North Carolina · county
Two things here need attention.
Two things could not be determined from the record.
Public records for Stokes County cover 102 named waterways across 27 sub-watersheds, and 48 active water systems serving about 31,042 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ararat River | Not considered safe | Not considered safe | ARSENIC, TURBIDITY |
| DAN RIVER | Not considered safe | Meets the standard | TOTAL SUSPENDED SOLIDS (TSS), TURBIDITY |
| South Mayo River | Not considered safe | Not considered safe | ESCHERICHIA COLI (E. COLI), MERCURY IN FISH TISSUE |
| Belews Creek (including Belews Lake below elevation 725) (1) | Not assessed | Not assessed | TEMPERATURE |
| Crooked Run Creek | Not assessed | Not assessed | BENTHIC MACROINVERTEBRATES BIOASSESSMENTS |
| DAN RIVER (North Carolina portion) | Meets the standard | Not assessed | TURBIDITY |
| Elk Creek | Not considered safe | Not assessed | ESCHERICHIA COLI (E. COLI) |
| Little Dan River | Not considered safe | Not assessed | ESCHERICHIA COLI (E. COLI) |
| Martin Mill Creek | Not assessed | Not assessed | BENTHIC MACROINVERTEBRATES BIOASSESSMENTS |
| Mayo River (Fall Creek) | Not considered safe | Not assessed | ESCHERICHIA COLI (E. COLI) |
| Muddy Creek | Not assessed | Not assessed | BENTHIC MACROINVERTEBRATES BIOASSESSMENTS, ZINC |
| Peters Creek | Not considered safe | Not assessed | ESCHERICHIA COLI (E. COLI) |
Showing 12 of 102 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 King | 23,370 | 0 | 0 |
| Town of Walnut Cove | 2,210 | 0 | 0 |
| Stokes County Water & Sewer Auth | 420 | 0 | 0 |
| The Vineyard Inc | 300 | 0 | 0 |
| Ymca Camp John Hanes | 300 | 0 | 0 |
| Stokes County-Meadows Water System | 288 | 0 | 0 |
| Hillbilly Hide Away | 250 | 0 | 0 |
| Town of Danbury | 250 | 0 | 0 |
| Wieland Copper Products LLC | 226 | 0 | 0 |
| Sandy Ridge Elem School | 215 | 1 | 1 |
| Bethel Baptist Church | 200 | 0 | 0 |
| Hanging Rock State Park No 2 | 200 | 0 | 0 |
Showing the 12 largest of 48 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: 48 active water systems serve Stokes County. 9 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 Ararat River, DAN RIVER, South Mayo River, Elk Creek, Little Dan River and 7 more as not supporting recreation. That is an official determination about the waterway, not a measurement taken today.
85 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 Stokes County report