News

Neuse Riverkeeper Samantha Krop and Volunteer Coordinator Emily Fritz welcomed seven new Water Watchers to the Water Watch team on Wednesday, and introduced them to Sound Rivers’ new, online Water Watch dashboard.

“The Water Watch dashboard was the creation of our summer intern, Avalon Rosenberger, and displays all the data our trained volunteers report to us as they monitor their sites,” Samantha said. “It’s an easy, functional way to share that information not only with us, but with anyone who wants to see what’s going on in various parts of our watersheds.”

(See the Water Watch dashboard here!)

Held at the Lenoir County Cooperative Extension, the Kinston event was the fifth in the series of Water Watch trainings. 2025 trainings have taken place in Oriental, Blounts Creek, Washington and New Bern.

“We had seven people last night, which was much smaller than our previous trainings, but it was a good crew,” Samantha said. “The people who attended were really engaged and asked lots of great questions.”

Even better news, she said, was that everyone who attended committed to monitor a site — some committed to two sites — along the Neuse River and tributaries in the Kinston area.

“I am stoked because we now have eyes on the Highway 11 boat ramp, Neuseway Nature Park, Adkin Branch and Bob Griffin took the Neuse and a tributary that runs behind his house,” Samantha said.

One couple drove from New Bern to attend the training and has volunteered to monitor Duck Creek a tributary of the Neuse River, just south of Sandy Point, she added.

Sound Rivers’ Water Watch is a science-based program in which community members volunteer to help keep an eye on the waterways by collecting basic observational data about river health once a month. The data gathered informs Sound Rivers, in real time, about the condition of the Neuse and Tar-Pamlico waterways and flags any pollution concerns.

Since the Neuse and Tar-Pamlico watersheds cover a lot of land and water — two rivers, 928,052 acres of estuary, 5,909 miles of streams and 21,423 acres of freshwater lakes across 12,210 square miles of North Carolina — Sound Rivers’ Riverkeepers have a lot of watershed to pay attention to. Water Watch was created because, while they can’t be everywhere at once, they can rely on community members to let them know when things are wrong on the water.

“A Water Watch training is an hour and a half, and people have said the trainings feel really comprehensible, but thorough,” Samantha said. “It’s really fun to growing our Water Watch team.”

The Water Watch team now consists of 34 volunteers monitoring 43 locations in the Neuse and Tar-Pamlico watersheds.

Future trainings are planned for Tarboro and Goldsboro in February 2026 and in Oxford and the Triangle area in April of 2026.

For more information about the Water Watch program, visit the Water Watch page (and watch the introductory video!). To sign up to get alerts about future trainings, visit our Water Watch trainings page here.

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