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Last week, Neuse Riverkeeper Samantha Krop and Water Quality Specialist Taylor Register added knocking on doors as another way to potentially find the source of Slocum Creek pollution.

A Sound Rivers investigation revealed where the ongoing pollution of Slocum Creek was coming from earlier this year: Wolf Pit Branch, an area with older homes hooked up to septic systems, as opposed to the City of Havelock sewer system. In an effort to narrow down the source of pollution further, informational mailers were sent to residents this summer, but there was no response to the joint Sound Rivers-Craven County request for assistance.

So last Friday, Sam and Taylor decided to visit residents in person.

“Our idea was to go out and try to talk to homeowners directly and build relationships there,” Taylor said. “We talked to a few people who were super-friendly and concerned about the health of Slocum Creek, and for those who weren’t home, we left our resources on their doors.”

The door-knocking and meeting community residents unexpectedly yielded a big win for the Riverkeeping team.

“Honestly, we weren’t really expecting much from doing this, but it’s a really good thing we did because we actually had someone reach out and offered to let us access the upstream portion of Wolf Pit from their backyard,” Taylor said. “This is a really big deal because we’ve not been able to do any sampling in that upstream portion since it’s completely inaccessible by kayak and from the road.”

Taylor — who’s been working on this investigation for over a year — said the offer to access Wolf Pit Branch might just bring resolution to the ongoing pollution.

“This might lead us to finally being able to pin down the source to an exact property, which is really, really exciting to me,” she said.

Prior to knocking on doors, the two paddled up Slocum Creek via kayak to collect more water samples from Slocum Creek, since the area had its first rain in weeks.

“When we got out there, we were surprised to find that the water levels were super-high, so much so that the actual tributary from Wolf Pit was flooded through the woods into the main stem of the creek,” Taylor said. “Because of that, all of the samples we collected came back pretty high, almost 10 times the EPA’s standard for bacteria, including our upstream site that is usually uncontaminated. So, in terms of source tracking, this data wasn’t the most helpful, but it still showed a sharp increase in the amount of fecal bacteria following a rain event.” 

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