Source: John Wolfe, ENCORE, 3/10/20


It is a CAVU—Ceiling and Visibility Unlimited—day in late February. Bright, clear and cloudless, the sky a polished glass bell—ideal conditions to defy gravity. I am watching US 74-76 peel past on the way to the Curtis L. Brown Jr. Airport in Elizabethtown. Driving the car is Patrick Connell, water quality field specialist at Cape Fear River Watch. Soon enough we will fly low over southeastern North Carolina to peer down at factory farms; the Cape Fear River basin has the highest concentration of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) on the planet.

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