Coastal Carolina Riverwatch

The primary goals of Coastal Carolina Riverwatch are:

Elevate the voices from the coastal community about targeted water quality concerns.
Increase coastal ecology and water quality knowledge and educational opportunities for under-served coastal communities.
Advocate for sustainable farmers and fisheries that support water quality improvements, while monitoring potential pollution sources and reporting results of studies that implicate polluters to the proper agencies.
Research, monitor, and assess pollution sources that impact water quality in the White Oak River Basin.
Collaborate with coastal communities to advocate for local, State, and federal policies that protect water quality in coastal NC.
Facilitate the collaborative development of long-term solutions that prevent water quality pollutants including:
Factory Farming and Industrial Agriculture Pollution
Stormwater Pollution
Industrial Pollution
Plastics Pollution
Wastewater Pollution
We accomplish these goals through strong advocacy, outreach and equitable education, regular investigative and emergency watershed monitoring, supporting environmental policy and statewide agency work for the water, assessing and researching water quality concerns from the voices of the coast, and by promoting citizen stewardship.

Coastal Carolina Riverwatch (CCRW) is a women-led grassroots organization driven by the voices of the coast and working through community collaboration to protect water quality and coastal habitat.

The work is funded by your donations and accomplished by an efficient and effective two-person staff, dedicated board of directors, top-of-their-field scientific and research advisors, local government and industry community stakeholders, pro-bono attorney groups, captains and pilots, university partners, local sustainable businesses, and local advocates.

Our mission is to protect the quality of water and quality of life in coastal North Carolina.

ACHIEVEMENTS in 2022:

Through Coastal Carolina Riverwatch’s boots-on-the-ground rapid response program we have documented significant water quality problems that threaten human health and aquatic life and utilize that information to increase awareness and support for improved policies. We conduct research and use facilitated collaborative methods to engage advocates, scientists, industry, government, and other stakeholders to provide top-down prioritized gaps-in-service programming for the communities in coastal NC.

In 2022, Coastal Carolina Riverwatch…

Published Weekly Newsletter to over 2,500 subscribers. Sign up, click here.
Investigated significant pollution events (averaging 1-2 per month) and published outreach content to a social media audience of over 20,000 per month and 2,500 newsletter subscribers.
Investigated potential pollution events (averaging 3-6 per month).
Entities were held accountable for pollution through proper documentation and reporting (averaging 2-3 violation reports per month).
Advocating for the protection of coastal habitat, water quality, and quality of life by providing comments on legislation, policies, regulations, and local planning and development activities (averaging 5 public meetings per month).
Create and sustain gaps-in-service programming that protects water quality:
Water Quality for Fisheries (WQ4F), (NEW IN 2021)
This work encompasses a comprehensive long-term strategy to study and advocate for water quality protection measures in coastal communities.
Achievements for this program in 2022:
Collaborated and communicated with fisheries representatives to address concerns about how water quality impacts fisheries and next steps on prioritized project development.
Collectively learned (from the WQ4F Assessment Process) what is currently being done in the State to address water quality issues impacting fisheries and use the information to develop prioritized project proposals to fund ongoing research and outreach efforts that will protect water quality for fisheries.
Collaboratively made recommendations on what more needs to be done to improve water quality for fisheries.
Proposed next steps that address gaps in addressing what is not currently being done to address water quality issues.
Submitted three project proposals in 2022 to fund further WQ4F work.
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