The Vestal Hog Farm in North Carolina had a serious problem. With over 10,000 hogs, the farm not only created a serious odor issue for the community, it found itself unable to comply with environmental regulations for nitrogen discharge. The problems were so serious that the farm was not expected to receive a permit renewal, and faced the prospect that it might be shutdown permanently.
Vestal Farm's situation is not unusual. It simply added livestock faster than it could treat the waste. In this case, over 16 acres of lagoons were being used for anaerobic storage of hog waste. The liquid was also being pumped back to the farm and used for flushing of the hog houses. The problems with the existing design were a substantial odor problem and levels of nitrogen so high that it required approximately 180 acres of cropland for liquid disposal.
In order to get a permit to continue operations, Vestal Farms needed to:
- reduce the nitrogen load
- eliminate noxious odors
- reduce the dependency on cropland discharge
Both of Water Energy's primary product lines — Bacteria products and Ozone water treatment systems — were deployed to solve the problem.
First, Water Energy bacteria products treated the incoming wastewater aerobically, which reduced the noxious odors. The resulting effluent was treated with a polymer to drop solids, creating a clarified solution which was further treated to reduce nitrogen.
Second, Water Energy ozone technology was used to purify and polish the water so that it could supply the hog houses with drinking and misting water.
This approach solved Vestal Farms' problems — it was able get a new operations permit, and the neighbors have stopped complaining about noxious odors. The 16 acres of lagoons were filled in and replaced with a compact, one-half acre footprint water treatment system, which now produces 40,000 gallons of water daily for drinking and misting. A separate 500,000 gallon storage basin and deluge water supply eliminates the need to use 180 acres of cropland for liquid disposal.
But most surprising of all was that cleaning up their operations also made the farm more productive, because the the mortality rate for the hogs has dropped a full fifty percent — from around 6% to approximately 3%.
