water quality problems." 



This was the case on Howe Creek. 

 Before it was closed by nonpoint pollution 

 in December 1991, it had been the only 

 New Hanover County tidal creek still open 

 to shellfishing. One by one, all of the 

 county's other creeks had been partially or 

 entirely closed. 



Residents, however, were blindsided 

 by the closure because Howe Creek had 

 been protected as a shellfishing area and 

 an ORW. It was 

 the only tidal 

 creek in the 

 county with this 

 level of protec- 

 tion, meaning 

 that it had excep- 

 tional water 

 quality, no 

 known point 

 sources of pollu- 

 tion and a high 

 resource value 

 when it was 

 designated in 

 1989. 



As such, it 

 has been pro- 

 tected from cer- 

 tain development 

 since that time. 

 Construction 

 within 575 feet 

 of the water 

 must be 

 low-density, 

 covering no 

 more than 25 

 percent of a lot. 



Increased buffer zones of vegetation are 

 required, and no dredge or fill activities 

 are allowed near significant shellfish areas 



But all to no avail. Howe Creek was 

 closed even though recent development 

 has met these ORW standards. 



Follow-up investigations by DEM 

 and Shellfish Sanitation have not yielded 

 much information on specific sources of 

 bacteria, says Beth McGee, an environ- 

 mental supervisor in the water quality 

 planning branch of DEM. 



Because the pollution sources are 

 mostly nonpoint, they're washed from a 

 large land area and are very difficult to 



track. Also, the movement of fecal 

 coliform bacteria into coastal water is 

 still poorly understood. 



But the Howe Creek closing flies in 

 the face of the federal Clean Water Act, 

 which says there should be no water qual- 

 ity degradation, especially in ORWs, says 

 Derb Carter, an attorney with the Southern 

 Environmental Law Center. ORWs ac- 

 count for about 198,000 acres of salt water 

 in North Carolina. 



Jeannie Fans 



The beauty ofHewletts Creek belies the bacterial contamination 

 that has closed it entirely to shellfishing. 



"It is the most stringent classification 

 and doesn't meet the basic anti-degradation 

 policy to protect existing uses," Carter 

 says. 



The anti-degradation policy is part of 

 the Clean Water Act, and it is the principal 

 tool in protecting shellfish waters. It re- 

 quires all states to designate their waters 

 according to their uses as of November 

 1975 and then protect and maintain those 

 uses. 



"The whole notion of it is, we're not 

 going to drop back from clean water to 

 some medium ground between somewhat 

 clean and polluted," Carter says. "We're 



going to do whatever we can not only to 

 restore waters that are impaired but to 

 maintain the clean waters that we have." 



Shellfish closings are an extremely 

 complex problem in all coastal states, 

 McGee says. In North Carolina, DEM has a 

 three-tiered system to protect these and 

 other waters. 



First, coastal salt waters are classified 

 for three basic uses: commercial shell- 

 fishing, class SA; fishing and organized 

 recreation, such 

 as swimming, 

 class SB; and 

 infrequent swim- 

 ming, boating, 

 fish propagation 

 and wildlife uses, 

 class SC. These 

 classifications are 

 used to develop 

 water quality 

 standards, which 

 in turn are used 

 for point and 

 nonpoint source 

 control strategies. 



On top of 

 these uses, waters 

 can be supple- 

 mentally classi- 

 fied "high quality 

 waters" (HQWs) 

 and ORWs, which 

 are given extra 

 protection from 

 certain discharges 

 and stormwater 

 runoff from 

 nearby develop- 

 ment. Shellfish waters, for instance, are 

 automatically HQWs. Waters that qualify 

 as ORWs must meet even stricter criteria 

 than HQWs, and they're protected to a 

 greater degree. But both help meet anti- 

 degradation policies. 



These classifications are the founda- 

 tion of the state's effort to curb water pollu- 

 tion. From there, DEM has built a series of 

 programs to control the elusive nonpoint 

 sources, with varying degrees of success. 

 Congress has also entered the picture with a 

 new incentive for states to get their coastal 

 act together. 



When Congress reauthorized the 



8 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1994 



