Property Rights Legislation: North Carolina's Hog Farm Problem and the Forgotten Rights of the Land Owners Downstream

North Carolina has a hog farm problem. As the hog farm industry grows in North Carolina, so do the environmental disasters that accompany it. This paper will examine the environmental dangers that the hog farm industry has posed to North Carolina's rivers and streams and the failure of the state to adequately prevent those harms from occurring. Then, this paper will address general legal protections against regulation by state and federal legislatures, including a discussion of the U.S. Supreme Court's regulatory takings analysis and the increasing popularity of "takings bills" in state and federal legislatures. Specifically, this paper will review a "takings bill" being considered by the North Carolina General Assembly that would compensate a private property owner for any diminution in value of her land caused by a state regulation. At the same time, the Assembly was considering more stringent regulation of hog farms. Finally, this paper will argue that a takings bill in North Carolina would not only detrimentally affect the extent to which the state could regulate hog farms that pollute the state's rivers and streams, but would also be unfair to the landowners who live downstream from those hog farmers and who are denied beneficial use of their land because of the state's failure to regulate