For the 315 miles of the Neuse, there are more than 400 permitted point-source waste discharges. These are the effluents from individually identifiable sources like sewage treatment plants. From the extraordinary heavy rains that fell upstream, the river received fertilizers, animal wastes, and other insults to the water's integrity. Usually a translucent brown in color, the river flows black at our location. How long these and other effects will last no one knows, nor can anyone predict the full range of the storms' ravages, which only added to pre-existing injury.
Vigilance is called for.
Organizations like the Neuse River Foundation and its riverkeeper Rick Dove, and the UNC-Chapel Hill Institute of Marine Sciences and its frequent spokesman Hans Paerl, will monitor the changes and prescribe remedies, including reduction in the river's nitrogen and the planting of buffer zones between the water's edge and human enterprise. I confess, though, to hope. In the few calm days after Dennis, in the halcyon blue weeks after Floyd, I've watched trout and striped mullet jumping in the river. A neighbor has set a net and caught a hundred feisty spot. The dolphins have gamboled both upstream and down.