## Facts

- Chatham County adopted a Swine Ordinance regulating swine farms raising 250 or more hogs, requiring county permits for existing and expanding operations.
- The Swine Ordinance imposed operational conditions, including setbacks and buffer zones for farms and sprayfields, semiannual well testing, and a financial-responsibility program backed by an agreement with the county health department and financial security.
- The County also adopted a Zoning Ordinance restricting swine farms to light industrial and heavy industrial zoning districts and conditioning permits on compliance with the Swine Ordinance.
- The Chatham County Board of Health adopted Swine Farm Operation Rules that were nearly identical to the Swine Ordinance but applied to a broader set of farms.
- Plaintiffs (a swine producer and an agricultural trade group) sought declaratory relief that the ordinances and rules were invalid, principally because state statutes and regulations governing swine waste management preempted local regulation.
- The trial court largely upheld the local enactments; the Court of Appeals held the Swine Ordinance and Health Board Rules preempted but sustained the Zoning Ordinance.
- The North Carolina Supreme Court granted discretionary review to resolve the scope of state preemption and the validity of the local enactments.

## Issues

1. Whether state statutes and regulations governing swine farms and animal waste management preempted the County’s Swine Ordinance imposing permitting, monitoring, setbacks, and financial-assurance requirements.
2. Whether state law preempted, or otherwise limited, the Board of Health’s authority to adopt Swine Farm Operation Rules duplicating and extending the County’s direct regulation.
3. Whether the County’s Zoning Ordinance restricting where swine farms may locate was preempted, in whole or in part, by the state regulatory scheme.

## Decision

- The court held that substantial portions of the Swine Ordinance were preempted because they created a parallel local regulatory program in an area addressed by a comprehensive state scheme.
- The court held that the Health Board Rules were likewise preempted to the extent they duplicated or extended the same substantive operational controls displaced by state law.
- The court treated the Zoning Ordinance as a generally permissible exercise of local land-use authority, so long as it did not function as a substitute means to impose preempted operational regulation.
- The court’s disposition affirmed preemption of the County’s direct operational regulations and preserved zoning authority subject to the limits imposed by state supremacy in the regulated field.

## Legal Principles

- A county’s general police power to protect health, safety, and welfare exists, but it cannot be exercised in a manner that conflicts with, enlarges, or duplicates a detailed regulatory program assigned by the General Assembly to state agencies.
- Local enactments are invalid when they (a) directly conflict with state law or (b) intrude into a field the State has occupied through a comprehensive statutory and administrative scheme.
- A local permitting regime, financial-assurance requirements, setbacks, monitoring, and related operational controls may be preempted when state law already prescribes the controlling standards and mechanisms for swine waste management and environmental oversight.
- Zoning is a traditional local function and may be used to regulate the location of uses, but it cannot be applied to negate state regulatory decisions or to reimpose preempted substantive standards under a different label.

## Conclusion

The North Carolina Supreme Court concluded that state law displaced key county and health-board efforts to directly regulate swine-farm operations through permitting and operational requirements, while allowing the county to use zoning tools to restrict where swine farms may locate, provided zoning is not used to recreate preempted operational regulation.


Craig v. Cnty. of Chatham, 356 N.C. 40, 565 S.E.2d 172 (2002)