The North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources has been alerted to an animal waste spill impacting Doctors Creek in Duplin County.
DWR staff were alerted over the weekend of a spill from Murphy Brown LLC Farm 6703 & 6704 (Permit AWS310397), located on Kenan Loop Road in Wallace. Due to a malfunction in equipment pumping waste between lagoons, a spill of an estimated 84,000 gallons of waste reached an unnamed tributary of Doctors Creek, which feeds into the Northeast Cape Fear River. The spill began early on Saturday, Feb. 15, and continued until early Sunday, Feb. 16.
The permittee removed waste from the unnamed tributary and returned it to a secondary lagoon on the farm site. DWR staff confirmed the cleanup actions, and have sampled at the discharge point, upstream and downstream to determinewater quality impacts related to the spill. No known public water system surface water intakes are present along the path impacted by the waste.
DWR will continue to monitor water quality in the area. Documentation on future actions taken based on the spill will be posted in the permit file on Laserfiche.