Meets state standards for swimming
Is it safe to swim here?
North Carolina · waterway · White Oak River basin
Great Island Bay: what state assessments show
No failing determinations on record for the uses assessed.
That covers what the state assessed — not what it hasn't.
Great Island Bay in the White Oak River 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
Meets state standards for eating fish
Can I eat fish caught here?
A use the state didn't report is omitted rather than shown as passing. "Never assessed" means unknown — never clean.
Assessed stretches
One assessment unit covers this waterway here.
Assessment unit IDs (1)
NC21-35-7-19
What the record doesn’t establish
- 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 Great Island Bay?
The state's most recent assessment found Great Island Bay meets its standards for swimming. That is a determination about the assessed stretches, not a guarantee about any spot on any day.
Can you eat fish caught in Great Island Bay?
The state's most recent assessment found Great Island Bay meets its standards for eating fish caught there.
How current is this assessment?
The most recent reporting cycle on record is 2022. States assess waters under the Clean Water Act on multi-year cycles, so conditions can change between assessments. The sources table shows when this snapshot was retrieved.
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 White Oak River basin
Go deeper
Search an address near Great Island Bay to see how it connects — what drains toward it, monitoring-station samples, and permitted operations in its watershed.
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