Giving Compass' Take:

• Pacific Standard reports on the decades-long issue in North Carolina when it comes to hog waste and natural disasters. Why wasn't it resolved before Hurricane Florence hit?

• Much of the problem boils down to ineffective policies and too much deference to an industry that relies on the bottom line. Other rural areas vulnerable to floods should take note on what went wrong.

• In North Carolina, there's also a question on who will rebuild beaches.

In September of 1999, North Carolina found itself facing a foul problem. As Hurricane Floyd battered the coast, floodwaters breached lagoons of animal waste from the state's industrial hog farms, transforming rural counties into seas of toxic, foul-smelling, bacteria-laden sludge. The storm drowned two million chickens and turkeys and 110,000 hogs. It also engulfed their waste, sending a deluge of feces, urine, and animal carcasses into waterways—and causing an environmental hazard that lingered as long as the stench.

North Carolina, accounts say, had not prepared for this. Locals struggled to take stock of what seemed an unimaginable horror: farmers whose crops were suddenly drenched in waste, rescue workers sick with the fumes, residents who feared to drink the water. Put simply: "We do have a practical problem here," North Carolina Governor James B. Hunt Jr. told the New York Times in 1999. Politicians called for tightening regulation meant to keep this from happening again; just two years prior, they'd banned new pits and enacted a landmark law.

Yet, in 2016, during Hurricane Matthew, it did happen again: storm, flood, feces. The same cycle has haunted the state for the past 25 years. Now many worry it will happen once more; forecasts place North Carolina's industrial farms right in the path of Hurricane Florence, a fierce storm projected to unleash "life-threatening, catastrophic" flooding in the eastern counties this week.

Why has this problem plagued the state, time after time? Like the sludge, it comes from a potent mix: ineffective regulation, an increasingly industry-friendly state legislature, entrenched monopolies, and, of course, geography.

Read the full article about the hog waste problem in North Carolina by Emily Moon at Pacific Standard.