Update – Jamestown’s 2024-2025 Annual NPDES MS4 (Stormwater Management) report was submitted to the NCDEQ in October 2025:
Original Post:
From Isaiah Reed, stormwater program coordinator, NC Dept of Environmental Quality, July 2024:
“Jamestown was audited by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (NCDEQ) Division of Energy, Mineral and Land Resources (DEMLR) on June 7, 2023 to determine compliance with their Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System (MS4) permit.
At that time, the program was found to be deficient in meeting all permit requirements. The renewal of their MS4 permit does not constitute an approval of the Town’s past administration of their program. The permit renewal, and creation/approval of the associated Stormwater Management Plan (SWMP) is the first step in the Town’s process to bring their program into compliance with the permit.”
“The measurable goals outlined in the SWMP are a required component which are designed to map out the steps the town will be taking over the next permit cycle to correct their program. While comments and concerns related to the MS4 program in the past are appreciated, the Town has already been found deficient of meeting all permit requirements and the renewal of the MS4 permit is focused only on future implementation of the program.“
This is an image of Reed’s response:
Jamestown’s stormwater permit was three years late in renewing, and the (required) Stormwater Management Plan submitted with it was incomplete:
August 19, 2024: Isaiah Reed, Coordinator of the NPDES MS4 permit program for the NC Department of Environmental Quality, said he is working on responses to Jamestown’s Public Comments and hopes to have results soon.
Reed said that Jamestown residents brought up a lot of issues that require responses from other divisions within NC DEQ, so those divisions must weigh in on the comments that pertain to their environmental areas before the document can be released.
Coincidentally, a major stormwater event took place the day Reed sent his email: Hurricane Debby blew in from the coast and dumped torrential rainfall on Jamestown for hours. Neighborhoods were flooded, the train tracks were underwater, the sewer pipe over Deep River was leaking, and muddy water carved out more roots, holes and gaps in our stream banks.
June 4, 2024: This week, the NC DEQ reissued a stormwater/wastewater permit to the Town of Jamestown without posting, responding to, or acknowledging the PUBLIC COMMENTS. We also saw that the “JAMESTOWN STORMWATER PERMIT” folder in the NC DEQ public digital files had been moved (link broken) and modified.
The Stormwater permit (NPDES MS4) was issued at 4:00 a.m. on Monday, July 1, 2024 by Isaiah Reed:
One business day before issuing the Stormwater Permit, Reed said in an email that he had many comments to work through and a “response to comments document” would be posted and made available to the public (us). That did not happen.
The NCDEQ public Laserfiche folder containing the town manager’s permit application, Notice of Violation, on-site audit, self-audit and correspondence were moved to a different location (which broke the links in our posts) and at least one document was removed. Meta data shows the files were moved on March 18, 2024.
We have redirected the links and uploaded images of the missing document – an August 18, 2023 letter from town manager to Isaiah Reed confirming the timeline:
