By Thursday afternoon, state estimates for the total number of North Carolina farm animal lives lost during Hurricane Florence and her aftermath had risen to 3.4 million birds and 5,500 pigs. The storm’s environmental impacts were beginning to come into focus, too: 57 hog waste lagoons had flooded, breached, or “overtopped,” and an additional 75 were in danger of overflowing. On Thursday morning, Duke Energy issued a high-level emergency alert as waters at a retired power plant flooded a lake adjacent to three coal-ash dumps. Over the weekend, a landfill at the site ruptured, unloading 180 dump trucks’ worth of material into surrounding waters, the Associated Press reports. It’s an especially painful part of the disaster recovery process for growers. In a mass mortality event like this one, poultry farmers are encouraged to compost their deceased animals. According to Mark Rice, an extension specialist in waste management at North Carolina State University, the simplest method involves shoveling wood chips over the carcasses without moving them from their houses, then waiting eight to 10 weeks for the composting process to run its course. In cases where barns are too flooded to build compost piles, the carcasses are moved to higher ground.The USDA announced on Thursday it will incentivize farmers to compost lost livestock through its Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP). An agency memo on emergency animal mortality management says that composting can help prevent water contamination, decrease methane and ammonia emissions, and minimize odor. Burial, by contrast, has the potential to facilitate the transmission of pathogens. In an area like eastern North Carolina, where the water table is high, burial can ultimately lead to water contamination. Mortality incinerators, according to the agency, can emit particulate matter, nitrogen oxide and carbon dioxide. The agency is holding a special sign-up period for farmers in South Carolina to join EQIP.