Catawba Riverkeeper Brandon Jones finessed a canoe around a boulder on a section of Sugar Creek that runs through Fort Mill. The Class 1 rapids spit the boat out into an eddy near shore.
“All right, well done. We’re going to hang out in this downstream eddy and see how everybody else does,” Jones said.
A volunteer then entered the rapids. His kayak deftly maneuvered around the rocks, but his improvised trash barge was another matter. A stand-up paddleboard strapped down with about 10 tires and the plastic grill of a car careened into a submerged boulder.
“Oh, no … So, one of our barges that’s full of tires just flipped over. It’s going to be very difficult, and I think he’s about to get stuck,” Jones said.
But the tires remained strapped on and the paddler righted his barge.
This is the Catawba Riverkeeper’s second tactical clean-up of Sugar Creek. Charlotte waters like Little Sugar Creek and McAlpine Creek feed Sugar Creek, which winds its way to the Catawba River several miles south of the state line.
Sugar Creek could be a sweet spot for paddlers — and an amenity for the Fort Mill area. But it’s hard to access, and it’s littered with hundreds of tires. This group, which includes volunteers from the Catawba Nation and York County Stormwater, aims to change that.
Showing the little waterway can be an amenity
The journey began Friday morning behind an event space, where the group hauled 12 boats 200 yards down to the creek. They zipped up their life jackets, sprayed themselves with bug spray and sunscreen, and slid their kayaks into Sugar Creek. Each boat was loaded with a trash picker and several mesh bags. They planned to paddle six miles.
The immediate goal was to pick up as much trash as they could. But Ryan Carter, the Catawba Riverkeeper’s policy manager said ultimately, they want to show that this little waterway can be an amenity to the area.
“It’s not the easiest place to get to. But if we can increase those access points, then more folks can get on the water, more folks can be outraged. But also more people can see the beauty of Sugar Creek,” Carter said.
The hope is that would create a community push to really clean up the creek — much like the uncapping of its upstream feeder Little Sugar Creek did nearly two decades ago.
The murky water flows under native oaks, sycamores and hollies. Dogwoods peek out from under the canopy. It feels remote, until retaining walls from encroaching developments appear around a bend.
The heat index reached 98 degrees that day. As fossil fuel combustion continues to warm the atmosphere, both people and animals will find it harder to beat the heat.
“We have to have that shade. We need cool water to support our ecosystems, and so having a big, mature canopy is absolutely critical,” Jones said.
Charlotte’s crap and old tires
A sandy bank forms at each bend in the creek. The paddlers parked their boats. Jackie Bagley, the director of construction for the Catawba Nation, picked up an aluminum can, tore it open and washed it out before putting it in her mesh bag.
“Sugar Creek dumps into the Catawba River. It’s about a mile or two up from the reservation, so we are certainly the first population that receives all of Charlotte’s crap,” Bagley said.
Three Charlotte wastewater plants feed the creek. Sewer lines run along the creek and its tributaries, transporting raw sewage to Charlotte’s wastewater treatment plants. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Stormwater monitors the creeks for fecal contaminants — which stay consistently above a level that qualifies the creeks as impaired.
The sandy bank is littered with tires.
“There’s more tires out here than the tire factory. This is, like, jaw-dropping how sad this is,” Bagley said.
Kaity D’Angelo, a Catawba Riverkeeper staff member, unearthed an old tractor tire. They haul it to a paddleboard barge and strap it down.
“The tires are the bane of my existence,” D’Angelo said. “That rubber will decompose in the water, and little microchips of rubber, like, little micro pieces, will break off and get consumed by fish and other aquatic animals.”
Many of the tires have been in the creek for years. People living nearby created fish habitats with them, unaware of their toxicity.
Several hours later, the paddlers beached their boats at the takeout near Highway 160. They unloaded 40 trash bags and 50 tires — pulling over 3,000 pounds of garbage out of the river.
