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  • The Wake Weekly

    All sites pass Swim Guide for a second week

    By Reggie Ponder,

    2024-06-02
    https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=1t5IRw_0te62i4c00
    Swim Guide water quality monitoring is entering its third week for the 2024 season. | Contributed photo

    All sites in the Upper Neuse and Tar-Pamlico watersheds passed the Swim Guide test for a second week running.

    Beaver Dam, Rolling View and Milburnie boating access sites were not tested this week.

    “We’ve had little rain this week, so bacteria from stormwater runoff is pretty low,” said Clay Barber, Sound Rivers’ program director. “It’s usually when we’ve had a hard rain that people need to exercise caution on local waterways. If we haven’t had much rain and sites are failing, that points to a different problem, usually infrastructure-based.”

    A Swim Guide fail means elevated levels of fecal bacteria in the water, which can come with increased risk of gastrointestinal illness and skin infections for pets and humans alike.

    Swim Guide is an international water-quality program conducted locally by Sound Rivers, an environmental nonprofit based in Raleigh, New Bern and Washington whose mission to keep North Carolina’s waterways fishable, swimmable and drinkable.

    Swim Guide runs from Memorial Day weekend to Labor Day weekend. Each week, a team of Sound Rivers’ volunteers gathers water samples at more than 50 popular recreation sites from the Piedmont to the Pamlico Sound. Sound Rivers’ staff test samples for E. coli in fresh water and enterococci in salt water and pass/fail results are released to the public, providing an easy way to find out where it’s safe to swim.

    Eighteen of the sites are located in the Upper Neuse and Tar-Pamlico river basins: at the Hickory Hill boat ramp, Ledge Rock boat ramp, Beaver Dam Lake day-use area, Rolling View boat ramp, Highway 50 launch and recreation area, Upper Barton Creek boat ramp and Falls of the Neuse canoe launch; canoe launches at Buffaloe Road, Milburnie, and Poole Road in Raleigh; the River Walk and Neuse Golf Club in Clayton; Town Commons Park in Smithfield, and Clubhouse Beach, Clubhouse boat dock, Moccasin Dock, Pavilion Beach and Pavilion boat dock at Lake Royale near Louisburg.

    Sound Rivers’ Swim Guide program is sponsored by the Water-Quality Fund in memory of Gene Pate, Grady-White Boats, Public Radio East, Cummins, UNC Lenoir Health Care, Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, UNC Pavel Molchanov Scholars, ECU SECU Public Fellows Internship Foundation, City of Greenville, Lake Royale Property Owners Association, Greenville Evening Rotary Club, Melinda Vann and David Silberstein, and Wendy and Tim Wilson.

    To sign up for Swim Guide notifications, go to soundrivers.org/swimguide or text “SWIM” to 833-686-5322 for weekly water-quality results.

    The post All sites pass Swim Guide for a second week first appeared on Restoration NewsMedia .

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