Meets state standards for eating fish
Can I eat fish caught here?
North Carolina · waterway · Haw basin
Dry Creek: 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.
Dry Creek in the Haw basin is tracked by the state as 2 separately assessed stretches (most recent cycle: 2022). Below is every designated-use determination on record — and what hasn't been assessed.
Designated uses
Does not support healthy aquatic life (1 of 2 assessed stretches)
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)
A listed cause names what the assessment found in the water. It is not an attribution to any specific facility or source.
Assessed stretches
The state tracks this waterway as 2 assessment units — a stretch can fail a standard while another meets it.
Assessment unit IDs (2)
NC16-13 · NC16-34-(0.7)
What the record doesn’t establish
- Whether Dry Creek 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 Dry Creek?
The state has not rated Dry Creek for swimming — that's a gap in the record, not a clean result.
Can you eat fish caught in Dry Creek?
The state's most recent assessment found Dry Creek meets its standards for eating fish caught there.
Why is Dry Creek listed as impaired?
State assessments list: benthic macroinvertebrates bioassessments. A listed cause names the problem the assessment found — it does not attribute it to any specific source.
Sources
| 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 |
| 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.
Also in the Haw basin
Go deeper
Search an address near Dry Creek to see how it connects — what drains toward it, monitoring-station samples, and permitted operations in its watershed.
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