Plentiful water is worth protecting - Urban pressures and long drought highlight need to manage Salem Creek resources well

By Dr. M. Robert Cooper
 
Water is plentiful in Forsyth County, but the growth of our state’s population and the current 6-year-old drought have highlighted the need to protect and conserve our water supply. The Journal has begun to address the issue of water pollution by calling attention to six polluted creeks in Davidson County that feed High Rock Lake. Davidson County intends to begin a clean-up program of these creeks, anticipating that the state may eventually impose strict water-quality regulations. While these efforts to bring attention to the importance of water quality are laudable, they quietly omit calling attention to one of the greatest offenders of creek pollution - the city of Winston-Salem.

Like many cities, Winston-Salem was established in an area with an abundant water supply. A group of Moravians, looking for an opportunity to further develop their colony in Pennsylvania, traveled south in 1753 to discover the current Winston-Salem/Forsyth County region. Because of ample water and grasslands, they surveyed approximately 100,000 acres on the Three Forks of Muddy Creek, which encompasses a good part of what is now Forsyth County. These founding fathers could not anticipate that the town they would establish on the banks of Salem Creek would grow to its current size and pollute this pristine body of water.
Urbanization has placed considerable pressure on the ecological systems of our region, with the resultant pollution of Salem and Muddy Creeks, the Yadkin River and High Rock Lake. While this situation was to a certain extent inevitable, it has been exacerbated by the intentional pollution of Salem Creek and the inability of both the City-County Utility Commission and the Forsyth Soil and Water Conservation District Board to ensure that rudimentary conservation practices are followed.

Salem Creek is listed on the state’s 303(d) list because of high levels of fecal coliform bacteria, excessive nutrients, sediments and heavy metal pollution. This has occurred because of the loss of riparian vegetation, increased runoff, and the transport of sediment and pollutants to Salem Creek from the city of Winston-Salem.
In an apparent attempt to improve waste management, the City-County Utility Commission has recently completed the installation of two eight-inch pipes along Salem Creek. These pipes pump city sewage from the Muddy Creek pumping station to the Archie Elledge Treatment Plant, where pellets are produced for distribution as fertilizer on lands in Virginia. This engineering activity has further denuded the riparian buffer along Salem Creek and deposited slag on a large portion of the creek bank.
Extensive research has established the importance of riparian buffers in maintaining and improving water quality. The term “riparian buffer” is used to describe lands adjacent to streams where vegetation is strongly influenced by the presence of water. They are often thin lines of native grasses, flowers, shrubs and trees along stream banks. Riparian buffers help to moderate flooding and prevent pollutants such as sediment, nitrogen, phosphorus, pesticides and heavy metals from reaching the stream. Indeed, the city of Winston-Salem’s Stream Management and Restoration Manual, published in June 2003, describes the importance of riparian buffers in improving water quality and the control of flooding.
While our City-County Utility Commission has worked to improve the quality of our creeks and streams, it is obvious that good intentions and hard work are not adequate. In 1952, the Nut Island Sewage Treatment Plant went into operation to help clean up Boston Harbor. Presumably, it could treat all of the sewage produced in the southern half of the Boston metropolitan area and was hailed as the solution to the harbor’s waste-water problems. This state-of-the-art plant became a self-sufficient island, but every show of interest from corporate senior managers and the public was seen as an unwelcome intrusion. After 30 years of hard work and dedicated service to the city of Boston, the Nut Island team was disbanded - and left Boston Harbor no cleaner than it was 30 years earlier.
We have a group of hard-working, well intentioned individuals in Winston-Salem attempting to improve our water supply. And I am convinced that there have been improvements in the management of our pollution of Salem Creek. But as I look at the current denuding of Salem Creek and sequential heaps of slag along its banks, I am convinced that our hard-working and innovative staff may be headed in a “Nut Island” direction. To date, attempts of Salem Creek landowners to work with the City-County Utility Commission and the Soil and Water Conservation District on this problem have been unsuccessful.
It is important that the city of Winston-Salem strengthen its resolve to clean up Salem Creek and other tributaries that eventually drain into High Rock Lake, since we remain a major source of its pollution.
Our rich Moravian heritage requires us not only to have good intentions but also to deliver results.
■ Dr. M. Robert Cooper, a physician, is the past chairman of the N.C. Tree Farm Program and the 2007 N.C. Tree Farmer of the Year. He and his wife, Jean, live on a farm bordering Salem Creek.  This article ran in the Winston-Salem Journal. 

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