News

Recent reports of sediment pollution on a pristine Neuse River tributary sent Neuse Riverkeeper Samantha Krop on a Monday morning mission: aerial surveillance of Brices Creek.

“It’s been an ongoing issue, and while sediment levels in the creek have gone down, I still wanted to see what was going on,” Samantha said.

What she found was not one, but two developments that could be responsible for Brices Creek’s murky waters.

“The main likely culprit was the Carolina Colours development that recently cleared a bunch of land on Brices Creek just north of County Line Road,” Samantha said. “There’s another development that appears to be on either side of creek. They’ve cleared on either side and have definitely impacted the buffer. From the sky, it was evident that there was a lot of clearing done along that creek.”

Samantha shared what she found with staff with of North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Energy, Land and Mineral Resources, who sent an inspector to the site.

“We got the report. We did some digging; I looked at satellite imagery and got DEMLR involved,” Samantha said. “They went out and inspected and found they were cutting in places not covered by the plan at both sites.”

According to DEMLR, the agency is looking into whether Carolina Colours development is in compliance with its development plan, as the areas being cut were not included in the current stage of development. The other site, a development being built by Nolan Commercial Contractors, has a development plan, but what they don’t have is a sediment and erosion control permit, nor a 401 permit for wetland and the creek crossings, according to Samantha.

“It’s part of a larger development that has a plan, but they are not supposed to be clearing where they are clearing. They’re doing unpermitted cutting in the wetlands and across Brices Creek,” Samantha said. “Not only is Nolan doing that, but Carolina Colours is jumping the gun on cutting, and they’re not supposed to be cutting where they’re cutting.”

When the report of Brices Creek sediment pollution came in, impacts were being seen as far as two miles downstream.

“The more we looked into this, the more we realized that this was what was behind the report we got on sediment pollution,” Samantha said. “There’s a lot more digging I need to do, now that I have the sediment-control plan, and DEMLR is determining the extent of what’s happening outside the permit. We’re probably also going to rope in the Division of Water Resources about the impacts to Brices Creek and the wetlands.”

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