WHAT’S BEYOND THE TAP

North Carolina · waterway · Haw basin

Booker Creek (east-Wood Lake): what state assessments show

Does not support healthy aquatic life.

Official state determinations under the Clean Water Act — about the waterway, not measurements taken today.

Booker Creek (east-Wood Lake) in the Haw basin is tracked by the state as a single assessed stretch (most recent cycle: 2022). Below is every designated-use determination on record — and what hasn't been assessed.

Designated uses

Eating fish caught here

Meets state standards for eating fish

Can I eat fish caught here?

Aquatic life

Does not support healthy aquatic life

Can fish and aquatic insects live here?

A use the state didn't report is omitted rather than shown as passing. "Never assessed" means unknown — never clean.

Listed causes

  • benthic macroinvertebrates bioassessments (cause unknown - impaired biota)
  • dissolved oxygen (organic enrichment/oxygen depletion)

A listed cause names what the assessment found in the water. It is not an attribution to any specific facility or source.

Assessed stretches

One assessment unit covers this waterway here.

Assessment unit IDs (1)

NC16-41-1-15-2-(1)

What the record doesn’t establish

  • Whether Booker Creek (east-Wood Lake) is safe for swimming — the state hasn't assessed it for recreation here.
  • What today's water looks like — assessments are determinations made on multi-year cycles, not live measurements.

Common questions

Is it safe to swim in Booker Creek (east-Wood Lake)?

The state has not rated Booker Creek (east-Wood Lake) for swimming — that's a gap in the record, not a clean result.

Can you eat fish caught in Booker Creek (east-Wood Lake)?

The state's most recent assessment found Booker Creek (east-Wood Lake) meets its standards for eating fish caught there.

Why is Booker Creek (east-Wood Lake) listed as impaired?

State assessments list: benthic macroinvertebrates bioassessments, dissolved oxygen. A listed cause names the problem the assessment found — it does not attribute it to any specific source.

Sources

DatasetAgency versionRetrieved
EPA/state ATTAINS waterway assessmentsATTAINS_Assessment ArcGIS snapshot (gispub.epa.gov)2026-08-15
ATTAINS waterway geometryATTAINS_Assessment ArcGIS lines + areas (gispub.epa.gov)2026-08-16
USGS watershed boundariesUSGS WBD via National Map MapServer2026-08-15

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.

Also in the Haw basin

Go deeper

Search an address near Booker Creek (east-Wood Lake) to see how it connects — what drains toward it, monitoring-station samples, and permitted operations in its watershed.

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