North Carolina · county
One thing here needs attention.
Two things could not be determined from the record.
Public records for Alamance County cover 69 named waterways across 28 sub-watersheds, and 101 active water systems serving about 134,513 people. Below is what those records establish — and what they don't.
A state determination under the Clean Water Act. This is one of several assessed waterways in the area you searched — search a street address to see which waters connect to you.
Official determination, waterway near you · U.S. EPA / state agency — ATTAINS assessed waters
| Waterway | Swimming | Eating the fish | Listed causes |
|---|---|---|---|
| HAW RIVER | Not considered safe | Not assessed | COPPER, FECAL COLIFORM |
| Reedy Fork (Hardys Mill Pond) | Not considered safe | Not assessed | BENTHIC MACROINVERTEBRATES BIOASSESSMENTS, FECAL COLIFORM |
| Back Creek (Graham-Mebane Reservoir) | Not assessed | Not assessed | CHLOROPHYLL-A - AQUATIC LIFE USE SUPPORT, NITROGEN, TOTAL |
| Cane Creek (Cane Creek Reservoir) | Not assessed | Not assessed | BENTHIC MACROINVERTEBRATES BIOASSESSMENTS |
| Dry Creek | Not assessed | Meets the standard | BENTHIC MACROINVERTEBRATES BIOASSESSMENTS |
| Haw Creek | Not assessed | Not assessed | BENTHIC MACROINVERTEBRATES BIOASSESSMENTS |
| Jordan Creek | On record, no conclusion | Not assessed | BENTHIC MACROINVERTEBRATES BIOASSESSMENTS |
| Little Alamance Creek (Gant Lake, Mays Lake)(Alamance County | Not assessed | Not assessed | BENTHIC MACROINVERTEBRATES BIOASSESSMENTS |
| North Prong Stinking Quarter Creek | Not assessed | Not assessed | FISH BIOASSESSMENTS |
| Rock Creek | Not assessed | Not assessed | CHLOROPHYLL-A - AQUATIC LIFE USE SUPPORT |
| Rocky River | Meets the standard | Not assessed | CHLOROPHYLL-A - AQUATIC LIFE USE SUPPORT, BENTHIC MACROINVERTEBRATES BIOASSESSMENTS |
| Stinking Quarter Creek | Not assessed | Not assessed | BENTHIC MACROINVERTEBRATES BIOASSESSMENTS |
Showing 12 of 69 waterways on record — the full report has all of them. "Not considered safe" is a state determination under the Clean Water Act, not a measurement taken today. "Not assessed" means unknown — never clean.
| System | Serves | Health-based violations since 2021 | Without recorded resolution |
|---|---|---|---|
| City of Burlington | 61,365 | 0 | 0 |
| City of Mebane | 20,212 | 0 | 0 |
| City of Graham | 18,354 | 0 | 0 |
| Town of Elon | 11,350 | 0 | 0 |
| Town of Haw River | 2,650 | 0 | 0 |
| Town of Swepsonville | 2,497 | 0 | 0 |
| Town of Green Level | 2,450 | 0 | 0 |
| Town of Ossipee | 2,390 | 0 | 0 |
| Southern Middle & High Schools | 2,337 | 0 | 0 |
| Village of Alamance | 1,200 | 0 | 0 |
| Saxapahaw Utility Company | 880 | 0 | 0 |
| Clover Garden Charter School | 680 | 0 | 0 |
Showing the 12 largest of 101 active systems serving the county. Health-based violations are shown alone — administrative (paperwork) records are counted separately and never added in, because most violation records are paperwork.
No public dataset can establish that any tap is safe or unsafe — records have gaps, lag by up to a quarter, and say nothing about a building's own plumbing or private wells.
What the records do show: 101 active water systems serve Alamance County. 3 of them currently have an unresolved health-based violation on record. Health-based violations are counted separately from paperwork violations, which make up most records.
State assessments under the Clean Water Act list HAW RIVER, Reedy Fork (Hardys Mill Pond), Town Branch, Little Troublesome Creek as not supporting recreation. That is an official determination about the waterway, not a measurement taken today.
57 of the county's waterways on record have never been assessed for swimming — their condition is unknown.
Datasets refresh on their agencies' cycles — EPA drinking-water records quarterly, state waterway assessments roughly every two years. The sources table on this page lists the version and retrieval date of every dataset used.
| Dataset | Agency version | Retrieved |
|---|---|---|
| EPA/state ATTAINS waterway assessments | ATTAINS_Assessment ArcGIS snapshot (gispub.epa.gov) | 2026-08-15 |
| ATTAINS waterway geometry | ATTAINS_Assessment ArcGIS lines + areas (gispub.epa.gov) | 2026-08-16 |
| Census TIGER county boundaries | Census TIGERweb Counties (current vintage) | 2026-08-16 |
| NC DEQ PFAS monitoring | NC DEQ DWR EQuIS export, samples through 2025-07-29 | 2026-08-17 |
| Census TIGER place boundaries | Census TIGERweb Places (Incorporated + CDP, current vintage) | 2026-08-16 |
| EPA water system service areas | EPA PWS Service Areas v3 (hosted layer, item 80c6912ef14f46e480f5afd807767b4b) | 2026-08-15 |
| EPA Safe Drinking Water Act compliance records | ECHO SDWA quarterly bulk download | 2026-08-16 |
| EPA standards & benchmarks | 2026-08 curation | 2026-08-15 |
| EPA UCMR5 PFAS monitoring | UCMR5 occurrence data (collections through 2025-12-10) | 2026-08-15 |
| USGS watershed boundaries | USGS WBD via National Map MapServer | 2026-08-15 |
Records lag their agencies' refresh cycles — a recent change may not appear yet. Absence from a dataset is absence of a record, never evidence that water is clean.
The interactive report adds the map, monitoring-station samples, permitted operations in connected watersheds, and plain-language explanations of every term.
See the full Alamance County report