Rivers in North Carolina and New Jersey are horribly contaminated in the wake of Hurricane Floyd, and North Carolina officials say the state is facing its worst-ever environmental disaster. The Cape Fear River in North Carolina is carrying raw sewage, farm pesticides, industrial chemicals, oil slicks, hog feces, and animal carcasses into the Atlantic. Cleanup crews working along New Jersey’s Raritan River have collected more than 1,000 hazardous items, ranging from a 1,000-pound propane tank to unlabeled drums of industrial chemicals and containers of pesticides. Thousands of water wells in eastern North Carolina have been contaminated, and residents of both North Carolina and New Jersey are being told to boil the water from public systems before drinking it.
