Every flood is a filthy stew of garbage, shit, and chemicals, and that's mainly because we live in garbage, shit, and chemicals. But the post-Hurricane Florence floods in North and South Carolina have an extra soupcon of nastiness because of just how much those states decided to fuck their environment. Right now, pig shit and poison are leaking into flood waters, which will go into the rivers, lakes, and water supply, and there is a good chance that, as the rivers continue to rise, a great deal more pig shit and poison will wash into the food chain.
You've no doubt heard by now about the pig shit lagoons, which sounds like some punishment in Hell but is actually a real thing where the industrial pig farms collect the literal millions upon millions of gallons of manure into open-air ponds. Then, because life is just one big joke, a bacteria is tossed into the shit slurry that turns it as bright pink as a princess's ball gown.
Already, over 20 of the shit lakes have had flood waters cause them to overflow, and at least one has had a breach. Now, there are about 3000 of these manure lagoons in North Carolina alone, according to the NC Pork Council (which is not nearly as fun an organization as it sounds). That's for 2100 pig farms. Another 90 or so have the potential to overflow. So, yeah, 110 out of 3000 is not bad except for the fact that it's 110 giant pools of pig shit and piss.
And if that wasn't delicious enough, a Duke Energy landfill in North Carolina has been breached, causing coal ash, which is totally not clean, to be spilled. This is on top of another spill at a coal-fired electric plant, with the chance very high that a retired plant's coal ash pit will be overtopped by flood waters. The leakage of coal ash is also a fear in South Carolina. It means that, on top of pig shit, mercury, arsenic, and other nasty stuff will get into the water. Already, over 180 dump truckloads worth of coal ash have leaked out. Again, it doesn't seem like much, except that it's fucking arsenic and mercury. (Update: A few minutes after posting this, AP reported that a dam was breached at that retired plant, and coal ash is likely flowing into the Cape Fear River.)
When he visited the region this week, President Donald Trump, who is just a grown-up, racist, and rapey Garbage Pail Kid, declared, "Washington is with you. Trump is with you. We are all with you 100 percent. And we’ll get through it. And I think the most exciting part is going to be that rebuild, because you’re going to have a lot of rebuilding." Putting aside his fuckin' weirdo third-person quirk and fucked-up delight at rebuilding, it's utterly untrue that Washington is with the Carolinas 100 percent.
Because, see, the Trump EPA won't do a thing about the pig shit lagoons or the coal ash heaps. It won't do a thing about climate change (just like North Carolina refused to), which is what has exacerbated the flooding, especially along the coast. The federal government will help rebuild, sure, but it's just providing more places to be wrecked by the next toxic floods, which will be more frequent, more severe, and more toxic. But, hey, as Trump said to a victim in North Carolina, "Have a good time."
By the way, just to make this all more disgusting, right now tankers are traversing North Carolina with the pig shit that was sucked out of lagoons that were in danger of spilling over. So you've got shit trucks going from shit lagoon to shit lagoon, which seems about an accurate description of where we find ourselves now as a nation.
