Sound Of River Flowing

[Bonny Battaglino]

Ourmission is to monitor and protect the Neuse and Tar-Pamlico River watersheds covering nearly one quarter of North Carolina, and to preserve the health and beauty of the river basin through environmental justice.

You may find them on the water, investigating an algal bloom or fish kill; on land, at a public hearing, explaining why a new landfill next to a river tributary is a bad idea; or even in the air, surveilling pollution entering our streams, creeks and rivers from industrial animal facilities.

Your RIVERKEEPERS serve as scientific experts and educational resources to schools and communities living in the watershed, so you may find them joining coalitions to right an environmental wrong; in indoor and outdoor classrooms, introducing children to their environment; speaking to civic groups about the issues facing our waterways and representing Sound Rivers at environmental events.

The Tar River begins as a freshwater stream in the Piedmont near Roxboro, flowing east to become the Pamlico River near Washington, then draining into the Pamlico Sound before meeting the Atlantic Ocean. Major tributaries in the upper basin include Swift, Fishing and Tranters creeks and Cokey Swamp, as well as the Pungo River in the lower basin. It also includes Lake Mattamuskeet, home to Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge and, at more than 18 miles long and six miles wide, is the largest natural lake in the state.

When rain falls in a natural setting, almost all stormwater infiltrates the soils and groundwater or is taken up by vegetation. But when land is developed, the impervious cover (roads, rooftops, driveways, parking lots) increases the volume of stormwater not absorbed by land and accelerates the transport of stormwater across the surface of the land. As impervious cover increases, so does the volume and velocity of contaminated surface runoff into waterways big and small.

Polluted stormwater runoff, including sediment from poorly maintained construction sites, is one of the main causes of pollution in the Neuse and Tar-Pamlico rivers. Sediment, toxic pollutants and pathogens in stormwater have negative impacts on waterways and aquatic life and our enjoyment of both. Climate change, and an increase in extreme rain events, adds to the stormwater issue with an increased risk of flooding.

Sanitary sewer systems collect and transport domestic, commercial and industrial wastewater, as well as limited amounts of stormwater and infiltrated ground water to treatment facilities for appropriate treatment.

Occasionally, sanitary sewers will spill raw sewage. These types of spills are called sanitary sewer overflows. SSOs can contaminate our waterways, causing serious water-quality problems and back up into homes, causing property damage and threatening public health.

In the Neuse and Tar-Pamlico watersheds, the main cause of SSOs is predominantly stormwater and/or groundwater overloading a system during tropical weather events, or even a hard rain. Aging sewer infrastructure and new development creating an additional burden on already insufficient infrastructure are two culprits behind our SSOs.

Those living in the Neuse and Tar-Pamlico watersheds are very familiar with the power of extreme rain and hurricane flooding. The more we have of both, the more stormwater issues arise; the more industrial animal waste flows into our creeks; the more plastics wash into our streams; the more sewer infrastructure is overwhelmed, spilling raw sewage into our rivers.

Sound Rivers uses the North Carolina, and EPA water quality criteria for contact recreation. Sites are marked green when the last sample was at healthy levels of bacteria. Sites are marked red when the last sample was above the criteria, or unhealthy levels of bacteria. Sites are marked grey when there are no current results or there is no available information.

E. coli is a type of bacteria found in the intestines of people and other animals, and is a good indicator of recent fecal contamination. While most types of these bacteria are harmless, some types can make us sick or cause more severe gastrointestinal issues in more sensitive groups.

The Albemarle-Pamlico estuarine system is made up of six river basins that flow into the sounds. The Pasquotank, Chowan, and Roanoke basins utlimately flow into Albemarle Sound, while the Tar-Pamlico and Neuse empty directly into Pamlico Sound. Rivers of the White Oak basin flow to the Albemarle-Pamlico estuary's southern sounds, including Core, Back, and Bogue. Each river basin boasts unique and valuable natural resources.

The watershed of the Albemarle-Pamlico estuarine system encompasses portions or all of six major river basins - the Neuse, Roanoke, Tar-Pamlico, Chowan, Pasquotank, and White Oak. Besides rivers, streams, sounds and marshes, the region includes the fields, forests, cities, and towns that surround them. All the water flowing across this landscape - rain and melted snow - eventually drains into the estuary. The N.C. Office of Environmental Education maintains educational materials for each of North Carolina's River Basins, including booklets, interactive Storymaps, GIS resources, and more.

Sea level was as much as 250 feet lower about 18,000 years ago. The area that is now Pamlico Sound was dry land covered with the type of plants found today only in much colder regions. Ancient rivers like the Neuse traveled in deep channels. As global climate warmed and chunks of polar ice melted back into the oceans, sea level began rising again. The rising Albemarle-Pamlico estuary drowned the forest, and the advancing ocean built up an unusually high sand ridge that has remained above sea level. That 160-mile-long ridge is the Outer Banks.

Most barrier islands moved landward during the last period of sea level rise, staying relatively close to the mainland. Though barrier islands are common along low-lying coastlines of the world, parts of the Outer Banks are unique in their long distance from the mainland. Spans of up to 40 miles separate the banks from the estuary's western edge. The enclosure formed by the banks makes the Pamlico Sound the largest embayed estuary in the world. The sound is nearly 100 miles from north to south and more than 25 miles wide in some places. Indeed, early European explorers searching for a shortcut to the Orient mistook the immense body of water for the Pacific Ocean.

Humans have lived in the North Carolina coastal region for at least 14,000 years. This area was one of the last places reached by the people who came to the American continent via a land bridge across the Bering Sea. The Stone Age Carolinians arrived as nomads, tracking animals like the woolly mammoth, and eventually developed into the settled cultures now known collectively as Native Americans. These tribal communities have lived throughout the Albemarle-Pamlico region for thousands of years and were part of a larger cultural group that is sometimes described as the Eastern Woodlands culture.

Among these groups were the Algonquian-speaking tribes, a large population of Native Americans who occupied coastal areas from Canada to North Carolina and lived in the Albemarle-Pamlico region since at least 1000 A.D. The Algonquian-speaking peoples lived in semiautonomous towns along the shores of the estuary and on the barrier islands. They grew beans, corn, gourds, and tobacco, as well as engaging in fishing and hunting. Their extensive trading network extended into the interior of North America. Among these tribal communities were the Roanoke, Pamlico, Nansemond, and Chowan.

The colonists brought major changes to the land and in some areas forcibly evicted its native people. Tensions between tribal communities and colonists increased due to these actions, as well as raids that took children and young members of tribal communities to sell them into slavery. These enslaved people were largely bound for plantations in the West Indies.

From 1711 to 1713, these tensions erupted into a regional conflict called the Tuscarora War in which an unknown number of native peoples were killed or enslaved. Overall, the ravages of disease and war reduced the population of Native Americans in eastern North Carolina to less than 5,000 by the end of the Tuscarora Wars in 1714. The Native American population prior to 1600 had been estimated at 300,000. Surviving Algonquian and Iroquoian peoples were forced to disperse, with some being confined to reservations within the Albemarle-Pamlico region and others retreating to the fringes of their once extensive territories. Some Tuscarora survivors migrated to what is now New York to join the Iroquois Confederacy, where their descendants live today, while those who stayed in North Carolina were forced onto a reservation near Lake Mattamuskeet.

The colonizing Europeans practiced intensive agriculture and forestry. They felled vast forests for timber and naval stores like tar, pitch, and turpentine. Virtually all of the original 4 million acres of longleaf pine forests were timbered and converted. The settlers caught millions of pounds of shad, sturgeon, and herring during the annual spring runs of these migrating fish. They also ditched and drained thousands of acres of wetlands to dry the land for farming.

In 1805, a canal that was dug almost entirely by enslaved people was completed through the Dismal Swamp to connect the Pasquotank River and Albemarle Sound with Norfolk and the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia. In the 1800s until the end of the Civil War, the Dismal Swamp was part of what was known as the Maritime Underground Railroad that helped enslaved people to escape to freedom. Elizabeth City, at the head of the Pasquotank, quickly became a major trade center. It remains an important hub of commerce and the largest city in northeastern North Carolina with a population of 18,631 (U.S. Census, April 2020).

The several of first communities on the Outer Banks oceanfront sprang up around lifesaving stations that lent aid to wrecked ships and stranded passengers. The U.S Lifesaving Service, the predecessor of the U.S. Coast Guard, built seven stations on the Banks in 1874 to hold boats and rescue gear and quarters to house crewmen. These buildings and the lighthouses, whose beacons helped orient ships at sea, were the first man-made structures on the beach. Around the same time, the banks became a destination for northern industrialists, who purchased thousands of acres of land for waterfowl hunting clubs in Currituck and Dare counties.

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