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Neuse Riverkeeper Samantha Krop, board members of Partners for Environmental Justice, staff from the Walnut Creek Wetland Center and Raleigh’s stormwater department teamed up for a walk through environmental-justice history.

Partnering for last Saturday’s wetland walk through the grounds of the wetland center and beyond, the group tour focused on the area’s history as a dumping ground and its restoration and revitalization thanks to an environmental-justice movement that started in nearby Saint Ambrose Episcopal Church. Partners for Environmental Justice is the outcome of the community organizing to save the wetland.

“It’s so place-based. Everything that we talked about was in front of us: the creek, the plants and the people who are from there — that exact place. We spent two hours getting to know the history and the people,” Samantha said. “That history is important. It’s a historic Black community of two neighborhoods — Rochester Heights and Biltmore Hills — that have been there since before the Clean Water Act. PEJ works with these communities.”

In addition to exploring the site’s history, Samantha introduced the group to the Little Rock Creek trash trap — part of Sound Rivers’ Litter-Free Rivers program — water sampling, visible and invisible pollution threats and how important these small urban waterways are to the Neuse River.  

Samantha was recently asked to join the board of PEJ, which she said made the wetland walk a meaningful collaboration.

“It really was a showcase of some deep partnerships that we’ve been building for a while,” she said. “We want to do more of these events together.”

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