How Healthy Is the Haw?

How Healthy is the Haw?

Elaine Chiosso, Haw Riverkeeper (updated February, 2017))

We are often asked about the health of the Haw and how safe it is for recreation. There is no easy answer to this question and monitoring results show much variance in water quality in the river, the creeks, and Jordan Lake. But this is an important question, and I’d like to offer some guidelines from the data available, and from my perspective as Haw Riverkeeper with the Haw River Assembly, and the many years I have lived near, and enjoyed, the Haw.

The Haw River has seen a great revival in its ecosystem health over the past 50 years, due to changes in agriculture and building practices, and federal, state and local laws that require stricter wastewater treatment, stormwater management and reductions in industrial pollutants. Riparian buffer rules and new parklands along the Haw River have allowed forests to re-grow along stream banks providing habitat for plants and animals. It’s a beautiful river with great hiking and paddle trails.

In this same 50 years, the population has tripled in the 1700 square mile Haw River watershed. Even with better laws and practices, the volume of wastewater and stormwater pollution from cities and suburbs has increased. There are 7 municipal wastewater treatment plants that discharge into waters of the Haw in Guilford, Rockingham and Alamance counties. (Burlington’s South WWTP near Swepsonville is the last in this row). Breaks in aging sewer lines or overflows can bring pollution into the Haw River or its tributaries. We have seen several major sewage spills in the Haw in recent years, including Burlington's 3.5 million gallon spill in January 2014. HRA successfully used the Clean Water Act to get an agreement with Burlington for major improvements. The river gets a break after Swepsonville, flowing many miles through southern Alamance and Chatham County without significant sources of urban stormwater or major municipal wastewater effluent, until Robeson Creek from Pittsboro meets the river at Jordan Lake.

What does the monitoring data tell us? Unfortunately NC river basin plans are now rolling out every 10 years instead of 5 due to changes imposed by the legislature. The most recent one for our basin is from 2005. The Haw River Assembly’s River Watch water monitoring program has been gathering monitoring data by our citizen scientist volunteers since 1995 and gives us a picture of stream health and changes over time (go to http://hawriver.org/projects/stream-monitoring/ to learn about the project and review the data through 2014.)

Another source of information for the Haw is the state’s bi-annual 303(d) report to the EPA of “Impaired Waters” for those not meeting water quality standards. Reason for the impairment can be specific, such as too much of a heavy metal or too little dissolved oxygen, but in most cases in our river basin, the listing is because of poor health of the aquatic organisms (water insects, crustaceans, fish etc) that live in those waters. We are not given the cause, but only the impact. The Draft 2016 303d list can be seen on the Dept. of Environmental Quality 303 d listings

There are 174 miles of creeks in the Haw watershed listed as impaired, including most of the creeks in urban areas, where polluted stormwater running off paved and built surfaces is greatest. 7.8 miles of the Haw River are listed as impaired in the upper reaches, but several sites on the Haw and some tributaries have been removed from the list, which we believe is due more to changes in methodology than in actual improvement in those waters.

Sections of the following creeks are on the Impaired Waters list:

Alamance County: Back, Big Alamance, Haw Creek, Jordan Creek, Little Alamance, Stinking Quarter, Stony Creek, Tickle, Travis,

Chatham County: Collins, Dry, Robeson, Terrels, Turkey

Durham County: Little Creek, New Hope, Northeast, Third Fork

Guilford County: Brush, Horsepen, N. Buffalo, S. Buffalo, Reedy Fork, Guilford College Trib, Varnals

Orange Co: (Chapel Hill) Bolin, Booker, Morgan,

Rockingham County: Little Troublesome, Troublesome

Returning to the question of how healthy the river is for recreational use - it is clear that most creeks in urban areas are not clean enough to swim or fish in. There are also portions of creeks in rural areas that show signs of being contaminated by runoff from fields where sludge (the treated solids from municipal waste water) is land applied. A report we published in 2015 "Sludge in Our Waters" looked closely at the issue of industrial contaminants, particularly perfluorinated compounds, in sewage sludge spread on agricutural lands, and how they end up in adjacent creeks during storm events. High amounts of 1-4, dioane, an industrial solvent, has also been found in the Haw River. There is excess algae growth, diminished aquatic life, and high alkalinity in much of the Haw River as it flows through Guilford and Alamance counties, due to both stormwater and wastewater effluent, which can also contain heavy metals and other chemicals. By the time the river flows down to Bynum, we see some improvement in water quality and aquatic life, and even more improvement further downstream in the Lower Haw River State Natural Area near the Hwy 64 bridge. Unfortunately, this healthiest part of the Haw would be most negatively impacted by the building of Chatham Park.

At this time, we recommend that water contact in the Haw River upstream of Chatham County be limited to wading and paddling. Although I cannot recommend swimming in the Haw River in Chatham County due to unpredictable conditions (dangerous river conditions, temperature, low water, unusual pollution events) I have done so myself over the years. Jordan Lake has excessive algae and other water quality problems with a total of 2291 acres listed on the Impaired Waters List. The worst areas are in the shallow Upper New Hope arm in the upper reaches near Chapel Hill and Durham and the Haw River arm. The state park swimming beaches are located in the cleanest part of the lake, the Lower New Hope Arm, near the Hwy 64 causeway. However, North Carolina does not regularly monitor swimming beaches for water quality and only once per month for bacteria.

Fish consumption should also be limited for fish caught in the Haw due to the industrial contaminants discussed above. In addition, all surface waters in North Carolina contain too much mercury, mostly from air borne emissions from coal fired power plants, some far to the west of us. To read more about safe fish consumption go to: http://epi.publichealth.nc.gov/oee/fish/advisories.html

We should all be outraged that our waters are not safe for us to use for all recreational purposes, and are not meeting water quality standards. The 1972 federal Clean Water Act promised us swimmable and fishable waters in all the USA by 1984. Join us in continuing to advocate for our right to clean water. Your membership in the Haw River Assembly supports our efforts!

Contact:

Haw River Assembly
P.O.Box 187
Bynum NC 27228
(919) 542-5790

www.hawriver.org