One of the new videos from the Waterkeeper Alliance tells a heartbreaking story… or, at least, the story would be heartbreaking if it was true. When the Waterkeepers climb up on their soapboxes, they like to depict hog farmers as villains who don’t care about “racial injustice.” To prove their point, they like to tell the story of Elsie Herring, an African-American woman in Sampson County who lived near a hog farm.
Back in 1998, Mrs. Herring had a legitimate complaint: The hog farmer next door was spraying too close to her home.Here’s what happened: Mrs. Herring took her grievance to the farmer, the company investigated, and agreed. Mrs. Herring was right. The farmer then moved his irrigation equipment further away from Mrs. Herring’s house, stopped spraying close to her home, and the company planted a grove of trees between her home and the farmer’s field as an additional buffer. Eighteen years later, that story took an odd turn. The Waterkeepers, along with one of their allies, posted a “report” on the Internet saying a farmer was spraying waste eight feet from Elsie Herring’s kitchen window… not 18 years ago. But now. Today. The Waterkeepers took a mistake that had happened almost two decades ago – and told people it is happening now. Here’s a photograph of Mrs. Herring’s home today.
Elsie Herring’s House
The trees planted years ago have now grown into a forest so thick you can’t see the farmer’s field from her house. This is a photograph of the farmer’s field on the far side of the trees.
Spray field next to Herring’s house.
And this aerial photo shows that the farmer’s irrigation doesn’t come any closer to the house than nine hundred feet* – not eight feet like the Waterkeepers claimed.
Map
And here’s a video that tells the entire story.
Hog farmers aren’t perfect. But they are honest, hard-working people. And when they make a mistake they fix it. Just like that farmer did 18 years ago.The Waterkeeper Alliance is just playing politics. The hard part is, when the Waterkeepers play politics, a lot of hard-working farmers get hurt.
*Update: this distance has been changed from 200 to 900 feet to represent the most current situation. Regardless, the claim of 8 feet is false.