comes out of their taps. If they have the money, which many of them don’t, they rely on bottled water.

The NC Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and researchers have confirmed PFAS contamination in the area, although state regulators have not made a final determination on the source. Most are pointing at the privately-operated landfill, which is known to have PFAS in it. For now, the state’s administering bottled water to homeowners with polluted water, although PFAS contaminants aren’t just harmful in drinking water. They can also travel through the air.

Then there are the pigs. Smithfield Foods and other hog farms make up a powerful economic force around here. Pork accounts for more than 6,100 jobsin Sampson County and Smithfield is the largest single employer in the county.

The people who live next to hog farms might be miserable, but the political pull of pork is immense. When locals began winning huge multi-million dollar jury awards from hog farmers working for Chinese-owned Smithfield, Republican state legislators intervened on the farmers’ behalf, rewriting statutes to all but ban such lawsuits.

“You can’t win for losing,” White-Williamson says when talking about the state legislature.

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