North Carolina · county
One thing here needs attention.
Two things could not be determined from the record.
Public records for Pender County cover 80 named waterways across 49 sub-watersheds, and 54 active water systems serving about 62,229 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alligator Bay | Meets the standard | Not considered safe | PATHOGENS |
| Batts Mill Creek (Barlow Creek) | Not assessed | Not considered safe | PATHOGENS |
| Beckys Creek (Bishops Creek) | Not assessed | Not considered safe | PATHOGENS |
| Burgaw Creek | On record, no conclusion | Not assessed | BENTHIC MACROINVERTEBRATES BIOASSESSMENTS, COPPER |
| CAPE FEAR RIVER | Meets the standard | Not assessed | BENTHIC MACROINVERTEBRATES BIOASSESSMENTS, DISSOLVED OXYGEN |
| CAPE FEAR RIVER | On record, no conclusion | Not assessed | PH, LOW, DISSOLVED OXYGEN |
| County Line Branch | Not assessed | Not considered safe | PATHOGENS |
| Cypress Branch | Not assessed | Not considered safe | PATHOGENS |
| Everett Bay | Not assessed | Not considered safe | PATHOGENS |
| Futch Creek | Not assessed | Not considered safe | PATHOGENS |
| Goose Bay | Not assessed | Not considered safe | PATHOGENS |
| Hardison Creek | Not assessed | Not considered safe | PATHOGENS |
Showing 12 of 80 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pender County Utilities | 32,302 | 14 | 14 |
| Town of Surf City | 9,730 | 1 | 1 |
| Town of Burgaw | 4,250 | 1 | 1 |
| Town of Topsail Beach | 3,495 | 5 | 5 |
| Belvedere Plantation | 3,462 | 0 | 0 |
| Scott`s Hill Baptist CH-Front | 1,600 | 0 | 0 |
| Maple Hill Water District | 968 | 5 | 5 |
| Castle Bay S/d | 777 | 0 | 0 |
| Scott`s Hill Baptist Church | 600 | 0 | 0 |
| Olde Point S/d | 516 | 0 | 0 |
| Camp Kirkwood | 400 | 0 | 0 |
| The Inlet at Lanier's Pointe #1 | 386 | 0 | 0 |
Showing the 12 largest of 54 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: 54 active water systems serve Pender 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 21 waterways assessed for recreation is listed as failing.
59 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 Pender County report