North Carolina · county
One thing here needs attention.
Two things could not be determined from the record.
Public records for Avery County cover 163 named waterways across 18 sub-watersheds, and 70 active water systems serving about 17,234 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hampton Creek | Not considered safe | Not assessed | ALTERATION IN STREAM-SIDE OR LITTORAL VEGETATIVE COVERS, ESCHERICHIA COLI (E. COLI) |
| Cane Creek | Not assessed | Not assessed | FISH BIOASSESSMENTS |
| Harper Creek | Not assessed | Meets the standard | PH, LOW |
| Hull Branch | Not assessed | Not assessed | PH, LOW |
| Watauga Reservoir | Not considered safe | Not assessed | MERCURY |
| WATAUGA RIVER | Meets the standard | Not assessed | FISH PASSAGE BARRIER, FLOW REGIME MODIFICATION |
| Anthony Creek | Not assessed | Not assessed | — |
| Baker Branch | Not assessed | Not assessed | — |
| Bear Wallow Hollow Trib | Not assessed | Not assessed | — |
| Bearwallow Creek | Meets the standard | Not assessed | — |
| Bee Tree Creek | Not assessed | Not assessed | — |
| Beech Creek | Not assessed | Not assessed | — |
Showing 12 of 163 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sugar Mountain Utility | 3,226 | 0 | 0 |
| Linville Land Harbor | 2,280 | 1 | 1 |
| Town of Banner Elk | 1,164 | 0 | 0 |
| Town of Newland | 999 | 1 | 1 |
| Elk River Club Development | 732 | 0 | 0 |
| Linville Ridge | 710 | 0 | 0 |
| Grandfather MTN Entrance | 500 | 0 | 0 |
| Linville Resorts Inc | 499 | 1 | 1 |
| Town of Elk Park | 495 | 0 | 0 |
| Blue Ridge Village | 343 | 1 | 1 |
| Charles A Cannon Memorial Hospital | 320 | 0 | 0 |
| Grandfather MTN Picnic Area | 300 | 0 | 0 |
Showing the 12 largest of 70 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: 70 active water systems serve Avery County. 10 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 Hampton Creek, Watauga Reservoir, Simerly Creek as not supporting recreation. That is an official determination about the waterway, not a measurement taken today.
139 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 Avery County report