North Carolina · county
One thing here needs attention.
Two things could not be determined from the record.
Public records for Bladen County cover 46 named waterways across 41 sub-watersheds, and 25 active water systems serving about 40,804 people. Below is what those records establish — and what they don't.
The state has determined this water doesn't meet standards for eating the fish caught in it. It's close to you, but your water doesn't flow from it.
Official determination, waterway near you · U.S. EPA / state agency — ATTAINS assessed waters
| Waterway | Swimming | Eating the fish | Listed causes |
|---|---|---|---|
| CAPE FEAR RIVER | Meets the standard | Not assessed | BENTHIC MACROINVERTEBRATES BIOASSESSMENTS |
| Jones Lake | Not assessed | Not assessed | PH, LOW |
| Long Branch | Not assessed | Not considered safe | MERCURY, TOTAL |
| Singletary Lake | Not assessed | Not assessed | PH, LOW |
| Big Swamp | Meets the standard | Meets the standard | — |
| Black Lake (Bay Tree Lake) | Not assessed | Not assessed | — |
| Black River | Meets the standard | Not assessed | — |
| Browns Creek (Cross Pond) | On record, no conclusion | Not assessed | — |
| Colly Creek | Meets the standard | Not assessed | — |
| Elkton Marsh | Not assessed | Not assessed | — |
| Ellis Creek | Not assessed | Not assessed | — |
| Friar Swamp (Council Millpond) | Not assessed | Not assessed | — |
Showing 12 of 46 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bladen Co WTR Dist-West Bladen | 14,408 | 0 | 0 |
| Town of White Lake | 5,770 | 1 | 1 |
| Town of Elizabethtown | 5,311 | 0 | 0 |
| Smithfield Fresh Meats Corp - Tar Heel | 4,589 | 0 | 0 |
| Bladen Co WTR Dist-East Bladen | 4,310 | 0 | 0 |
| Town of Bladenboro | 3,175 | 1 | 1 |
| Town of Clarkton | 1,233 | 0 | 0 |
| Town of East Arcadia | 633 | 2 | 2 |
| Town of Dublin | 603 | 1 | 1 |
| Centerville Baptist Church | 125 | 0 | 0 |
| Rowan PFWB Church | 75 | 0 | 0 |
| ST Rest Holiness Church | 75 | 0 | 0 |
Showing the 12 largest of 25 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: 25 active water systems serve Bladen County. 5 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.
None of the 17 waterways assessed for recreation is listed as failing.
29 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 Bladen County report