An Environmental Assessment of the North and South Carolina Coasts

Abstract Coastal waters of the Carolinas include some magnificent resources that are increasingly degraded from upstream pollution and poorly controlled local development. Escalating water demands have rapidly depressed coastal water tables. Upper watershed industries, cities, and croplands contaminate coastal riverine potable source waters with a wide array of unregulated/poorly regulated toxic substances, and with nutrients that fuel nuisance algal blooms. Industrialized livestock production adds fecal microbes and many other contaminants to surface and groundwaters. Toxic cyanobacteria blooms have spread into newly affected freshwaters including potable source waters. Physical reengineering of coastal landscapes with numerous detention ponds has created ideal incubation sites for noxious estuarine/marine dinoflagellate and raphidiophycean blooms. Stormwater runoff from sprawling coastal development alters the sediment composition and benthic fauna of receiving waters, while also adding toxic chemicals and fecal contaminants that threaten human health and seafood safety. These impacts are expected to be exacerbated by warming trends in climate change.