![]() Their population in North Carolina increased more than threefold in just one decade, from 2.8 million in 1990 to 9.3 million in 2000 – where it’s stayed, more or less, ever since. To understand Rene Miller’s predicament, you have to start with the pigs. Rene Miller is currently involved in a lawsuit against the hog farm which sprays hog waste on to a field across the street from her home. The News & Observer earned a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on it in 1995.īut the stench – and its consequences, both for the lower-income, largely African American neighbors of hog farms and the state’s environment – lingers. The New York Times and the Washington Post covered it. The issue has been well examined in the media, too. A growing body of research has documented the industry’s health and environmental risks. For years, their waste and its stink have been the subject of litigation, investigations, legislation and regulation. ![]() It’s the smell of hog country, of millions of pigs and even more tons of their feces. It’s ubiquitous across parts of eastern North Carolina. Nobody else will ever live on this land.” ![]() “How long have we lived here? Always,” she says, gazing at her grandmother’s headstone. Purple and yellow wildflowers nip at its edges nearby, a Steelers flag rustles in the wind. When she gets to the cemetery, she stops in front of her nephew’s grave, recalling his life and his death to cancer. It’s a stone’s throw from her one-story, white-walled house, part of a tract of land her great-grandmother inherited as part of a post-slavery land grant. She points ahead to her family cemetery, which sits just off Veachs Mill Road in Warsaw, an hour’s drive east from Raleigh. Still, Miller makes this trip often, to honor her family and pay her respects.
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