710052_Acknowledgement Letter_20210304

MIKE HOPE FARMS
826 CHANCEY RD
CLINTON, NC 28328
March 4, 2021
North Carolina Division of Aquifer Protection
Water Quality Regional Operations Section
Mr. Chad Coburn
127 Cardinal Dr. Extension
Wilmington, NC 28405-3845
Dear Mr. Coburn,
I am writing in regards to the incident at my farm, M&D Sow Farm (71-52) on March 2,
2021. My employee conducted an irrigation event on pull 1 that day. After starting the
irrigation system and making sure that everything was working properly, he returned to
chores inside the hog houses. When he came back to inspect the land application event
1.5 hours later, he saw that water had ponded at the edge of the field. He immediately
turned the system off. He did not realize that the waste had left the field and gotten into
the woods and the adjacent creek. Before he could contact me, I had a call from my
technical specialist, Curtis Barwick, that there had been an accident.
Due to darkness on Tuesday, my workers began pumping the mixed rainwater and
wastewater out of the field, woods and creek into the upper parts of the field for over 6
hours on March 3rd. We ran a subsoiler over the field to facilitate better infiltration. We
have estimated a maximum of 7,000 gallons of wastewater left the field.
We have had
very careful in
natured soils
overestimated
has occurred
environment.
a tremendous amount of rainfall in the last few months and have been
land application so as to not allow ponding nor runoff. The farm has wet -
and we must be careful when applying waste. Obviously, we
the soils ability to absorb the wastewater applied. I regret that this runoff
and we are managing the farm to prevent any damage to our
If you need further information regarding this please call me at 910-590-7830. Thank
you for your attention to this matter.
ncerely,
James Michael Hope