News

Pamlico-Tar Riverkeeper Katey Zimmerman was in Greenville this week, helping East Carolina University students map out a plan to track Blounts Creek groundwater when mining begins at a 649-acre limestone mine in Vanceboro.

Department of Geological Sciences professor Dr. Stephen Moysey is leading the advanced elective class for groundwater modeling and analysis class, and the project that to study how the withdrawal of up to 12 million gallons of water per day will impact the Castle Hayne aquifer.

“For my part, I gave a pretty short overview of the proposed mine, the work we’ve done in advocacy up to the point and the impacts we expect to see,” Katey said. “I mentioned the concerns residents have for their wells and how the drawdown of the aquifer will affect them.”

Martin Marietta Materials is expected to begin mining early this year — a process that will require pumping out millions of gallons of groundwater and discharging the fresh water into the brackish headwater of Blounts Creek.

The leadup to mining operations goes back 15 years, and has included several public hearings held by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality and a Sound Rivers lawsuit that wound its way through North Carolina courts for more than a decade. In April 2023, the North Carolina Supreme Court ultimately ruled against Sound Rivers and the Blounts Creek community, allowing the mine to move forward as proposed.

Read more about the Blounts Creek lawsuit here or listen to Sound Rivers’ podcast “The Story of Blounts Creek” to get the full story.

The first step in monitoring groundwater one mining starts is research.

“The project is in the planning phase, and the class is going to be considering available data from the phosphate mine (Aurora-based Nutrien) and how that all plays together,” Katey said.

Katey said there has been no word on when mining will start.

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