Greenfield Lake – Grant Project To Reduce Pollution

Overview

With grant funds from the EPA and managed by the NC Dept. of Environmental Quality, CFRW, along with partners at UNCW, NC State, the City of Wilmington, and Moffatt & Nichol began work on a multi-tiered project to reduce nutrient loading to Greenfield Lake.

Greenfield Lake suffers from green and blue-green algal blooms, bottom-water hypoxia, fish kills, and high fecal coliform bacterial counts. (Check out the green muck in this video drone footage!)

The lake was placed on the NC 303(d) list of impaired waters in 2014. UNCW has conducted numerous studies and determined that two streams at GFL carry in much higher nutrient input (pollution from runoff) than others. Our project will focus on one of these streams: Jumping Run Branch.

Follow along on our Facebook and Instagram and here on the website for updates on our progress!
Send us (dana@cfrw.us) your photos of GFL to include in our updates!

Check out our Executive Director Dana Sargent talking about our efforts to restore Greenfield Lake! Dana and our partners discuss how universities, local government, a nonprofit, and an engineering firm are collaborating to target the sources of pollution and clean up a lake that is a community amenity and ecological gem.

Photos above show sampling equipment installed by NC State on an offsite testing pond.  Base sampling is being conducted after which NC state will test the effectiveness of a medium projected to remove nutrients that choke water systems.