Haw River Assembly protects the Haw River Watershed.
This includes nine hundred and twenty miles of streams feeding into the Haw along the 110 miles of the river, the 14,000 acres of Jordan Lake, and the plants, animals, and people who depend on the river. We work as advocates to stop pollution through with our Haw Riverkeeper, and are building a watershed community that supports clean water through our outreach, education and water quality monitoring programs
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Learn About Current Watershed Issues
HRA's Successful Legal Action Over Greensboro's 1,4-Dioxane
Settlement sets better process, public reporting, and reduction of Greensboro pollution
On behalf of the Haw River Assembly, Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) reached a settlement on December 18 with the City of Greensboro and North Carolina regulators that further limits Greensboro’s 1,4-dioxane discharges from it’s wastewater treatment plant, where industries are sending this chemical in their waste stream. HRA was joined by City of Fayetteville in this challenge, who draws their raw drinking water further downstream on the Cape Fear River. The settlement also requires the Department of Environmental Quality to investigate sources of toxic 1,4-dioxane pollution in the Cape Fear River basin, including the Haw River, and report actions it takes to reduce those amounts, including permit limits.
“Without these legal challenges brought by Haw River Assembly and City of Fayetteville, the original order would have allowed Greensboro to continue polluting the Haw River with higher levels of 1,4-dioxane, and with much lower penalties for extraordinarily high discharges,” says Emily Sutton, the Haw Riverkeeper. “The monitoring required under this agreement will identify the industries responsible for these toxic discharges in Greensboro and put the responsibility of safe and clean water on polluters, instead of the downstream users.”
Read the full SELC press release here. Here are links to the Final Settlement and the state’s Amended Special Order by Consent for Greensboro 1,4-Dioxane releases
Take a Hike in the Haw Watershed!
Here’s a list of public trails in our watershed – from the headwaters in Guilford County, to trails through old mills towns in Alamance, along the big white waters of the State Natural Area in Chatham, and along many creeks, wetlands and lakes. Bring a trash bag to leave nature a little happier than when you came.!
See our list at http://hawriver.org/about-the-river/recreation/
Small Farmers are supporting our communities, let's return the favor.
Sustainable farmers are not taking days off during this challenging time, working harder than ever to get food to their communities. They are going above and beyond to supply healthy produce and meats through Community Supported Agriculture, and taking all precautions at markets and farm pick ups. We’re seeing the fragility in our food systems. Industrial models of animal production require packaging and processing plants where people work shoulder-to-shoulder and have seen many Tconfirmed cases of COVID-19.
Shop at your local Farmer’s Market – get locations and contact info for local farmers with on-farm pick-ups HERE and support them in their efforts protecting our environment and waters.
Make your holiday dinner sustainable!
Slides from Forum on Industrial Contaminants
Haw River Assembly held a public meeting on August 26 to discuss the industrial contaminants in the Haw, Pittsboro’s drinking water – and solutions – with a panel of leading scientists researching this issue.
Powerpoint slides from the presentations by scientists:
HRA Joins NC DEQ to Defend their Denial of Key Permit for MVP Southgate
NCDEQ has used it’s authority to reissue the denial of the stream crossing permit for the MVP Southgate project. This followed an original denial letter in August of 2020 and a federal court hearing that ruled NCDEQ had the authority to deny the permit. This is a huge win for impacted community members, and communities in the Dan and Haw River watersheds.
Haw River Assembly, represented by Southern Environmental Law Center, has been approved to join the case to defend NC Department of Environmental Quality’s decision to deny the 401 permit. That decision, denied in August of 2020, was based heavily on the likelihood of MVP mainline not being successfully completed due to ongoing legal challenges, ballooning costs, and environmental violations. These challenges were also faced in the Atlantic Coast pipeline project, which was canceled and abandoned earlier this summer.
Additionally, MVP Southgate is now THREE YEARS behind schedule. The mainline project is four years behind schedule and $2.5 Billion over budget. These pipelines face an increasingly uncertain future. To read the full blog for MVP Southgate updates, click here.