Story by Katie MacKinnon
Graphics by Ellen Cochran
Photography by Andrew Lewis
More than one billion dead fish floated down the Neuse River in September 1991. Between Minnesott Beach and New Bern, fish were piled up, white belly to the sky, covered in festering wounds. The smell of rot drifted through the air, forcing people living nearby to stay inside.
Scientists who began to study pfiesteria, the organism found in the rotting fish, developed skin sores, experienced nausea and memory impairment. Fishermen and government leaders alike were baffled.
In what ended up being one of the largest fish kills to date in an American river, scientists eventually discovered that the cause of this dramatic event was nutrient rich waste being dumped into the river from hog farming and rapidly growing suburban development along the river.
The Neuse River, which runs 250 miles from Durham to the Pamlico Sound, has been the source of drinking water, food and recreation for communities in Eastern North Carolina. Named after the Neusiok, or peace, Indians by an English explorer, the river provided stability and sustenance for those who lived along it.
But for more than 30 years, issues related to agricultural runoff and industrial development have caused fish kills and algae blooms. The river was polluted to what seemed like such an irredeemable level that it was named one of America’s most endangered rivers in 2007.
But no longer.
Thirty-one years later, the Neuse River was named the 2022 river of the year by American Rivers. This was possible, in part, because of the Clean Water Act.
“The Clean Water Act was a huge help in improving water quality, essentially creating regulations and rules about what could be put into the water and bringing industries to task and holding them accountable for what they are putting in the water,” Samantha Krop, Neuse riverkeeper, said.
As riverkeeper, Krop is a scientist, educator and advocate for the Neuse and its many tributaries. She promotes the importance of keeping the water resource running clean and useable for swimming, drinking, fishing or any other public use.
The regulations set out in the Clean Water Act limited the hog farms that were dumping nitrogen, the textile industry that was dumping chemicals, and the infrastructure that was creating impermeable surfaces.
Decades later, the Neuse River is again safe for all of its previous uses, but the fix may not be permanent.
The Supreme Court is in the midst of considering Sackett v. EPA, which challenges the state’s ability to prevent development on a parcel of land in Idaho, near Priest Lake and across the road from a wetlands complex that feeds the lake.
Chantell Sackett and Michael Sackett have been a part of dispute with the Army Corps of Engineers and the EPA since 2007 when they were ordered to restore their land after beginning to fill in the property. The Sacketts sued the EPA, arguing that the order was arbitrary because its underlying jurisdictional basis was flawed.
The district court ruled in favor of the EPA, claiming that the Sackett’s property contained jurisdictional wetlands. The Sacketts appealed, and the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.
The case is being heard because wetlands are one of the main gray areas around navigable waters. Since they are often not visibly connected to flowing bodies of water, they are the first to be filled in and developed. Although to the naked eye wetlands are not essential to the function of an ecosystem, they provide unseen ecosystem services.
“You can think of them as the lungs of the system, and so when rain falls or we have runoff from land if that rain or runoff hits a wetland before it goes to a flowing water body it will generally be absorbed or stay there for a long period of time which is obviously good for flood mitigation but also those wetlands play a role in cleaning the water,” said Josh Eagle, CWA expert and Solomon Blatt Professor of Law at the University of South Carolina.
The Supreme Court could use this case as an opportunity to provide a majority opinion for the definition of waters of the United States, putting protected wetlands across the country in danger, including surrounding the Neuse River. A decision is expected early this year.
If a stricter interpretation of waters of the United States is put in place, it could remove protections from 350,000 acres, or about 550 square miles, of Neuse River wetlands.
While removing protections from these areas may allow further development in the region, economically it may still not be beneficial.
Hannah Druckenmiller, environmental economist and fellow at Resources for the Future, was part of a team that studied the impacts of wetland loss after the Trump administration changed the waters of the United States regulation to eliminate wetlands that don’t share a surface water connection with navigable waters.
It is written into the CWA that if wetlands are lost, equivalent wetlands must be created or restored in the same watershed. Druckenmiller’s research shows that this still leads to a loss of ecosystem services. Wetlands most frequently developed on are often serving a large community, while the wetlands that are created to replace them are often on cheap land that may be functionally equivalent in terms of biological resources, but is not actually near people who benefit from the services it provides.
This means that both people and property end up being harmed by a lack of wetlands, and that this loss of wetlands is hard to make up for.
From Krop’s perspective, clean water is invaluable.
“Having clean water resources and protecting our water resources is the single most proactive thing that we can do to look out for our future selves and to mitigate the impacts of climate change,” Krop said.
The people who live along the Neuse are already taking charge of the resource and working to protect it. Frequent trash clean ups by people along the river and groups like The Great Raleigh Cleanup have helped to maintain cleaner waters.
Preston Ross III started The Great Raleigh Cleanup in 2020 after noticing abundant trash around the city. Now, he works with Krop and Sound Rivers to help clean up Little Rock Creek, which flows into Walnut Creek and then into the Neuse.
“After every single rainstorm there is just a ton of debris, the worst of it being the plastic bottles and the Styrofoam fragments which are just impossible,” Ross III said.
The Great Raleigh Cleanup has been able to build a community of environmental stewards who are looking out for their city. This kind of ownership is what Krop says is necessary to keep the river clean.
Hog farms still exist along the Neuse. Durham and Raleigh continue to grow. But summer camps also dot the river from Minnesott Beach to New Bern where children swim, fish and boat. The Upper Neuse contains nine public drinking supply reservoirs, serving about 500,000 people. Multiple greenways follow the river for miles, allowing walkers and bikers to enjoy the sites.
For now, the Neuse River has returned to its namesake, remaining a source of peace for those who live along it.
Updated March 20: On March 9, the U.S. House passed a resolution to narrow the EPAs definition of waters in the United States, undoing a Biden administration standard that allows for wetland regulations on private lands. This week, an expected Senate vote will move the resolution to President Biden’s desk, which he said he would veto in a March 6 statement of administration policy. The White House says that revoking the rule would void any working definition, further complicating the waters of the United States issue.
