Source: COASTAL REVIEW, 5/19/20


The New Hanover Board of Education was denied a rehearing on a lawsuit disputing the state attorney general’s authority to distribute environmental enhancement grants funded through an agreement with Smithfield Foods. The plaintiffs were petitioning the April 3 decision by the state Supreme Court that keeps the 2000 arrangement between then- Attorney General Mike Easley and the meat-processing company based in Smithfield, Virginia. Easley entered into the agreement “following a five-year period during which ruptured or flooded hog waste lagoons spilled millions of gallons of waste into North Carolina’s waterways,” the court document states. The agreement came a year after Hurricane Floyd, which flooded eastern North Carolina.

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