A pig in a poke: will a giant slaughterhouse breathe life into a moribund Bladen County - or threaten the lower Cape Fear?

• Author: Mildenberg, David

For nearly 350 miles, from its headwaters on the Haw and Deep rivers to where it empties into the Atlantic, the Cape Fear River system has long been the backbone of industrial North Carolina. It is not only the biggest but the most heavily used river basin in the state.

Along its lower reaches, within 30 miles of Wilmington, the Cape Fear is the nearest thing you'll find to the "chemical alleys" of New Jersey or West Virginia. Giant plants bearing some of the corporate world's mightiest names - Du Pont, Hoechst Celanese, Federal Paperboard - line its banks, all attracted by the river's 6-trillion-gallon daily flow.

An example of their dependence on the river: Federal Paperboard's waste-water treatment plant at Riegelwood is two and a half times as large as the port city's below it. Though their record is not spotless -Federal was fined $729,000 in 1984 after being cited for 240 violations of state environmental laws - regulators say these companies have generally been good stewards of the Cape Fear. The giant pulp and paperboard producer, for example, struck a truce by spending millions of dollars to reduce the river's dioxin levels.

But this year, it's not pulp or petrochemicals that is ruffling the waters of the lower Cape Fear. It's pigs, the raising and killing of which have been an important part of North Carolina's agricultural economy since the first permanent settlers drifted down from Virginia. The latest controversy was sparked by another entrant from the Old Dominion. Smithfield Foods of Virginia wants to build a $50 million plant 50 miles upriver from Wilmington near Tar Heel population 134 - in Bladen County.

Opponents of the plant see the blood, guts and feces from 8,000 butchered hogs a day oozing through Smithfield's sewer system into the Cape Fear: 3 million gallons a day of treated offal going into a river that is nearing its capacity for handling what farmers, municipal treatment plants and industries are dumping into it.

The giant slaughterhouse, they contend, would also spur development of big hog farms that could pollute creeks, rivers and ground water.

But for the proponents, the "woulds" and "coulds" of the critics can't compare with the benefits the pig plant would bring to a county that can only be described as economically depressed: 431 new jobs and millions of dollars in spinoffs. Because of the plant, N.C. Highway 87 is likely to be widened to four lanes through the county years earlier than initially planned. And Bladen is financing a $600,000 natural-gas pipeline that should attract other industry. Besides, they say, the plant would create no more waste than a town of 30,000.

Of course, no town in Bladen County has that many people. In fact, the county's population last year totaled only 28,663. And even though people have come to realize that rivers aren't bottomless pits but more like pies, from which nobody can afford to take too much, the people of Bladen feel it's high time they get their slice.

State regulators concluded early this year that Smithfield's treatment system would meet state standards, pending a final review. (Smithfield hopes to start...