North Carolina · county
Two things here need attention.
Two things could not be determined from the record.
Public records for Richmond County cover 81 named waterways across 30 sub-watersheds, and 9 active water systems serving about 48,023 people. Below is what those records establish — and what they don't.
A state determination under the Clean Water Act. This creek is close to you, but your water doesn't flow from it.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| PEE DEE RIVER (including Lake Tillery below normal operating levels) | Meets the standard | Not considered safe | PCBS - FISH CONSUMPTION ADVISORY, PH, HIGH |
| Brown Creek | On record, no conclusion | Not assessed | BENTHIC MACROINVERTEBRATES BIOASSESSMENTS, BIOCHEMICAL OXYGEN DEMAND (BOD) |
| Clarks Creek | Not assessed | Not assessed | BENTHIC MACROINVERTEBRATES BIOASSESSMENTS |
| Marks Creek (Boyds Lake, City Lake, Everetts Lake) | Meets the standard | Not assessed | DISSOLVED OXYGEN, BENTHIC MACROINVERTEBRATES BIOASSESSMENTS |
| Naked Creek | Not assessed | Not assessed | PH, LOW |
| Nells Branch | Not assessed | Not assessed | PH, LOW |
| PD-713 | Not assessed | Not assessed | BENTHIC MACROINVERTEBRATES |
| PEE DEE RIVER | Meets the standard | Not assessed | TURBIDITY |
| PEE DEE RIVER (including Blewett Falls Lake below normal operating levels) | Not assessed | Not assessed | CHLOROPHYLL-A - AQUATIC LIFE USE SUPPORT |
| RL-05398 | Not assessed | Not assessed | CHLOROPHYLL-A, PHOSPHORUS, TOTAL |
| RL-09100 | Not assessed | Not assessed | CHLOROPHYLL-A, PH |
| Rocky River | On record, no conclusion | Not assessed | COPPER, TURBIDITY |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Richmond County Water System | 22,578 | 0 | 0 |
| City of Rockingham | 12,510 | 2 | 2 |
| Hamlet Water System | 10,635 | 11 | 11 |
| Town of Ellerbe | 2,050 | 2 | 2 |
| Travel Resorts of America_forest Site | 75 | 0 | 0 |
| Joy Freewill Baptist Church | 75 | 0 | 0 |
| Mark`s Creek Presbyterian CH | 50 | 0 | 0 |
| Camp Mackall Fire Dept | 25 | 0 | 0 |
| Southern Products & Silica Co | 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: 9 active water systems serve Richmond County. 3 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 PD-339 as not supporting recreation. That is an official determination about the waterway, not a measurement taken today.
64 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 Richmond County report