Edgar Miller, Executive Director and Riverkeeper

Significant progress is being made in establishing more stringent water quality standards to protect public health and water quality in North Carolina. NC Riverkeepers, including the Yadkin Riverkeeper, have been at the forefront of advocating for these changes to ensure our waters are drinkable, swimmable and fishable. For latest regulatory and policy developments see below:

NC Environmental Management Commission (EMC) Approves Triennial Review Water Quality Standards At its March 10 meeting, the NC EMC approved new water quality standards for cyanide, impacting YRK’s work on Badin Lake. The EMC also committed to converting the state to an e. coli standard for measuring harmful bacteria in our state’s Class B (recreational use) waters, moving away from using a more general fecal coliform standard. NC is one of only four remaining states still using the fecal coliform standard. Riverkeepers statewide have been sampling for e. coli for several years and are consistently finding high levels above EPA’s recommended guidelines. In addition to committing to the new e. coli standard, the EMC approved requiring the measurement of available or total cyanide compared to the initial recommendation to go with free or total cyanide. YRK and other experts commented that just measuring free cyanide would not include some cyanide containing compounds that could release more harmful free cyanide into the environment under certain conditions. The proposed standards now go the Regulatory Review Commission and NC Attorney General before being submitted to EPA for final approval, hopefully in July.

NC EMC to Vote on High Rock Lake (HRL) Chlorophyll-a Standard – As a starting point for establishing a Nutrient Management Strategy (NMS) for High Rock Lake to reduce nutrient pollution and harmful algal blooms (HABs), the NC EMC will be voting on a new site-specific chlorophyll-a standard for High Rock Lake at its July meeting. The proposed new standard is 35 micrograms/L of chlorophyll-a measured as a geomean of results taken at several monitoring stations on HRL during the algae “growing season,” April to October. As proposed, if the standard is exceeded in a growing season additional nutrient reductions will be required upstream to meet the standard. The standard also will establish targets for the HRL Nutrient Management Strategy under development by the NC Division of Water Resources, which is looking at an alternative management strategy to reduce nutrient pollution in HRL. Yadkin Riverkeeper is advocating the establishment of specific numerical nutrient water quality standards to achieve the new chlorophyll-a standard and reduce the potential for HABs in the Yadkin Pee Dee Lakes. YRK submitted extensive public comments in support of the new rule last summer.

Yadkin Pee Dee River Basinwide Water Resources Management Plan Under Development – The NC Division of Water Resources, Basin Planning Branch, has released a draft of the Yadkin Pee Dee River Basinwide Water Resources Management Plan, updating the most recent 2008 Plan. YRK staff is reviewing the 1,000-plus page document, which contains vast amounts of information, watershed maps and data documenting the current health of the watershed and potential areas of concerns. The plan also includes numerous recommendations on how to improve water quality in the basin and references YRK’s Roadmap to a Cleaner Yadkin report. YRK will be submitting comments in support of the recommendations in the report, as well as encouraging stronger language supporting nutrient pollution reduction and greater transparency and oversight of the poultry industry in the watershed. The report estimates more than 280 million chickens are produced in the basin annually based on the 2017 USDA Agricultural Census data.

Complete the Trails Funds to Support Improvements to the Yadkin River State Trail Blueway. Yadkin Riverkeeper is slated to receive $50,000 in capacity building funds and just over $210,000 in state funding to begin making improvements to the Yadkin River State Trail (YRST) to make the user experience more enjoyable and safer. YRK has signed an agreement with the NC Division of State Parks and Recreation to begin administering the funds and plans to implement a mini-grant program to provide funds to local government and nonprofit partners to make improvements to existing access areas and develop new access areas. YRK will be releasing new on-line and printed YRST maps in time for the summer paddle season and will begin putting new mile marker signs featuring the new official YRST trail blaze along the River in Yadkin County this Spring.

Advocacy Opportunity: NC Division of Water Resources (NCDWR) Requesting Public Comments on Digester System General Permit for Swine and Dairy Lagoons – The NCDWR is requesting public comments on the proposed general permit requirements for anaerobic digesters to be added to liquid animal waste lagoons to recover methane gas for energy. The NC General Assembly passed legislation in 2021 requiring the state to develop a permit for digester systems to facilitate a controversial effort in southeaster NC by Smithfield and Dominion Energy to recover and refine methane gas from 20 hog farms in Duplin and Sampson County. The farms would be networked together by a gas pipeline that would bring the gas to a centralized refinery to be “cleaned up” and distributed via existing commercial natural gas pipelines. YRK is not only concerned this system would perpetuate the inadequate and antiquated “lagoon and spray field” management system for waste from concentrated animal feeding operations or “CAFOs,” but also that it will further concentrate nitrogen and related compounds in the sludge making land application more problematic. In addition, the permits would apply to large dairies in the Yadkin watershed that might be interested in recovering methane for on farm use. YRK will be evaluating how that technology might impact water quality in the basin, particularly as it relates to elevated bacteria and nutrients in the South Yadkin. NCDWR will be holding a public hearing on the proposed new permit requirements in our watershed on April 19 at the Statesville Civic Center. Please contact Edgar Miller, Yadkin Riverkeeper, at edgar@yadkinriverkeeper.org, if you are interested in learning more about this issue and would like to comment on the issue.