Florence Could Flood Hog Manure Pits and Taint Drinking Water

File photo showing a North Carolina resident trying to pump flood waters from around his home following heavy rains from Hurricane Floyd on 17 Sept. 1999 in Ocean Isle Beach, NC. Floyd killed over a dozen people, wreaked serious damage and triggered the largest peacetime evacuation ever undertaken in the United States. Steve Schaefer/AFP/Getty Images

Hurricane Florence’s heavy rains could cause an environmental disaster in North Carolina, where waste from hog manure pits, coal ash dumps and other industrial sites could wash into homes and threaten drinking water supplies.

Computer models predict more than 3 feet of rain in the eastern part of the state, a fertile low-lying plain veined by brackish rivers with a propensity for escaping their banks. Longtime locals don’t have to strain their imaginations to foresee what rain like that can do. It’s happened before.

Worst Natural Disaster in State History

In September 1999, Hurricane Floyd came ashore near Cape Fear as a Category 2 storm that dumped about 2 feet of water on a region already soaked days earlier by Hurricane Dennis. The result was the worst natural disaster in state history, a flood that killed dozens of people and left whole towns underwater, their residents stranded on rooftops.