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Sound Rivers Program Director Clay Barber joined municipal and county officials, representatives from universities, fellow nonprofits and state agencies this week at a brainstorming workshop. The subject: trails and creating a new regional organization to promote, fund, build, connect and maintain them.

“There are four big regional trails in North Carolina, but there’s a gap on the east, in both the north and south, so this was trying to think of ways to create a new regional trails organization. It was a real Who’s Who of agencies and organizations,” Clay said. “Basically, it was a workshop with regional partners who believe that trails are important and good and need maintenance and expansion and to be connected.”

More than 100 people from Hertford County to the Outer Banks attended Wednesday’s Northeast Regional Trails Organization workshop, which was hosted by Roanoke River Partners and held at Moratoc Park on the Roanoke River in Williamston. Sound Rivers was issued an invitation to the event for two reasons, according to Clay.

“We are already a well-known regional organization that also has a paddle trail,” Clay said. “They very purposefully gathered everyone in related fields surrounding trails — how can we work together, what are the barriers — and since it’s a regional thing, that means a bunch of counties are going to have to work together. The turnout was massive. You had a room full of passionate planners and they are ready to go.”

Clay described the daylong workshop as a “very loose, but very cool” event and said the next step in the potential creation of a regional trails organization is another meeting, this time brainstorm implementation. Clay said he’s all in.

“We’ve been working on getting more resources for our paddle trail. It could be if this thing gets going, we could brand the Tar-Pamlico Water Trail as part of a regional trail and could get more funding to promote and maintain it,” Clay said.

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