To report water pollution, call 560-SWIM (7946).
Streams, lakes, reservoirs, and other waters throughout the state and the nation are being polluted by many different types of nonpoint source pollution, including stormwater runoff. The 1987 Clean Water Act amendments mandate that urbanized areas develop stormwater management programs to address urban nonpoint source pollution and to restore and protect these impaired waters. The City of Durham was issued an NPDES permit to discharge stormwater runoff in 1995.
Many streams and other waters in Durham County fail to meet water quality standards or to fully support all their designated uses. Some lakes and estuaries fed by these streams are also not meeting water quality standards. This impairment affects our ability to use these resources for fishing, swimming and boating activities, or as sources of drinking water.
The City of Durham's Stormwater Services Division has developed a Water Quality Program to manage and control sources of pollution that cause or contribute to water quality impairment at various scales including local urban streams, regional reservoirs and river basins. The Water Quality Program addresses pollutants from dry weather discharges as well as stormwater runoff. Categories of sources include: industrial and related facilities; residential and commercial areas; and illicit connections and illegal dumping. Through monitoring, management and maintenance programs, and public education efforts, the amount of stormwater pollution in our urban streams and lakes will be reduced. More information is provided in the links below:
Northeast Creek Watershed
Pollution Source Characterization
Pollution Investigations
Stream Monitoring
Stream Restoration & Watershed Master Planning
Commercial & Industrial Pollution Prevention
Residential Pollution Prevention
Terms and Definitions
The State of Our Streams Report is a report to City of Durham residents to describe water quality issues during the previous calendar year. The State of Our Streams Report summarizes water quality data collected by the City of Durham using a water quality index. The water quality index is determined for each stream monitoring site that is visited regularly by Stormwater Services. The State of Our Streams Report also discusses factors that contribute to water pollution and the types of water pollution determined during investigations. The State of Our Streams Report is published each year following a complete calendar year of water quality monitoring.
NPDES Annual Report: The City of Durham produces an annual report to the State of North Carolina on the status of stormwater management. This annual report, which is required by a federal National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit, details programs and practices implemented by the City to fulfill permit requirements and reduce pollution entering our streams. New initiatives and programs, comparisons of data to water quality standards, and summaries of water quality investigations are contained in this report.
The Water Quality Program addresses pollutants from dry weather discharges as well as stormwater runoff:
Restoring our urban streams requires finding and eliminating illicit discharges and illegal dumping. The Water Quality Program uses public participation as well as stream monitoring to help find sources of pollution so they can be eliminated. Experienced field investigators use a variety of instruments, tests, and techniques to determine whether pollution is likely to be present and if so, where it is coming from. Chemical tests that can be conducted in the field include measurements for copper, total and free chlorine, ammonia, phenols. Field investigators use maps, Geographic Information Systems, dye tracing, and other techniques to help find sources of pollution so they can be eliminated.
Report pollution - call 560-7946 (hotline) or 560-4326 (Public Works/Stormwater Services)
Results of our pollution investigations by watershed [Available soon]
Results of our investigations by type of pollutant [Available soon]
The North Carolina Division of Water Quality monitors river basins every five years as part of the state's basin planning process. Streams in the north and eastern part of Durham are in the Neuse River Basin, while streams in the southwest are in the Cape Fear River Basin. The state's monitoring has found that urban streams generally have high levels of fecal coliform bacteria, impaired aquatic life support, and problems with excessive sediment or turbidity.
All but one of these impaired waters receive significant runoff from the City of Durham.
As part of its effort to restore and protect streams and other waters receiving runoff from the City of Durham, Stormwater Services Water Quality Program has developed a number of stream monitoring programs:
Full restoration of these impaired streams' lakes and other waters will require a better understanding of the extent of impairment, its causes and its sources. It will also require improvements in management practices. Stream monitoring supports these and other program objectives.
The Water Quality Program has in place several programs to address excessive levels of fecal coliform bacteria, including intensive stream monitoring, and illicit discharge detection and elimination.
Restoring streams that have impaired aquatic life support will be challenging, but success in Ellerbee Creek shows that improvement is possible. The Division of Water Quality's benthic ratings for Ellerbee Creek improved from poor (one of the lowest rated streams in the Neuse River Basin) in 1995 to fair in 2000. Contributing factors for this improvement may include: closure of the City's landfill, improved control of illicit discharges, and improvements in treatment at the North Durham Water Reclamation Facility. While this improvement is encouraging, a rating of "fair" still indicates impairment.
Complete restoration of streams rated as "fair" will require a better understanding of the causes of impairment. While pollution is clearly involved, poor habitat is also a major cause of biological impairment. Many streams have been straightened and had their channels dredged and reshaped. Other streams have undergone erosion and down-cutting in response to increased stormwater flows resulting from urbanization. Stream restoration is a relatively young field that restores streams to a stable configuration with more natural characteristics, improved sediment transport, and improved habitat for aquatic life.
The first restoration project in Durham was a demonstration project by the Durham Soil and Water Conservation District and its partners under a NC Clean Water Management Trust Fund grant that provided limited restoration of a section of Goose Creek along Eastway Elementary School and xxx Park south of Holloway Street in Northeast Central Durham. The success of this limited project has spawned interest in the restoration of portions of other streams around the city. Planned restoration projects include:
Stormwater Services will be developing hydrologic, hydraulic and water quality computer models of its streams. These models will be used to support developing watershed master plans that should provide more comprehensive solutions to flooding, drainage and water quality problems in these streams.
Stormwater Services conducts or funds a number of programs to reduce pollution from commercial and industrial sources:
Stormwater Services conducts or funds a number of programs to reduce pollution from residential sources. These programs include:
Nonpoint Source Pollution - pollution from diffuse sources that cannot be identified as entering a water body at a single location, such as a pipe. In practice, any pollution that does not come from an NPDES permitted discharge usually is taken to be nonpoint source pollution, regardless of whether it is coming from a diffuse source. Categories of non-point source pollution may include agricultural runoff, urban stormwater runoff (unless under an NPDES permit), land development (unless under an NPDES permit) and atmospheric deposition directly onto water surfaces.
NPDES - stands for National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System. The term refers to the permits issued to point source dischargers by federal and state regulators to prevent pollutants from causing exceedances of water quality standards. Initially, NPDES permits were issued to industrial and municipal wastewater treatment plants. More recently such permits have been required for any discharge to waters of the state, including municipal stormwater discharges and other sources that historically have been viewed as non-point source pollution.
Point Source Pollution - a point source is any discernable, confined, discrete conveyance from which pollutants are or may be discharged to surface waters. All such discrete sources are required to obtain an NPDES permit for any discharge. Examples include wastewater discharges from industrial and municipal treatment plants.
State-wide stream impairment - more than 2,800 miles of streams in North Carolina are failing to meet water quality standards. Most of these streams are being impaired by non-point source pollution: agricultural runoff, urban runoff, land development, atmospheric deposition, and other diffuse sources of pollution. North Carolina and federal water quality regulations now mandate that cities and urbanized counties develop stormwater management programs to restore and protect waters that receive runoff from urban areas.