HOG-TIED

由专筑网胡婧宜，李韧编译

摘自2019年5月出版的《景观建筑》杂志。在休斯敦，污染源是石化工厂，在北卡罗来纳州，污染源是养猪场。最近的洪水让这两个地方的污染蔓延出来，危及当地的水资源和公共卫生安全。 2018年9月，佛罗伦萨飓风在北卡罗来纳州登陆，那里有700万加仑的生猪垃圾灌满了该地区无处不在的露天泻湖，很快垃圾就进入了邻居的院子和附近的小溪。

工业规模的养猪场的粪便污泥是此类项目的副产品，也是严重的污染源。废物会携带病毒、寄生虫，硝酸盐和沙门氏菌等细菌。即使在最好的情况下，这些露天泻湖的气味也非常强烈，泻湖在全州约有3,300个，但集中在北卡罗来纳州东部非洲裔美国大部分县。2018年8月陪审团判给6个家庭4.735亿美元，因为他们不得不住在Pender县的一个养猪场附近。然而，严重的暴雨使这些泻湖变得更加危险，威胁着整个区域供水和远处生态系统的水系。

佛罗伦萨飓风只是最近的一个例子，说明气候变暖导致的恶劣天气事件与工业污染的相互作用，对公共健康和安全造成新威胁。如果景观设计师要应对气候变化对环境和人类健康的影响，就必须对加强对农业废弃物的学习。

“设计师已经开始考虑这个问题”，北卡罗莱纳州立大学罗利分校景观设计副教授、ASLA成员Kofi Boone说。作为由北卡罗莱纳州景观系组织的2018年设计周的一部分，一个跨学科团队调查了生猪粪便问题，并建议农民使用黑蝇幼虫作为饲料，从而减少生物垃圾的总量。研究者借鉴了一些在使用该策略的国家，例如中国和印度尼西亚，蝇幼虫在大多数闭环系统中喂养给鸡或其他牲畜。

FROM THE MAY 2019 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE.
In Houston, it was the petrochemical plants. In North Carolina, it was the hog farms. In both places, churning floodwaters caused by recent storms were turned into a toxic stew that endangered local water resources and public health. In September 2018, Hurricane Florence made landfall in North Carolina, where seven million gallons of hog waste overtopped the region’s ubiquitous open-air lagoons and quickly made its way into neighbors’ yards and nearby streams.
As by-products go, the fecal sludge of an industrial-scale hog farm is far from benign. The waste can carry viruses, parasites, nitrates, and bacteria such as salmonella. Even in the best circumstances, the odors from these open-air lagoons, which number some 3,300 across the state but are concentrated in the heavily African American counties of eastern North Carolina, are noxious enough that in August 2018 a jury awarded six families $473.5 million for having to live near a hog farm in Pender County. Combined with a severe storm, however, these lagoons become all the more dangerous, threatening the water supply of entire communities and far-flung ecosystems.
Hurricane Florence was just the most recent example of how severe weather events, strengthened by a warming climate, can interact with industrialized landscapes to create new threats to public health and safety. If landscape architects are to grapple with the environmental and human health impacts of climate change, they will have to educate themselves about agricultural waste.
Designers are beginning to consider the issue, says Kofi Boone, ASLA, an associate professor of landscape architecture at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. As a part of NC State’s 2018 Design Week, organized by the school’s Department of Landscape Architecture, one interdisciplinary team investigated the hog waste problem and proposed that farmers use black soldier fly larvae to consume and thereby reduce the overall mass of biowaste. (In countries where the strategy is used, such as China and Indonesia, the fly larvae are fed to chickens or other livestock in a mostly closed-loop system.)


一项将农业研究和创新废物管理战略与Goldsboro镇的更宏观的绿道系统联系起来的设计方案，这是作为北卡罗来纳州立大学2018设计周的一部分而创建的／A proposal created as a part of Design Week 2018 at NC State tied agricultural research and innovative waste management strategies into a larger greenway system for the town of Goldsboro. Image courtesy Andrew Harrell, Student ASLA; Adeline Lerner, Associate ASLA; Sarah Johnson, Student ASLA; James Popin; Simon Gregg; Celen Pasalar.

北卡罗来纳州提供美国12％的生猪肉，他们面临的挑战是像Smithfield这样的生产商并没有动力去改善污染。露天泻湖成本较低，且目前是合法的。虽然州立法机构于2007年禁止设立新泻湖，但现有的泻湖不受法律约束。“这意味着设计师需要有一定的创造力。”景观设计和Prato工作室的主要负责人、ASLA的Connie Migliazzo说道。他在俄勒冈州波特兰市开展业务，以及研究猪粪便问题的少数设计师，“我们有责任找出有助于此类情况的设计策略，以及设计资金流。”

2012年，作为哈佛大学设计研究生院的一名学生，Migliazzo通过Penny White基金获得了一项资助，用于研究荷兰的养猪场，尽管土地面积仅为13,086平方英里，却是世上的10大猪肉生产商之一。 Migliazzo已经对与北卡罗来纳州工业规模养猪设施相关的健康问题进行了研究，这些设施也被称为集中动物饲养操作或CAFO，她还了解到它们对环境产生了深远的影响，农民经常将液化废物喷洒到田地上，这些田地在北卡罗来纳州东部的沙质土壤中可以渗入地下水或流入溪流，并导致了鱼类的死亡和藻类爆发。

Migliazzo花了一个月的时间游览荷兰乡村，与养猪农民会面并研究他们的废物管理系统。一些如使用板条地板去分离谷仓的废物等策略，与美国使用的方法类似，但Migliazzo注意到一个明显的区别，任何地方都没有露天泻湖。相反，许多荷兰农民使用大型圆形地上空间，上面覆盖着白色圆锥形织物。 Migliazzo被告知，露天泻湖在荷兰是非法的。废物的储存和处理方式受到严格管制，农民倾向于遵守。

The challenge in North Carolina, which produces 12 percent of America’s pork, is that producers such as Smithfield have little incentive to buck the status quo; open-air lagoons are cheaper than other options and, at the moment at least, legal to operate. (Although new lagoons were banned by the state legislature in 2007, existing lagoons were exempted from the law.) This means designers will need to get extra creative, says Connie Migliazzo, ASLA, the principal and owner of Prato, a landscape architecture and design practice in Portland, Oregon, and one of few designers who has researched the issue of hog waste. “It’s up to us to figure out the design strategies that will help in situations like this, but also how to create funding streams.”
In 2012, while a student at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Migliazzo received a grant through the Penny White Project Fund to research hog farms in the Netherlands, which, despite a land area of just 13,086 square miles, is one of the top 10 pork producers in the world. Migliazzo had read about the health concerns associated with North Carolina’s industrial-scale hog facilities, which are also known as concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs. She also understood that they had far-reaching consequences for the environment: Farmers often spray liquefied waste onto fields, which in the sandy soils of eastern North Carolina can seep into groundwater or flow into streams and contribute to fish-killing algal blooms.
Migliazzo spent a month touring the Dutch countryside, meeting with hog farmers and studying their waste management systems. Some methods, like the use of slatted floors to remove waste from the farrowing, or birthing, barn, were similar to those used in the United States. But Migliazzo noted one glaring absence: There were no open-air lagoons anywhere. Instead, many Dutch farmers employed large, round, aboveground tanks covered with white, conical, fabric tops. Open-air lagoons were illegal in the Netherlands, Migliazzo was told. How waste was stored and disposed of was highly regulated, and farmers tended to comply.


荷兰的另一个主要的猪肉生产商——大多数泻湖都被覆盖／In the Netherlands, another major pork producer, the majority of lagoons are covered. Photo by Connie Migliazzo, ASLA.

“对我而言，这项研究最大的结果是，我们只是在文化上有所不同。”Migliazzo说。她承认，可能有农民违反规则，或者寻求以牺牲邻居或荷兰的自然资源为代价来实现利润最大化。她还指出，荷兰的养殖规模使监管官员的密切监督更加可行。她说，和她交流的荷兰农民似乎也明白，如果他们污染了河道，每个人都得不到好处。“对我来说，这真的很简单，但真的很令人兴奋。”

多年来，人们一直在努力减轻生活垃圾给北卡罗来纳州带来的危险。最重要的一次举措发生在20世纪90年代末，以应对飓风弗洛伊德。然后，就像佛罗伦萨一样，过度的泻湖引发了公众的强烈抗议。当时该州最大的猪肉生产商Smithfield食品公司屈服于州立法机构的压力，并同意与北卡罗来纳州立大学的研究人员合作制定替代管理战略。然而，该协议充满了漏洞。经过近20年的发展，该公司的许多呈粉色的、污泥填充的泻湖仍在使用中。

全球化对此情况并没有帮助。 2013年，Smithfield被中国猪肉公司WH集团收购。Boone说，这造成了一种情况，即拥有养猪场的公司对当地环境的投资可能更少。正如滚石乐队2018年3月文章的标题所说：“为什么中国像其他发展中国家一样对待北卡罗来纳？”

北卡罗来纳州东部的景观也受其种族历史的影响。根据Rachel Carson委员会的研究，该州百分之九十五的大型养猪场位于低收入的社区。许多县都是曾经以棉花种植为主，后来又以烟草为主。当烟草在20世纪80年代和90年代变得不适宜时，垃圾填埋场和监狱经营者涌入，猪肉生产商也是如此。1987年至1997年间，北卡罗来纳州的生猪数量几乎翻了两番，从250万增加到960万。 当地居民的边缘化限制了他们抵抗养猪场和垃圾填埋场进入社区的能力。1987年，在北卡罗来纳州Shocca的饮用水中发现有毒化学物质之后，基督联合教会种族正义委员会在美国发布了具有里程碑意义的毒性废物和种族报告，这是首次将种族与有毒废物对环境的影响联系起来的研究之一。 “比收入更重要，比教育更重要，比来自城市还是农村更重要，决定你是否会接近有毒废物的头号因素是种族。”Boone说。

“For me, the biggest and most depressing result of this research was that we’re just culturally different,” Migliazzo says. She acknowledges that there likely are farmers who skirt the rules, or who seek to maximize profit at the expense of their neighbors or the Netherlands’ natural resources. She also notes that the size of the Netherlands makes close monitoring by regulatory officials more feasible. Still, she says, the Dutch farmers whom she spoke to seemed to understand that if they pollute their waterways, everyone loses. “And that, to me, was just so simple but really mind-blowing.”
There have been efforts over the years to mitigate the dangers that hog waste poses to North Carolina. The biggest push came in the late 1990s, in response to Hurricane Floyd. Then, as with Florence (and with Matthew before it), overtopped lagoons spurred a public outcry. Smithfield Foods, then the state’s largest pork producer, bowed to pressure from the state legislature and agreed to work with NC State researchers to develop alternative management strategies. The agreement, however, was full of loopholes and caveats. After nearly 20 years, many of the company’s bright pink, sludge-filled lagoons remain in use.
Globalization hasn’t helped matters. In 2013, Smithfield was purchased by WH Group, a Chinese pork company. Boone says this creates a situation in which the corporation that owns the hog farms has potentially less investment in the local environment. As the headline of a March 2018 article in Rolling Stone put it, “Why Is China Treating North Carolina Like the Developing World?”
The landscape of eastern North Carolina is also shaped by its racial history. Ninety-five percent of the state’s large-scale hog farms are located in low-income communities of color, according to research by the Rachel Carson Council. Many of the counties with high concentrations of CAFOs are the same ones once dominated by cotton plantations and, later, tobacco. When tobacco became untenable in the 1980s and 1990s, landfill and prison operators rushed in, sensing opportunity. So did pork producers. Between 1987 and 1997, the number of hogs in North Carolina nearly quadrupled, rising to 9.6 million from 2.5 million.
The marginalization of local residents limited their ability to resist hog farms and landfills coming to their communities. In 1987, after toxic chemicals were found in the drinking water of Shocca, North Carolina, the United Church of Christ’s Commission on Racial Justice published the landmark report Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States, one of the first studies to correlate race with exposure to environmental degradation from toxic waste. “Stronger than income, stronger than education, stronger than whether you’re urban or rural, the number one predictor of your proximity to toxic waste at that time was race,” Boone says.


猪废物泻湖中含有多种可以渗透当地水源的毒素／Hog waste lagoons hold multiple toxins that can infiltrate local water supplies. Image courtesy Waterkeeper Alliance.

三十年后，有色人种继续承受工业景观有毒副产品的冲击。最近的一项研究将北卡罗来纳州东北部婴儿死亡率、肾脏疾病和肺结核的高于平均水平与其CAFO浓度联系起来。为了应对最近的洪水，联邦政府和北卡罗来纳州已经启动了一系列自愿收购项目，包括帮助位于百年一遇洪涝区的居民和生猪农民。Boone说，尽管存在危险，许多家庭仍不愿意离开。人们知道他们处于易受灾区，但因为他们对这个地方生活了几代人，他们对于搬离此地犹豫不决。”

这与沿海区域面临的紧张局势相同，Boone看到了将适应战略应用于农业景观的潜力，而不仅仅是调整该国的海岸线。景观行业在过去30年中对建筑环境的标志性贡献一直是倡导使用弹性生物系统来管理传统上由工程处理的东西，例如海堤和混凝土运河，这些工程措施并没有解决根本问题，而是将问题推给了更遥远的区域。Boone认为对养猪场可以采取相近的策略。

在实际操作上，这种干预可能看起来像农场和溪流之间的植被缓冲，在污染的废水进入该地区的水道之前吸收和过滤污染的废水。Boone认为，更直接的是，景观设计师可以通过帮助实现问题的可视化，在降低北卡罗来纳州农村社区所面临的风险方面也会发挥重要作用。

Migliazzo说她认为要解决的第一个问题是农业领域内存在的知识差距。“因为人们对农业了解不多，他们不了解设计如何有用。” Migliazzo对景观设计师在开发或帮助农民达到自愿认证标准中所起的作用感兴趣。根据美国农业部的指导方针，有机农场需要“维持或改善作业的自然资源，包括土壤和水质。”在可接受的行动清单上，可以通过森林和湿地恢复或种植植被覆盖物以维持水质。

Thirty years later, people of color continue to bear the brunt of the industrial landscape’s toxic by-products. A recent study linked southeast North Carolina’s higher-than-average rates of infant mortality, kidney disease, and tuberculosis to its concentration of CAFOs. In response to the recent flooding, the federal government and the state of North Carolina have initiated a series of voluntary buyouts, both for residents and hog farmers located in the 100-year floodplain. And yet despite the dangers, many families are reluctant to leave, Boone says. “People know they’re in harm’s way, people know the history, but because they have generations and generations of attachment to that particular place, they are hesitant to make that radical of a move.”
It’s the same fundamental tension that faces coastal communities, and Boone sees potential for applying adaptation strategies to the agricultural landscape, not just the country’s coastlines. In many ways, landscape architecture’s signature contribution to the built environment over the past 30 years has been to advocate the use of living systems to manage what traditionally has been handled by hard engineering, such as seawalls and concrete canals, which didn’t so much solve the issue at hand as shunt it onto far-flung communities. Boone says he thinks there are similar opportunities with hog farms.
On a practical level, such interventions might look like vegetated buffers between farms and streams, to absorb and filter the polluted wastewater before it enters the region’s waterways. More immediately, he says, landscape architects can play a pivotal role in reducing the risks faced by North Carolina’s rural communities by helping visualize the problem.
Migliazzo says she thinks the first problem to address is the knowledge gap that exists within the profession when it comes to agriculture. “Because people don’t understand a lot about agriculture, they don’t understand how design can be helpful,” she says. Migliazzo is interested in the role landscape architects can play in developing or helping farmers meet the standards included in voluntary certifications such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Program. Under the USDA’s guidelines, an organic farm is required to “maintain or improve the natural resources of the operation, including soil and water quality.” On the list of acceptable actions are things like forest and wetland restoration or the planting of vegetative covers to maintain water quality.


美国工厂农场的地图显示了北卡罗来纳州的相对运营密度／A map of U.S. factory farms shows the relative density of operations in North Carolina. Image courtesy Connie Migliazzo, ASLA/Food & Water Watch.

“我认为我们可以采取的方式就是试图与那些试图遵守这些法规的农场取得联系，并帮助他们根据自己的土地特性弄清楚如何遵守这些法规。”Migliazzo说，她正与波特兰州立大学的研究人员合作，设计出可以通过名为“LIVE”的程序帮助葡萄酒厂获得认证的工具。然而，参与此类认证计划的农民数量正在减少，特别是在猪肉行业。根据最新的美国农业普查数据，2016年有14,707头生猪获得有机认证，占该国总生猪种群7460万的0.02％。

与此同时，部分解决方案可能来自一个不太可能的源头，即能源。10月，Smithfield宣布计划覆盖其大部分泻湖以捕获甲烷气体用作生物燃料。这项工作的第一阶段包括大约100个农场。用塑料薄膜密封泻湖可以显着降低飓风时溢流的风险，但一些专家表示，这将取决于系统的设计，以及是否仍然允许农民将多余的废物喷洒到他们的领域中。

正如Migliazzo发现的那样，没有快速的解决方案可以解决美国的生猪浪费问题。作为环境主义问题，它就像它们出现的原因一样复杂。可以肯定的是，如果不采取任何措施，如生猪养殖场继续单单依赖北卡罗来纳州的土地和水域来处理他们的废物，下一场风暴将使脆弱的美国人再次面临风险。

“I think one of the ways that we could go about [helping] is trying to get in touch with farms that are trying to comply with these regulations and help them strategically figure out how to comply based on their specific land,” says Migliazzo, who is working with researchers at Portland State University to devise tools that can help wineries achieve certification through a program called LIVE. The number of farmers participating in such certification programs is vanishingly small, however, especially within the pork industry. According to the most recent U.S. Agricultural Census data, 14,707 hogs were certified organic in 2016, or 0.02 percent of the country’s total hog population of 74.6 million.
In the meantime, a partial solution may have arrived from an unlikely sector: energy. In October, Smithfield announced plans to cover a large percentage of its lagoons to capture methane gas for use as biofuel. The effort’s first phase comprises roughly 100 farms. Sealing the lagoons with a plastic membrane could significantly reduce the risk of overtopping in the event of a hurricane, but some experts say it will depend on the design of the system, and on whether or not farmers are still allowed to spray excess waste onto their fields.
As Migliazzo discovered, there is no quick solution that will solve the problem of hog waste in the United States. As an environmental justice issue, it is as complex as they come. What is certain is that if nothing is done—if hog farms continue to rely on the lands and waters of North Carolina to sop up their waste—the next storm will put vulnerable Americans at risk all over again.


2018年佛罗伦萨飓风期间，北卡罗来纳州的数十个泻湖被淹没或以其他方式受到损害／Dozens of North Carolina’s lagoons were overtopped or otherwise compromised during Hurricane Florence in 2018. Photo courtesy Waterkeeper Alliance.

Timothy A. Schuler撰写多篇关于设计、生态学和自然环境的文章。他现居住在檀香山。

Timothy A. Schuler writes about design, ecology, and the natural environment. He lives in Honolulu.


原作者：Timothy A. Schuler
地点：北卡罗莱纳
项目类别：受污染废弃地的再利用