THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, March 23, 1996 TAG: 9603230255
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY CATHERINE KOZAK, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: KITTY HAWK LENGTH: Medium: 80 lines
To veteran biologist Yates Barber, the struggle for clean water reminds him of one of his favorite cartoons: A frog is shown three-fourths down a heron's throat with its ``hands'' wrapped desperately around the heron's neck. Underneath, the caption says, ``Don't ever give up.''
``We've got to keep trying,'' Barber told an audience of about 60 at a Friday presentation on water quality sponsored by Dare County's League of Women Voters. ``Don't give up.''
Barber, 74, has kept a steady eye on the gradual degradation of the Currituck Sound for nearly 40 years. Once, he said, the area was considered the ``waterfowl mecca of the East Coast.'' Now muddied and fouled by the overgrowth of a prolific aquatic plant, the 2 million acres of brackish waterway between North Carolina and Virginia is no longer the crystal-clear recreational haven of yesteryear.
The factors that ``knocked out Currituck and put it on its knees,'' Barber said, include fluctuating salinity levels, an overabundance of nutrients and depletion of friendly aquatic plants. Changes that went undetected for years suddenly became apparent when people began noticing that fewer wild birds and fish were thriving in the Currituck and when, in 1975, the imbalance showed itself in a plankton overgrowth.
``From that day to this, we haven't seen the bottom since,'' said Barber, a member of the North Carolina Sea Grant College Advisory Committee and a former state and U.S government biologist.
That is the sort of outcome that Dare County needs to guard against in its own sounds and beaches, said Brant Wise, a member of Dare County's Clean Water Advisory Committee.
Wise, also a member of The Surf-rider Foundation, a clean water activist group, said a modest countywide water monitoring program needs to be expanded as a proactive water quality control mechanism.
``What we need to realize is that as development increases, so will its impact,'' Wise told the audience, which included Dare County Commissioner Clarence Skinner and Republican county commissioner candidate Cheryl Byrd. ``Therefore, we need to plan ahead if we want both the economic benefits of development and to capitalize on the quality of Dare County's water.''
Since October, water sampling has been conducted by the volunteer county water board at 10 sites between Duck and Hatteras, including Colington Harbour, Shallowbag Bay in Manteo, Oregon Inlet and two points in Nags Head.
The program was designed to detect changes and trends in water conditions caused by natural events or manmade pollution, Wise said. He said he hopes the number of test sites can be expanded to 30 within two years.
Both Wise and Barber said it is essential to establish a baseline water quality measure to interpret patterns and anomalies.
``I decried for years the fact that we have not had an adequate monitoring system,'' Barber said. ``Most of the time, we don't do anything until there's a problem. Then we get moving. Had we had a baseline, that could've told us in 1988 that we had a trend starting - and it's going up.''
Although the area ocean waters are ``relatively'' clean, the Outer Banks sounds have not been tested long enough to show any trends, Wise said. The sounds, however, have been monitored enough to show that some have elevated levels of bacteria. Testing around storm drains near ocean waters has so far shown elevated levels of both fecal and coliform bacteria after storms.
In response to a question from an audience member about the group releasing their test results to communities, Wise warned that weather, location, even the number of wildlife in the water has to be factored in when interpreting test data.
``You have got to take all this into consideration,'' Wise said. ``You can come out screaming and say, `We've got water problems!' and it was just due to bird droppings.
``It's kind of premature to give out the data,'' he said.
``You can have information and it could be as dangerous as it is helpful.''
Barber suggested that concerned citizens join the new northeastern chapter of the North Carolina Coastal Federation, or contact their state and federal representatives.
``We've got the expertise in state government,'' Barber said. ``The problem is they have not coordinated together.'' by CNB