Targeted for Removal

An Award Winning N.C. Legislator Speaks Out About Corruption in Industry and Government

CCV Meets Cindy Watson

 

Editorial Note: Rep. Cindy Watson of Duplin County, served two terms in the North Carolina House of Representatives, from 1995 to 1999. In this interview with CCV she talks of her yeas in politics, how she moved at the center of the popular convulsion again hog waste pollution, led the fight for moratorium legislation to stop the expansion of mass factory hog farm operations in North Carolina, and the struggle she waged against political corruption. In 2000, she received the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award, the nation’s most prestigious award for elected public servants…

 

CCV: Can you tell us about yourself...where were you born, your background, your education?

Watson: I was born in Knightdale, N.C....a resident of Wake County. Born and raised there on a farm just outside of Raleigh. And my grandparents were farmers, big time with row crops and hogs and cows, tobacco. Then my mother and dad married and we had about a 150-acre farm over in another part of the Knightdale area. And I grew up on an actual farm when farming was true farming, and had a wonderful life there for about fifteen years. Then later my mom and dad separated and divorced and we moved to Raleigh. I attended Broughton High School and graduated in 1960. And then attended Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee for two years. Then I decided to marry my high school sweetheart, and we moved back to Raleigh.

CCV: When did you move to Duplin County?

Watson: We moved here in 1976.

CCV: And that was for the purpose of operating ...?

Watson: This grow-out operation here, after my husband’s dad decided not to process chickens. The Johnsons were going to process the chickens and we were going to grow them.

CCV: So your business, you all were involved in contract farming?

Watson: Yes, we contracted with the individual farmer, and then we processed for them and then the chickens went to market. And so, the same way with hogs today. This is what we’re doing here now. I guess because of North Carolina State University telling us that the lagoon system was the better method of for waste disposal of the hogs. This is the way we went. No one ever thought when we started that we would end up with maybe seven or eight major companies in the area investing in the hog integration process, however, we went from probably 500,000 hogs back in the late seventies or eighties to ten million in just a couple counties around here...and at that point we were having a lot of problems with the lagoons systems and with some breaches and with contamination in the ditches and on some people’s farms. The neighbors and citizens were having a fit because the private property rights were being invaded and the water quality in the wells were being damaged. They came to me, and I represented 55,000 people in House District 10 in parts of three counties, Duplin, Jones and Onslow.

CCV: But in the beginning wasn’t it thought that the lagoons and the spray nozzles—was a new technology that would enable this large scale farming to occur?

Watson: I think probably, N.C. State, and it’s done a lot of good, had some people back then who were thinking, you know, how do you do this and come up with a good solution. And if you don’t find something that’s profitable then why do the industry, or why go into the business? I think this was a system they thought would work, and the whole idea of digging the hole in the earth, and then using clay to line it, and then have the spray from thousands of animals go into this, then use enzymes in the water that would supposedly treat it, and then spray it out onto the fields... that that would be a good thing. And probably had that system been manned and we had not seen the growth and had the numbers, that lagoon system would have very well been a good system. But like anything, when you start growing, and you start expanding, and you have a given amount of space, and you end up with millions of animals. And you have a volume of waste from a hog—is ten times more than from a human. And the way I saw it, and the way the scientific reports to us indicated that it was not treated as we do our human waste... So, when I listened to all this I thought, we have to find a solution. And as a state representative, this ought to be the place where we all come together. The citizens, the lawmakers, and the corporations and the universities, and we will find a solution.

CCV: And did you see that happening?

Watson: No. The industry took an attitude that they didn’t have a problem. And wanted to pose that anybody that complained was anti-hog. And it became probably one of the toughest issues and hardest issues that anybody could have endured. And I was a freshman legislator, had been an ordinary citizen. Just a civic leader, that had put my name in the pot to run as Republican to be a conservative right in the heart of a Democratic area for a hundred years.

CCV: Did the press pick up on it? Didn’t the press help out by running the story?

Watson: This would be the time also, when I went to Raleigh, the Boss Hawg series, the News and Observer had been observing the hog industry for years, and had been following Senator Murphy and all the laws that had been changed to benefit the industry. We had been having problems with the Neuse River, and they did an article on the Neuse and it had become one of the most endangered rivers at that time. I would meet with Rick Dove who was the Neuse River Keeper, had the Neuse River Foundation. And he had been flying planes over and looking at the district and documenting all the polluters, a lot of them being from the hog industry and a lot of the industrial polluters. And he focused on the water and worked diligently until he got the Neuse rules out of the General Assembly. And I was a part of that, I was on the House Environmental committee and I was one of the co-chairs of the House committee while there.

CCV: When did all this get started? Was this in the late eighties, early nineties?

Watson: Probably the environmental problem began as soon as the lagoons were put in. And I heard some horror stories that some of the lagoons that were put in were never really lined, by individuals that had worked for the companies. Some of them that had been in operation had busted. The sand had caved away and that had gone under, millions of gallons of water near the town, the town of Magnolia had water problems for a long while. This was probably back in the mid to late eighties. They were told not to build the lagoon where they did, and they did it anyhow. And the individual that was with that company left and was later with another one. And he would later meet with me, after the largest spill ever over in Onslow County happened and it was in my district. It was owned by a company over in New York, but one of theirs had a breech in it, it was just millions of gallons of water into the New River, which closed them down for months.

CCV: How did a New York owner get down here? I mean, aren’t we talking about farmers?

Watson: This is an investment. And we would find out in a community up near Faison, that in doing this, there was an attitude that was hard for me to believe, but I saw it happening... And it was kind of a strong-arm attitude. That we’re gonna come in here. So, I would learn, I would go up to visit one lady up on Friendship Road in the Faison area. And they had cows in the backyard. They had been there three generations, and all of a sudden there were four corporate hog houses right next to them, and spray was all out that day, and flies were everywhere. And they were just having a hard time, and I said, well, where is the owner? And the owner lived at Figure Eight Island.

CCV: So, are we talking about absentee farming with the big corp for investment purposes?

Watson: Yes. And I think that’s where a lot of the problems with the lagoon system would be. I would see as I would go out that some of people that invested in this, they had another job that they worked in Jacksonville or somewhere else, and they would turn on that nozzle in the morning and they’d go to work. And then somewhere something would go wrong during the day. You know, it would inundate the ditches and the road and everything else, until the Division of Environmental Water Quality would come up, and they would be fined. And we would find that most of the fines that they were giving these corporations, and there were a lot of corporate farmers as well as individual farmers. You would find that there were a lot of different things going on, but that the fines were never paid. They were waived. But if another local businessman, say at the local Scotchman, would have a spill, they would shut him down...

CCV: Now these absentee owners, would not have much involvement in the operation of the farm?

Watson: No, not at all. They would hire, sometimes the Hispanic laborer who doesn’t even speak English.

CCV: So, if there’s a pollution problem on the farm, they might say—Well, I didn’t even know that this was happening?

Watson: Yes, had no idea. No, they’re removed from it. It’s already put in place, millions of dollars worth of investments.

CCV: And when you go to the big corporation whose got the management contracts on all these farms, and you say, hey we’ve got a problem with pollution, are they telling you, well you’ve got to deal with these operators?

Watson: That’s right. Nobody wanted to accept the responsibility. And if you go back and look at the articles in the press, you find out that nobody ever said it was their fault. It was always someone else, or maybe somebody sabotaged the lagoon. It wasn’t the fact that the lagoon itself was just failing. And it probably hadn’t been built right, or it was built in the wrong place. A lot of them had pipes in them that would go right to the ditches if they fill up. And you know weather is a factor here in our region. So many times it rains and rains and rains, and the more it would rain, you know these guys cannot spray. If they do spray in the rain they should not, it should be dry, but they were supposed to have green pastures here, they were supposed to have cows on it, and then you’re supposed to see a cycle that the waste never leaves here. The grain comes in here, millions and millions of cars of grain weekly to the feed mill. You get the feed. You feed it to your hogs. They defecate, they spray it on the land. You plant your things, the cows eat it, you kill the meat. That’s the cycle.

CCV: I’m getting an ideal picture here. The picture that’s painted by the industry press. There’s a new technology. We’re gonna have these big farms. We’re gonna produce hog waste, yes. But they’re gonna do these lagoons, and they’re gonna convert the waste to spray and they’re gonna spray the fields and then they’re gonna grow crops that the cows are gonna eat, and then we’re gonna produce beef. That’s kind of an idea picture. Did people really believe that?

Watson: I think they did, and I think the industry did believe it. And I think as I talked to the owners of that industry they felt that it is the right way to go. And they still defend that position.

CCV: They still do?

Watson: Yes. They still do. And N.C. State has not said that it wasn’t the best system, they still defend whatever the industry believes it to be. However, if you get the records of all the state agencies, and if you go and talk to the citizens throughout the district that have had damage in their ponds, have had damage to their property. And you will see the pipes that are piping out of these lagoons. I remember we had a pond that was damaged because it had rained for a week or two weeks, and the water came underneath a culvert and busted the dam on their pond, and then the Division of Water Quality walked up one day and said you need to get your cows out of the way, that the pond was contaminated, and they said, “Well what are you talking about?” And the guy across the road had

 

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Carolina Civic Voice

                             Winter 2006-07  Vol.  6, No 4

“Profiles in Courage”—bearing an inscription and an engraved image of President John F. Kennedy.