Advocacy
Florence
Florence: What We’ve Learned
On September 13th, 2018, Category 1 Hurricane Florence began to batter the North Carolina Coast.
Wilmington, North Carolina sits right in between the Atlantic Ocean and the Cape Fear River. Cape Fear River Watch documented and responded to several events before, during and after the storm.
Here is our story.
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Wednesday, Sept. 12: Pre-storm flights. The Waterkeeper Alliance team documents and confirms CAFOs spraying in violation of permit by air. Also patrolled areas by car.
Thursday, Sept. 13 – Saturday, Sept. 15: Wilmington was brutally battered by over 100 mph winds, inundated with 20 – 30 inches of rains and thrashed by several tornadoes. Major damage and flooding occur during this lashing of our coastline.
Thursday, Sept. 13 – Monday, Sept. 17: 17.17 millions of treated and untreated wastewater discharged into the Cape Fear River according to Carolina Beach town officials (discharges were coordinated with the State of North Carolina Division of Water Resources).
Friday, Sept. 14: Cape Fear Public Utility Authority discharges 5.25 million gallons of “partially untreated” wastewater into the Cape Fear River
Monday, Sept. 17: Waterkeeper Alliance’s rapid response team was in the air to photograph Sutton Lake and CAFOs.
View the CAFO shots here courtesy of our volunteer photographer Alan Cradick.
Wednesday, Sept. 19: CFRW and WKA took to the air and documented two total failures of swine lagoons which breached and emptied their contents. One was into the South River and the other into the Northeast Cape Fear River. Numerous lagoons were completely inundated by floodwaters. Dozens of barns, both swine and poultry, were underwater.
Friday, Sept. 21: Documented failure of Sutton Coal Ash Landfill by ground and notified NCDEQ. CFRW launched a boat into Sutton Lake to investigate where and if there were failures in the lake at that point. Also, documented ash flowing into Sutton Lake from multiple locations. CFRW was on the water before Duke Energy or the State. The State wasn’t even on site at the facility when we were on the water taking samples at the landfill breach with colleagues from Earth Justice and Sound Rivers. Two teams made up of CFRW staff Patrick Connell and representatives from Waterkeeper Alliance were simultaneously on the ground taking water samples from creeks around breached and inundated CAFO facilities. Sutton was then overtopped by the river. The lake filled and overtopped the coffer dam surrounding the coal ash pond, turning the river, lake, and pond into one body of water. Then Sutton Lake breached the berm as well as overtopped the berm for hundreds of yards, along the western side of the lake. Coal ash is leaving the lake at all those locations.
Samples were taken and analyzed by commercial labs and scientists at NC State. It is probable that Sutton Lake will now drain leaving the operation of the Sutton Plant in question and releasing an enormous amount of water polluted with coal ash into the Cape Fear.
Saturday, Sept. 22: CFRW hosted reporters at our downtown Wilmington headquarters before members of the Waterkeeper Alliance Rapid Response Team took them to Sutton Lake to document the coal ash contamination.
Saturday, Sept. 22 – Sunday, Sept. 23: CFRW responded to Greenfield Lake fish kill. Documented depleted dissolved oxygen from excess organic material entering the lake.
Monday, Sept. 24: CFRW staff, as part of a statewide rapid Response team, traveled to South Carolina to aid other the Waccamaw Riverkeeper with Winyah Rivers Foundation responding to contamination in their watersheds.
As this was all transpiring we gave countless media interviews. Rachel Maddow, NBC with Lester Holt, Wall Street, New Yorker, Bloomberg, NY Times, AP, Canadian Broadcasting. NPR Morning Edition. The Take Away, etc.
Tuesday, Sept. 25 – Current: CFRW staff locate, document, track and map fish kills in our basin. Reports have come in from Southport, Greenfield Lake, NC Battleship, Castle Hayne Boat Ramp, Rockfish Creek & more.
Cape Fear River Watch | 617 Surry Street | Wilmington, NC 28401 | Phone: 910.762.5606
