Life-long Onslow County resident Sydney Whaley was sitting on his front porch on a hot summer day in 1995 watching traffic that had been routed past his A.I. Taylor Road home because of a wreck on U.S. 258 when a river of hog manure flooded the street as high as the cars’ bumpers.
Fifteen years later, Whaley, 78, homebound with an oxygen tank at his side, said he can still smell the manure.
On June 21, 1995, the side of an 8-acre hog waste lagoon at Oceanview Farms ruptured, spilling nearly 22 million gallons of hog waste into the surrounding area, including tributaries that feed into the New River.
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