Thousands of carcasses of pigs, drowned in B.C. floods, won't pollute environment, composting plant says

WARNING: This story contains graphic images of piled up pig carcasses

The owner of an industrial composting facility in the B.C. Interior is condemning what he says is misinformation after images of thousands of pig carcasses piled near the Similkameen River appeared in local media.

The pictures were published in the community media outlet Castanet last Tuesday, along with complaints from the Upper Similkameen Indian Band that the decomposing hogs could pose a hazard to the land and water.

But Mateo Ocejo, who runs the Net Zero Waste Eastgate facility located 50 kilometres southwest of Princeton, says the animals do not pose a risk to humans or the environment.

While he admits the images were disturbing, Ocejo says there was no other way to handle the roughly 10,000 pigs, weighing a total of 700 tons, after they drowned in floods in B.C.'s Fraser Valley last November.

Ocejo, a practising engineer, says he received a call from the Ministry of Agriculture last month to recycle the huge amount of hog carcasses.

"It was a disaster and they were in standing water on the farm, polluting the water," he said.

Ocejo says he was complying with B.C.'s Organic Matter Recycling Regulation to help the carcasses decompose.

"We use Gore-Tex jackets to encapsulate the material and keep it as non-contact to the environment, non-contact to snow or rain," Ocejo said. "It also keeps all of the moisture and the bacteria that's inside the pile recycling within the pile to help the materials break down faster."

The B.C. Ministry of Environment describes the flooding that ravaged the Lower Mainland and the Interior regions last year — which killed an estimated 650,000 poultry, pigs, cattle and other farm animals — as "unprecedented" in the province's history.

Ocejo says he has been dealing with threats and backlash since the images came out last week, and he was upset he wasn't initially given a chance to provide context on what had happened.

"We've had some comments from people that thought we killed the pigs. For some reason, they asked if we were responsible for this and asked how these corpses could go and [spread] disease and … just a lot of misinformation," Ocejo said.

The Castanet story quoted an Upper Similkameen Indian Band official saying the massive amount of biowaste may contaminate the river and groundwater, something Ocejo says isn't true.

The band also sent a letter of complaint to the Town of Princeton on Jan. 11, saying its staff discovered the colossal amount of hog carcasses at the Net Zero Waste facility on Dec.10, and found that leachate and contaminated water were flowing directly from the facility to the Similkameen River's surrounding areas.