Today, the population of 709,900 occupies a drainage basin of 6,381 square miles. Unlike the situation in the drainage basins of the Albemarle and Pamlico Estuaries, North Carolina's other major estuaries, the population in the Neuse River basin is predominantly urban. Therefore, the predominant influence on the concentration and total amount of nutrients in the Neuse River appears to be still agriculture and forest runoff. This is, however, only a hypothesis and the question of the source of the nutrients entering the Neuse River Estuary should be quantified in some future study. The predominant agricultural products in the Neuse River basin are tobacco, soybeans and hogs.
Tobacco is heavily fertilized and, of course, the hog wastes are a rich source of nutrients.
During the past decade, there has arisen an increased awareness that the estuaries of North Carolina are valuable to the state and that these estuaries could be threatened by pollution. There can be no argument about the value of estuaries to North Carolina. For example, every species of commercial fish or shellfish spends at least one important stage of its life in the estuaries. Thus, a commercial fishery valued at more than 20 million dollars depends on the estuaries. Thus, at six percent, it would take a 333 million dollar investment to produce 20 million dollars.