North Carolina · county
One thing here needs attention.
Two things could not be determined from the record.
Public records for Polk County cover 60 named waterways across 16 sub-watersheds, and 26 active water systems serving about 12,956 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| RS-03514 | Not considered safe | Not assessed | BENTHIC MACROINVERTEBRATES, ESCHERICHIA COLI (E. COLI) |
| B-026 | Not considered safe | Not assessed | ESCHERICHIA COLI (E. COLI) |
| B-126 | Not considered safe | Not assessed | ESCHERICHIA COLI (E. COLI) |
| B-259 | Not considered safe | Not assessed | ESCHERICHIA COLI (E. COLI) |
| B-301 | Not considered safe | Not assessed | ESCHERICHIA COLI (E. COLI) |
| BROAD RIVER | Meets the standard | Not assessed | BENTHIC MACROINVERTEBRATES BIOASSESSMENTS |
| Cleghorn Creek | Not assessed | Not assessed | BENTHIC MACROINVERTEBRATES BIOASSESSMENTS |
| Mill Creek | Not assessed | Not assessed | BENTHIC MACROINVERTEBRATES BIOASSESSMENTS |
| RS-18406 | Not considered safe | Not assessed | ESCHERICHIA COLI (E. COLI) |
| B-719 | Meets the standard | Not assessed | — |
| Brights Creek | Not assessed | Not assessed | — |
| Britten Creek | Not assessed | Not assessed | — |
Showing 12 of 60 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Town of Tryon | 5,494 | 1 | 1 |
| Town of Columbus | 2,489 | 1 | 1 |
| City of Saluda | 1,814 | 0 | 0 |
| Polk County Water System | 838 | 0 | 0 |
| Foothills Community Chapel | 300 | 0 | 0 |
| Orchard Lake Campground | 280 | 0 | 0 |
| Coopers Gap Baptist Church | 250 | 0 | 0 |
| Melmont Water System | 127 | 0 | 0 |
| Big Level Baptist Church | 100 | 0 | 0 |
| Pea Ridge Baptist Church | 100 | 0 | 0 |
| Peniel Baptist Church | 100 | 0 | 0 |
| Silver Creek Campground | 100 | 0 | 0 |
Showing the 12 largest of 26 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: 26 active water systems serve Polk County. 2 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 RS-03514, B-026, B-126, B-259, B-301 and 3 more as not supporting recreation. That is an official determination about the waterway, not a measurement taken today.
43 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 Polk County report