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Jamestown, NC is a big network of streams, creeks and river that meander through our town and neighborhoods before feeding our drinking water supply, Deep River/Randleman Lake. Our town has endured decades of industrial waste and discharge from landfills, superfund sites, Eastside WWTP, factories and Brownfield sites yet there has been no effort to clean, restore, monitor or publicly discuss the health of our water supply streams: Bull Run, Long Branch, Richland Creek and Deep River.
The 2024 303(D) list has no new additions from our Bull Run/Deep River Sub-Watershed or the Deep River/Randleman Water Supply network – even though these waterways are the beneficiaries of decades of industrial wastewater and runoff.
The NC DEQ has fallen behind in submitting accurate classification data to the EPA on our streams and waterways. As a result, the EPA’s data for Jamestown is outdated.
Jamestown’s public drinking water (which comes from Randleman Lake/PTRWA in Randolph County) has tested for 17 different PFAS analytes so far. Guilford County is the worst state in North Carolina for 1,4-Dioxane, and North Carolina is the third worst state in the country.
Yet, in January, representatives from our own regional DWR (the Winston office) downplayed the worsening 1,4-Dioxane problem that exists here on the Deep River side of Guilford County in their annual 1,4-Dioxane Progress Report to the NC Environmental Commission.
Eastside Wastewater Treatment Plant has racked up such a long list of air and water violations that it has been operating without a permit since December 2018. The Town of Jamestown has been operating with an expired Stormwater Permit since February 2022.
At least five active and inactive landfills leak and leach into our water supply streams – two of those are in the process of expanding and doubling their capacity. One of them, GFL Construction & Demolition Landfill, takes in debris from FOURTEEN COUNTIES. It is located next door to Kersey Valley Landfill, and in the same square mile as Deep River and Eastside Wastewater Treatment Plant. An inactive landfill, High Point Landfill, sits alongside Seaboard Chemical dump, an inactive hazardous Superfund site. Several weeks ago we learned about Jackson Lake Road Landfill, a 25-acre unlined pre regulatory landfill that, like the others, is leaching 1,4 Dioxane.
Our current stormwater map is shown below, left. The version on the right is the map with our streams drawn in (in blue).
Here’s the 2023 SAFE DRINKING WATER ACT passed by the North Carolina General Assembly:
ALL of the contaminants in item 1 (PFAS, PFOA, PFOS, Chromium, 1,4-Dioxane) have been detected in concentrations exceeding the maximum contaminant levels in either our kitchen tap water (Jamestown/PTRWA public water system), private wells, surface waters, pretreated wastewater and effluent at Eastside Wastewater Treatment Plant, and/or groundwater and soil samples at the Brownfield sites on Gate City Blvd and Seaboard Chemical Dump. Jamestown’s floodplain map has not been updated since 2008.
Aside from being drinking water supply (it empties into Deep River), Bull Run flows through the neighborhoods and backyards of many homes in Jamestown, and it tends to overflow its banks during heavy rain events. As paving and development increases, the flooding is happening with more frequency. During the Tuesday (Jan. 9 2024) storm that brought flooding to the Piedmont, Bull Run overflowed its banks and flooded neighborhoods in the floodplains – as shown in this image of a backyard flooded by Bull Run in the Yorkshire neighborhood.
In one grab sample of Alberdingk Boley’s wastewater taken for Eastside WWTP’s 2022 Pretreatment Report, 1,4-Dioxane was detected at 60 ppb. In Eastside WWTP’s Pretreatment Report for 2023, the concentration of 1,4-Dioxane in two grab samples of Alberdingk Boley’s wastewater increased to 87.2ppb and 99ppb. In addition, Bull Run has been receiving groundwater from TWO contaminated Brownfield sites on West Gate City Boulevard for decades.
Alberdingk Boley’s front door has a Greensboro address, but it discharges out the back to Jamestown. This is a common practice here in Jamestown. Kersey Valley Landfill and GFL Construction and Demolition Landfill, for example, sit at the intersection of Riverdale Drive and Kivett Drive in Jamestown, yet are under the permitting authority of the City of High Point. Both landfills leach/run off to creeks that empty into Deep River where it merges with Richland Creek.
Jamestown’s “Official Zoning Map” as downloaded today, January 12, 2024, is below. The direct link is HERE.
