Cape Fear River Watch

10/13/2026

10/10/2026

Well, just in time for a hurricane, here’s our most recent Swim Guide results and a wrap-up for the season. We had two fails this week, with Kenansville Wildlife Access showing elevated levels of E.coli and Archie Blue Community Park again for Enterococcus. We will be pursuing further testing at Archie Blue this fall.

⤵️ Scroll to see each site’s results, season average, and pass rate according to the EPA safe threshold for the bacteria we test for. As a reminder, this reading (called an MPN) indicates the amount of bacteria that is present in a single 100 mL water sample. Contact with water with bacterial levels above this threshold can have harmful health impacts, which is why we test these popular recreational sites where people are regularly getting in the water.

Thank you for following along this summer! We hope Swim Guide helped you make informed decisions about where to safely recreate across the Lower Cape Fear. Shoutout to our interns for collecting and processing these samples, and to our Board Member Jessica Thomas for covering our Duplin County sites!

P.S. NEVER swim in floodwaters!

10/06/2026

10/05/2026

The early bird gets the best sightings! 🪱

Thank you again to everyone who joined us bright and early in search of migratory birds with expert Evan Buckland from Cape Fear Bird Observatory. We saw just shy of 30 species, and the woodpeckers, orbweavers, and crabs were especially abundant!

If you missed out, don’t forget that we are leading these free guided walks along Burnt Mill Creek from 8-9 a.m. EVERY Friday in October. Come start your morning with us (and the wildlife)—all registrations are now open at capefearriverwatch.org/calendar.

10/05/2026

10/05/2026

We find some spooky things on our cleanups, but there’s nothing scarier than litter in our waterways. 😱

Help us make the Burnt Mill Creek watershed a little cleaner, and a lot less creepy, from 9-11 a.m. this Saturday, October 10th!

We will focus our efforts on the drainage easement that runs behind the shopping plazas on Kerr Ave., as well as the Kerr Ave. artificial wetland, just across the street. We will meet at a central staging location located in the parking lot of Crossroads Center. 894-1 S Kerr Ave. should get you to the right spot.

CFRW and Keep New Hanover Beautiful will bring the gloves, pickers, bags, and safety vests—you bring your passion for clean water, and your Halloween costume! If you have waterproof knee boots or waders, we will need some folks to walk through the center of the ditch, which typically has standing water.

P.S. The volunteer with the *trashiest* cleanup costume will receive a voucher for a free paddleboat ride at Greenfield Lake Boathouse!

If you dare to join us on this cleanup, registration is now open tr.ee/cleanup.

10/01/2026

During the month of October, 11% of the sales of our Oktoberfest Marzen style l***r will be donated to the to support their mission of protecting and improving the water quality of the Cape Fear River Basin through education, advocacy, and action!