News

In order to develop a 649-acre open pit limestone mine outside Vanceboro in Beaufort County, N.C., Martin Marietta plans to pump up to 12 million gallons per day of ground and mining wastewater into Blounts Creek. If allowed, this will transform the swampy habitat into a stream consisting primarily of the mine discharge water, permanently altering the creek’s diversity of life and abundance of high quality habitat for fish.

“There are other alternatives for a surface water discharge not to the headwaters of Blounts Creek that would be very easy for the company to do,” Heather Deck, Sound Rivers’ Executive Director, told WNCT. “Instead they chose to spend tens of thousands of dollars on court fees and attorneys.”

Read more on this latest development on WNCT here or watch on WITN here. You can also read about Judge Josh Wiley ruling that Sound Rivers does have legal standing in this case in the Washington Daily News here.