An environmental crisis is escalating in Wayne County as a local biogas facility racks up thousands of dollars in unpaid fines.
The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality issued a $7,300 penalty to BIOX Renewables this month, on top of an unpaid $10,000 fine from May.
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BIOX took over the former White Oak Farm site last year, which was home to a catastrophic one-million-gallon hog-waste spill back in 2022. But Sound Rivers officials say the environmental threat never stopped. They caught the new operators pumping waste from a defunct lagoon into neighboring woods and fields.
Subsequent water samples revealed off-the-charts levels of E. coli and nitrogen levels 12 times higher than normal.
Neuse Riverkeeper Samantha Krop warns the facility is playing fast and loose with maintenance, risking another major toxic spill into the Nahunta Swamp.