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Water Quality Specialist Taylor Register was in the field this week, scouting locations for future Slocum Creek sampling.

“With our Slocum Creek (North Carolina) Land and Water Fund grant starting up in January, there’s been a lot of prep work on our end to make sure we have everything in place to start on time,” Taylor said.

For the past two years, Sound Rivers’ Riverkeeping team has been working to identify the source of Slocum Creek’s pollution, and recently confirmed that two sites with failing septic systems are responsible: one at a home in a neighborhood off Wolf Pit Branch and another at Greenfield Heights Mobile Home Community. Steps have been made by the Craven County Health Department to address these issues and stop the pollution, and the Land and Water Fund grant will fund the continuation of Sound Rivers’ work on Slocum Creek.

Taylor will be leading the yearlong project’s field work and sampling efforts, while University of North Carolina’s Institute of Marine Sciences staff will tackle processing and testing for nutrients and DNA.

Taylor’s first step: identifying sample sites.

“These site scouting trips are super important because sites that you think would be a good fit based on mapping will sometimes turn out to be impossible,” she said. “For example, I visited one location that we were pretty confident would be a good option, but after getting there and poking around, I realized that it wasn’t a very safe access point for us to count on. … So, we’ll need to do some rethinking and figure out some alternative sites for that part of the creek.”

She said accessibility and safety are two main requirements for selecting a site.

Taylor did pin down a separate sample site in the upper part of the creek and some unexpected help from the City of Havelock in attaining a third.

“We just found out that we can start sampling the creek behind the Havelock VFW, so a big thanks to the City of Havelock who helped us get connected with them, so we could get our sample access approved by their board,” Taylor said. “We historically haven’t done any sampling that far downstream in Slocum Creek, so I’m really excited about getting a broader set of data for that area.” 

The goal is to collect and process water samples at six sites on 10 separate occasions, with an additional 10 samples for source-tracking purposes.

“We will be looking specifically at bacteria, nutrients and human fecal DNA markers,” Taylor said. “This will be a ton of data, and will help us to paint a picture of the overall health of the entire southwest prong of the creek over the course of a year.”

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