TOP: Haywood's Landing offers access to the White Oak River, 

 with its popular padding trails for canoes and kayaks. 

 BOTTOM: Commercial fishing boats at Clyde Phillips' Seafood 

 in Swansboro attest to the river's rich natural resources. 



The White Oak's woes 

 are not unique. "Anytime 

 you have a shallow coastal 

 river, with increased 

 development, you're going 

 to have problems because 

 you don't have the flushing 

 action," Mobley says. 

 "Everybody wants to move 

 to heaven, and coastal 

 North Carolina is heaven. 

 The more people we have, 

 the more contaminants we 

 have, the more pollutants 

 we have." 



Russell Howell, a Cedar 

 Point crabber, says the river 

 has been good to him in the 

 22 years he's worked it. "It's 

 fairly healthy as far as 

 making a living off it," he 

 says. He has seen water 

 quality change, though, as 

 the shoreline has developed 

 and the river flow has altered. 



"We're slowly losing it. 

 I figure it will be good for my 

 lifetime," he says. His son- 

 in-law might not be so lucky. 

 "He'll have problems down 

 the road," Howell says. 



Shellfishers already 

 suffer after thunderstorms. 

 "If we get an inch-and-half 

 of rain, they've got to go 

 elsewhere. It really hurts them 

 when they close the river." 



Wayne Mobley, the state Shellfish 

 Sanitation Section chief, grew up on the White 

 Oak. Vessels in the 1 970s used to take 

 "boatload after boatload" of choice oysters 

 from the rocks between local landmarks called 

 the Turn Stake and Gator Gap, he recalls. 



"People used to oyster there day in and 

 day out," he says. "They were just great oysters." 



The rocks have been off-limits to shellfishing 

 for many years, due to high bacteria levels. Last 

 year's drought, bad news for much of the 

 state, was good for the White Oak. The lack of 

 rain kept runoff low enough to allow oyster har- 

 vesting in some previously closed areas. 



The White Oak's prolific clam beds near 

 the river's mouth have evaded long-term closures. 

 But Mobley worries Hills Bay may soon fall 

 victim to runoff from the widened highway. 



SEEKING SOLUTIONS 



While increased storm water runoff from 

 the widened N.C 24 presents new complexities, 

 many complain the highway has been ruining 

 the river since the road was built in the 1 950s. 

 The bridges and causeways interrupt the tide's 

 natural course to and from Bogue Inlet, some 

 say, so the White Oak can't cleanse itself. 

 Intracoastal Waterway dredging also is suspect 



"If you stop the ebb and flow of a river, 

 the thing will die," says Ray Harris, Carteret 

 County extension director, who lives on the 

 White Oak near Stella. 



As highway widening plans developed in 

 the 1990s, residents feared more pavement 

 would exacerbate shoaling as well as runoff. 

 Harris and his Onslow County counterpart 

 took those worries to the N.C. Cooperative 



Extension Service. Together, the service and 

 concerned citizens got a U.S. Department of 

 Agriculture grant to fund scrutiny of the plans. 



The citizens and other "stakeholders" — 

 known as the White Oak River Watershed 

 Advisory Board — worked with local govern- 

 ments to convince the N.C. Department of 

 Transportation to redesign parts of the 

 expansion to reduce runoff. The board also 

 expects a federal flow study of the river. 



Like many, Harris' interest in the White 

 Oak is personal as well as professional. He 

 loves to watch the sunset paint the water 

 different colors, and to see stars reflected on 

 the surface at night. Even with its troubles, he 

 says, the White Oak is one of the East Coast's 

 finest rivers. "And we definitely do not want to 

 mess it up." 



The White Oak advisory board became 

 the pilot watershed planning group for N.C. 

 Cooperative Extension's Watershed Education 

 for Communities and Local Officials (WECO), 

 aimed at educating communities in how to 

 address their own water quality issues. Barbara 

 Doll, Sea Grant water quality specialist, has 

 been part of the ongoing outreach effort. 



After success with the highway redesign, 

 the advisory board took on other sources of 

 storm water runoff that cause shellfish 

 closures. WECO and the advisory group 

 teamed up with the NC State College of 

 Design, the town of Swansboro, N.C. Shellfish 

 Sanitation Section and Duke University to 

 obtain a $300,000 Environmental Protection 

 Agency grant aimed at improving shellfish 

 waters around Swansboro and Pettiford Creek, 

 an estuarine tributary. 



In Swansboro, dwarf yaupon, daylillies, 

 spirea and other selected species are planted in 

 two prominently placed rain gardens. 



"Rain gardens are designed to slow down 

 storm water runoff and let it percolate into the 

 ground," says WECO's program coordinator 

 Christy Perrin. "And there is some nutrient 

 uptake by the plants themselves." A permeable 

 pavement parking lot is under construction. 

 The demonstration projects illustrate "best 

 management practices" that mitigate urban 

 storm water runoff. 



In Pettiford Creek, the goal is to reduce 

 harmful runoff from a varied landscape. Broad- 

 based teamwork involves WECO, NC State's 

 College of Design and Department of 

 Biological and Agricultural Engineering, Duke 

 Marine Lab, N.C. Shellfish Sanitation Section, 

 Carteret County Cooperative Extension and the 



14 EARLY SUMMER 2003 



