Clean Water Defense
Winyah Rivers is an alliance of Riverkeepers, licensed by WATERKEEPER® ALLIANCE, and united as one powerful force advocating for every community’s right to drinkable, fishable, swimmable water.
We work to safeguard clean water, defending and supporting a robust set of laws, standards and permits, ensuring that these legal protections are enforced and guarding against major threats to our communities’ access to clean and safe water.
Our Riverkeepers monitor and protect water quality through several different programs, briefly described below.
Waccamaw Volunteer Water Quality Monitoring Program
Click here to check out water quality at a location near you!
Coastal Carolina University’s Waccamaw Watershed Academy and the Waccamaw RIVERKEEPER® launched this volunteer-based program on the Waccamaw River in South Carolina in 2006. In SC, it is funded by the City of Conway, Horry County, and Georgetown County.
In 2011, the program was expanded upstream on the Waccamaw into North Carolina, creating a bi-state, watershed focused program to monitor water quality from Lake Waccamaw downstream to the outlet of the Waccamaw River into Winyah Bay. In NC, project partners include CCU’s Waccamaw Watershed Academy, Lake Waccamaw State Park, Columbus County, and foundations including the International Paper Foundation and Z Smith Reynolds Foundation. We are grateful for all our supporters and volunteers!
Learn more about the Waccamaw Volunteer Water Quality Monitoring Program here>>
To view water quality data on the Waccamaw River, click here>>
Winyah Rivers Swim Guide Program
Click here to check out recreational water quality at a location near you!
Swim Guide monitoring provides important information about the recreational water quality at several locations on the rivers within our greater Winyah Bay watershed and, thanks to our grantors and donors, we’ve been expanding the number of sites that are monitored from Memorial Day to Labor Day.
Click here to learn more about our Winyah Rivers Swim Guide >>>
Bacteria Blitz
Our Riverkeepers participate in EarthEcho International’s World Water Monitoring Day every September by engaging our community in Bacteria Blitz, a one day event gathering water quality samples from our local waterways to determine if E. coli bacteria are present where we recreate.
Click here to learn more about Bacteria Blitz>>
South Carolina Adopt-a-Stream
Winyah Rivers Alliance has partnered with South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control to engage local volunteers in monitoring their local streams, freshwater or tidal saltwater, through the SC Adopt-a-Stream program.
Our team of certified trainers monitor our local waterways and host workshops to train local volunteers to participate.
Learn more about SC Adopt-a-Stream here>>
Industrial Farming and Its Impact on our Waterways
Our goal is to stop and cleanup water pollution caused by the concentration and waste management practices of swine and poultry operations by forcing government agencies to properly regulate and enforce their procedures. We support food production systems that do not harm water quality, communities and farmers, and hold agribusiness corporations responsible for waste management solutions.
Industrial meat production facilities, confining thousands of animals in industrial-like conditions, routinely violate the Clean Water Act, damaging the health of communities and waterways while destroying the independence of generational farmers.
These operations, which tend to be geographically concentrated around the industry processing facilities and feed mills, can produce as much waste as a small city, but without the most basic waste treatment system to process it. As a result, the facilities frequently dispose of untreated animal sewage on adjacent lands in excess of the amounts needed for crop production and discharge that waste into local waterways in violation of the Clean Water Act, contaminating water resources and damaging the health of downstream communities.
Learn more about the impacts of industrial meat production facilities here>>