North Carolina · county
Two things here need attention.
Two things could not be determined from the record.
Public records for Gates County cover 41 named waterways across 20 sub-watersheds, and 2 active water systems serving about 11,646 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adams Swamp | Not considered safe | Not assessed | DISSOLVED OXYGEN, ESCHERICHIA COLI (E. COLI) |
| Blackwater River - Lower | On record, no conclusion | Not considered safe | DISSOLVED OXYGEN, MERCURY IN FISH TISSUE |
| Blackwater River - Lower Middle | Meets the standard | Not considered safe | DISSOLVED OXYGEN, MERCURY IN FISH TISSUE |
| Nottoway River - Lower | Meets the standard | Not considered safe | DISSOLVED OXYGEN, MERCURY IN FISH TISSUE |
| Somerton Creek | Not considered safe | Not assessed | BENTHIC MACROINVERTEBRATES BIOASSESSMENTS, ESCHERICHIA COLI (E. COLI) |
| Unsegmented Tributary to Blackwater | Not assessed | Not considered safe | BENTHIC MACROINVERTEBRATES BIOASSESSMENTS, MERCURY IN FISH TISSUE |
| Buckhorn Creek | Not assessed | Not assessed | PH |
| Dismal Swamp Canal & Feeder Ditch to Lake Drummond | On record, no conclusion | Not considered safe | MERCURY IN FISH TISSUE |
| March Swamp | Not considered safe | Not assessed | ESCHERICHIA COLI (E. COLI) |
| Pasquotank River | Meets the standard | Meets the standard | COPPER, DISSOLVED OXYGEN |
| Unsegmented rivers in K36R (not PWS area) | Not assessed | Not considered safe | MERCURY IN FISH TISSUE |
| UT to Blackwater | On record, no conclusion | Not considered safe | MERCURY IN FISH TISSUE |
Showing 12 of 41 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gates County Water System | 11,621 | 0 | 0 |
| Dollar General #22761 | 25 | 0 | 0 |
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: 2 active water systems serve Gates County. None currently has 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 Adams Swamp, Somerton Creek, March Swamp, Darden Mill Run, Nottoway Swamp and 1 more as not supporting recreation. That is an official determination about the waterway, not a measurement taken today.
21 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 Gates County report