Never assessed — condition unknown
Is it safe to swim here?
North Carolina · waterway · Upper New basin
Valley Branch and Tributaries: what state assessments show
No failing determinations on record for the uses assessed.
That covers what the state assessed — not what it hasn't.
Valley Branch and Tributaries in the Upper New 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?
Never assessed — condition unknown
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.
Assessed stretches
One assessment unit covers this waterway here.
Assessment unit IDs (1)
VAW-N17R_VLY01A16
What the record doesn’t establish
- Whether Valley Branch and Tributaries 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 Valley Branch and Tributaries?
The state has not rated Valley Branch and Tributaries for swimming — that's a gap in the record, not a clean result.
Can you eat fish caught in Valley Branch and Tributaries?
The state's most recent assessment found Valley Branch and Tributaries 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 Upper New basin
Go deeper
Search an address near Valley Branch and Tributaries to see how it connects — what drains toward it, monitoring-station samples, and permitted operations in its watershed.
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