美国国家公共电台 NPR Hog Farmers Scramble to Drain Waste Pools Ahead Of Hurricane Florence

 

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

Right in the path of Hurricane Florence, there's an area where pigs far outnumber people. A big worry is the state of hundreds of open-air lagoons² filled with manure³. Torrential rain could cause them to overflow⁴. Here's NPR's Dan Charles.

DAN CHARLES, BYLINE⁵: Katy Langley lives on the North Carolina coast downstream from a bunch of hog⁶ farms, and she thinks about them a lot.

KATY LANGLEY: When you fly over the area, I mean, you can't throw a rock without hitting one.

CHARLES: She works for an environmentalist organization, Sound Rivers.

LANGLEY: You just see these long barns and these big square shapes that looks like Pepto-Bismol pink because swine waste is bright pink - fun fact of the day.

CHARLES: Actually, it's bacteria feeding on the waste that turn the ponds pink. Those lagoons are a little bit like compost piles. It's a cheap way to handle manure, but they're just sitting there open to the weather, thousands of them, with a Category 4 hurricane coming. Langley is worried that a lot of manure is going to end up in the rivers. Farmers are worried, too, like Marlowe Vaughan in Goldsboro, N.C.

MARLOWE VAUGHAN: We're going to probably get, you know, hit on the nose with this, and flooding is our biggest concern.

CHARLES: They spent part of the day on her farm pumping liquid waste out of their lagoons, spraying it as fertilizer on nearby fields so there's more room for rain from Florence. If farmers are doing this, the lagoons should be able to handle almost three feet of rain. But they've never actually had to deal with that much.

I mean, if you got two or three feet of rain, would that flood the lagoon¹?

VAUGHAN: We don't really know. I mean, we try to pump down as much as we can, but, you know, after that, it's kind of in God's hands. I mean, we're kind of at the mercy of the storm.

CHARLES: Here's the really bad scenario⁷ - water starts overflowing⁸, erodes⁹ the lagoon walls and the walls collapse¹⁰, spreading animal waste across the landscape and into rivers. Some lagoons and hog houses could also be inundated¹¹ by rising rivers. About 60 of them lie within what the state considers the 100-year flood plain. Vaughan's seen other hurricanes. The farm's come through OK, but she says it sounds like Florence could be worse.

VAUGHAN: Well, we really just don't know. We have no idea what's going to happen. But everybody's very, very, very worried and very concerned, so please pray for us (laughter).

CHARLES: Dan Charles, NPR News.

1 lagoon   

n.泻湖，咸水湖

参考例句：

• The lagoon was pullulated with tropical fish.那个咸水湖聚满了热带鱼。
• This area isolates a restricted lagoon environment.将这一地区隔离起来使形成一个封闭的泻湖环境。

2 lagoons   

n.污水池( lagoon的名词复数 )；潟湖；（大湖或江河附近的）小而浅的淡水湖；温泉形成的池塘

参考例句：

• The Islands are by shallow crystal clear lagoons enclosed by coral reefs. 该群岛包围由珊瑚礁封闭的浅水清澈泻湖。 来自互联网
• It is deposited in low-energy environments in lakes, estuaries and lagoons. 它沉淀于湖泊、河口和礁湖的低能量环境中，也可于沉淀于深海环境。 来自互联网

3 manure   

n.粪，肥，肥粒；vt.施肥

参考例句：

• The farmers were distributing manure over the field.农民们正在田间施肥。
• The farmers used manure to keep up the fertility of their land.农夫们用粪保持其土质的肥沃。

4 overflow   

v.(使)外溢，(使)溢出；溢出，流出，漫出

参考例句：

• The overflow from the bath ran on to the floor.浴缸里的水溢到了地板上。
• After a long period of rain,the river may overflow its banks.长时间的下雨天后，河水可能溢出岸来。

5 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

6 hog   

n.猪；馋嘴贪吃的人；vt.把…占为己有，独占

参考例句：

• He is greedy like a hog.他像猪一样贪婪。
• Drivers who hog the road leave no room for other cars.那些占着路面的驾驶员一点余地都不留给其他车辆。

7 scenario   

n.剧本，脚本；概要

参考例句：

• But the birth scenario is not completely accurate.然而分娩脚本并非完全准确的。
• This is a totally different scenario.这是完全不同的剧本。

8 overflowing   

n. 溢出物,溢流 adj. 充沛的，充满的 动词overflow的现在分词形式

参考例句：

• The stands were overflowing with farm and sideline products. 集市上农副产品非常丰富。
• The milk is overflowing. 牛奶溢出来了。

9 erodes   

侵蚀，腐蚀( erode的第三人称单数 )； 逐渐毁坏，削弱，损害

参考例句：

• The sea erodes the rock. 海水侵蚀岩石。
• The sea erodes the land. 海洋侵蚀陆地。

10 collapse   

vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷

参考例句：

• The country's economy is on the verge of collapse.国家的经济已到了崩溃的边缘。
• The engineer made a complete diagnosis of the bridge's collapse.工程师对桥的倒塌做了一次彻底的调查分析。

11 inundated   

v.淹没( inundate的过去式和过去分词 )；（洪水般地）涌来；充满；给予或交予（太多事物）使难以应付

参考例句：

• We have been inundated with offers of help. 主动援助多得使我们应接不暇。
• We have been inundated with every bit of information imaginable. 凡是想得到的各种各样的信息潮水般地向我们涌来。 来自《简明英汉词典》