North Carolina · county
Two things here need attention.
Two things could not be determined from the record.
Public records for Catawba County cover 81 named waterways across 24 sub-watersheds, and 148 active water systems serving about 141,420 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
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| CATAWBA RIVER (Lake Norman below elevation 760) | Not assessed | Not considered safe | PCBS - FISH CONSUMPTION ADVISORY, TURBIDITY |
| Clark Creek | Not considered safe | Not assessed | COPPER, FECAL COLIFORM |
| Clark Creek (Shooks Lake) | On record, no conclusion | Not assessed | BENTHIC MACROINVERTEBRATES BIOASSESSMENTS |
| Drowning Creek | Not assessed | Not assessed | FISH BIOASSESSMENTS |
| Falling Creek | On record, no conclusion | Not assessed | BENTHIC MACROINVERTEBRATES BIOASSESSMENTS |
| Forney Creek | Not assessed | Not assessed | FISH BIOASSESSMENTS |
| Frye Creek | Not assessed | Not assessed | BENTHIC MACROINVERTEBRATES BIOASSESSMENTS |
| Henry Fork | Meets the standard | Not assessed | FISH PASSAGE BARRIER, FLOW REGIME MODIFICATION |
| Horseford Creek | Not assessed | Not assessed | BENTHIC MACROINVERTEBRATES BIOASSESSMENTS |
| Indian Creek | On record, no conclusion | Not assessed | FISH BIOASSESSMENTS |
| Killian Creek | Not assessed | Not assessed | FISH BIOASSESSMENTS |
| Lower Little River | On record, no conclusion | Not assessed | FISH BIOASSESSMENTS |
Showing 12 of 81 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 Hickory | 71,393 | 0 | 0 |
| City of Newton | 18,407 | 0 | 0 |
| City of Conover | 15,347 | 0 | 0 |
| Town of Maiden | 5,563 | 0 | 0 |
| Town of Longview | 5,244 | 0 | 0 |
| Southeast Catawba County | 5,080 | 0 | 0 |
| City of Claremont | 2,645 | 0 | 0 |
| Town of Catawba | 1,617 | 0 | 0 |
| Wildlife Woods Campground Inc | 775 | 0 | 0 |
| Cross Country Campground Inc | 627 | 1 | 1 |
| Pebble Bay | 587 | 0 | 0 |
| Homestead S/d Water System | 389 | 0 | 0 |
Showing the 12 largest of 148 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: 148 active water systems serve Catawba 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.
State assessments under the Clean Water Act list Clark Creek, Rocky River as not supporting recreation. That is an official determination about the waterway, not a measurement taken today.
62 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 Catawba County report