side of the river," Howard says, and then 

 people would go in swimming. "At the blue 

 stage, it would stain swimsuits. It left green 

 and blue collars on the piers and pound net 

 stakes, and a blue smear along the beach 

 where it met the water." 



Homeowners in the Arrowhead 

 community, where Howard lives, were 

 furious. "Everybody was upset, and some- 

 body had to take the lead," Howard says. So 

 he did. 



With a group of friends from the 

 Arrowhead Property Owners Association, 

 Howard signed on with the regional Stream 

 Watch program. Now incorporated into the 

 N.C. Department of Environment and 

 Natural Resources (DENR), Stream Watch 

 helps local residents to "adopt" a waterway 

 and act on its behalf. The new volunteers 

 gathered information about the water 



Hans Paerl, a Sea Grant researcher and 

 champion of water quality improvement on the Chowan 



quality, ecology and history of the 

 Chowan, and they searched for industries 

 and other facilities contributing to the 

 pollution of the river. With the help of a 

 fisheries grant from the Z. Smith Reynolds 

 Foundation, the Arrowhead group also 

 purchased a water-quality test kit and 

 began monitoring the river's dissolved 

 oxygen levels, pH, turbidity, salinity and 

 temperature. 



Armed with new information, the 

 volunteers began publicizing the river's 

 plight and encouraging other residents to 

 get involved. Residents from the Arrow- 

 head community traveled up and down the 

 river, getting the word out to as many 

 people as they could. "We attended 

 women's clubs and Lions clubs, letting 

 them know what was going on and how to 

 help," Howard says. 



Group 

 members also 

 attended 

 public hear- 

 ings for 

 National 

 Pollutant 

 Discharge 

 Elimination 

 System 

 (NPDES) 

 permits, which 

 industries and 

 treatment 

 plants must 

 maintain in 

 order to 

 discharge 

 wastewater. If 

 the Arrowhead 

 group believed 

 that businesses 

 were not 

 abiding by the 

 regulations 

 required to 

 maintain the 

 permit, they 

 spoke up 

 about it at the 

 hearings. 



Patrick Stanforth, director of the 

 Albemarle-Pamlico Citizens Water Quality 

 Monitoring Program between 1997 and 

 1998, has high praise for Howard. When 

 the monitoring program was established in 

 the late 1980s, Howard's group immedi- 

 ately joined. "He's as grassroots as they 

 get," Stanforth says. "He's one of the 

 cornerstones of it being a productive 

 program." 



The Albemarle-Pamlico Citizens 

 Water Quality Monitoring Program 

 receives funding through the Environmen- 

 tal Protection Agency's Albemarle- 

 Pamlico Estuarine Study (APES). Citizens' 

 groups that work with the program receive 

 water-quality monitoring kits and test the 

 water every Tuesday. The data are checked 

 for accuracy at East Carolina University 

 and then compiled into a baseline data set 

 for the river. 



Recently, the program had enough 

 money to purchase a Hatch 2000 monitor- 

 ing kit, which measures nitrogen and 

 phosphorus levels. It's a more expensive 

 and sophisticated instrument than the usual 

 test kits, and the Arrowhead group was 

 selected to use it. "With Captain Al there, 

 we know the Chowan is in good hands," 

 says Stanforth. "I couldn't pick a better 

 advocate for the river." 



A Decade of Research 



Scientists also rallied to defend the 



river. 



"I think the Chowan has been a real 

 success story," says Hans Paerl, a Sea 

 Grant researcher at the University of North 

 Carolina at Chapel Hill. "We hear horror 

 stories about science being slow to respond 

 to problems — that scientists sit in the 

 ivory tower without solutions to practical 

 problems. But in the 1980s, research 

 supported by Sea Grant and the Water 

 Resources Research Institute provided 

 some timely answers and nutrient-reduc- 

 tion strategies." 



In conjunction with the institute, 

 North Carolina Sea Grant focused exten- 

 sive research efforts on river and estuarine 

 processes. Scientists studied flow dynam- 

 Continued 



COASTWATCH 21 



