Mobile Journalism Project
This is my mobile journalism project for Capstone course in journalism at Appalachian State University. This is the product of four months of reporting, editing and writing, and I’m very proud to share it with you. This project examines the health of the South Fork of the New River in Todd, North Carolina through the lens of one local businesswoman.
Trash Talk: North Carolina River Enthusiasts Wade into Pollution Battle for a Cleaner New River
Kelly McCoy loves the New River. She loves it so much that she left her life as a fisheries biologist in Florida to come live in Todd, North Carolina, right on the bank of the New River. After moving to Todd in 2005, McCoy struggled to find a job that combined her love of the river and the fish that inhabited it. So, McCoy created her own job and opened RiverGirl Fishing Co. in 2006. RiverGirl is an all-service river outfitting company, providing visitors with canoe, kayak and inner tube rentals, as well as fly fishing lessons and equipment.
Kelly McCoy has been fishing since childhood. Her father was a competitive bass fisherman, and she proudly followed in his footsteps with the creation of RiverGirl Fishing Co.
Shortly after opening RiverGirl, McCoy found herself unable to enjoy the activities that had drawn her to the New River.
“I would spend a lot of my time not enjoying myself, but paddling over to get a water bottle, or paddling over to get a piece of styrofoam,” McCoy said.
From these frustrations with garbage in the river, McCoy came up with the idea for Trashy Tuesdays, an event that would allow visitors to rent equipment and be shuttled to the river for free, with the exception that they would pick up as much trash as they could. Whoever collects the most interesting piece of trash wins a free RiverGirl t-shirt, and whoever collects the most trash wins a free fly fishing lesson.
Trashy Tuesday participants have collected over 1,000 pounds of trash out of the New River, and have found some pretty strange items. A hollowed out bust of Spiderman was pulled out of the river and now serves as a tip jar for RiverGirl guides. A prop treasure chest from a nearby amusement park was also pulled out the river, and is used for decoration inside the RiverGirl office.
McCoy suspects that this Spiderman bust used to be a Halloween pail before being discarded into the New River. It now serves as a tip jar for the RiverGirl staff.
McCoy doesn’t just pick up trash for fun, though. There are real, dangerous consequences on aquatic wildlife when litter ends up in waterways. Pollution sensitive macroinvertebrates such as stoneflies, caddisflies and mayflies can’t survive in litter-infested waterways. Litter in the rivers affects and depletes natural algaes that they need to feed on, and without them, they go elsewhere. This in turn leaves the trout and other fish that eat the flies without a food source, so when the flies go, the fish go with them.
“If you’re only finding snails, beetles and dragonflies in the water, that’s a good sign that you don’t have a healthy river system,” McCoy said.
Litter isn’t the only thing that affects the health of the river, though. Silt from construction and bank erosion also plays a huge role in dirtying the water and making it unfit for wildlife to live in, according to reporting by National Geographic.
John Cox, a retiree and river activist who grew up in Todd and returned to the area in 2018, says silt in the water is the biggest thing he’s worried about when it comes to pollution in the water.
When dirt and other bits of construction runoff make their way to the waterways, it disrupts the habitat that macroinvertebrates need to thrive.
“The small aquatic life that lives in the water is greatly impacted by silt in the streams — crayfish, the little snails, and not to mention the fish,” Cox said. “It’s all an upward climb, and eventually it’s going to make its way back to us.”
Mark Retting, junior Appalachian State University biology major, shares Cox’s concerns about sedimentary and silt pollution in waterways.
“When you’re an animal living in a stream, one, it needs to be clear so you can see and so you can breathe properly, and also when there’s dirt in the water it can affect your ability to find food sources because silt affects plants ability to photosynthesize,” Retting said.
While silt is his greatest concern, Cox, like McCoy, is also concerned about the growing amount of litter in the river.
A broken plastic flower pot sits washed up on the bank of Meat Camp Creek, a feeder creek into the New River.
“I’ve picked up 180 bottles, cans and wrappers just walking through downtown Todd in a matter of hours,” Cox said.
Cox has also advocated with local politicians and representatives for a greater recycling incentive in both Watauga County and all of North Carolina.
“I’ve asked Congresswoman Mrs. Virginia Foxx, ‘Could you push any legislature to establish a nationwide recycling deposit as they do in New England, Michigan and Hawaii?’ And the response I got from her was that it was a state issue,” Cox said. “But the bulk of the litter I see around is cans and bottles.”
While Foxx was unable to provide help to the community of Todd and other towns downstream from the New River, the North Carolina attorney general’s office just provided the town of Boone with a $41,400 grant to be used for river health enhancement programs. This will provide funds for organized river cleanup events as well as for Trash Trouts to be installed in particularly polluted areas of the New River.
All types of pollution, be it silt or plastic litter, will eventually end up in the ocean if left in the waterway.
According to a study done by North Carolina Sea Grant, an organization partnered with North Carolina State University, 230 billion particles of plastic are delivered to the Pamlico sound annually by fresh water rivers and streams. These microplastic particles have been found in sea turtles, whales and seabirds, as well as in fish, oysters and crabs that are commercially fished for human consumption.
Despite efforts made by folks such as Kelly McCoy, John Cox and Mark Retting, pollution in North Carolina waterways will remain an issue for some time. In the case of the River Rhine, it took nearly 40 years for it to be deemed safe after a major pollution event left it contaminated in the 1980s.
“When we’re out on the river, we’re there to see the beauty of it. If we see something that’s not beautiful, we pick it up to make it beautiful,” said McCoy.
Please note that portions of this headline are AI generated