The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources (DWR) has responded to an animal waste spill affecting Doctors Creek in Duplin County. The incident was reported over the weekend, involving Murphy Brown LLC Farm 6703 & 6704, located on Kenan Loop Road in Wallace.
The spill occurred due to a malfunction in equipment that pumps waste between lagoons. An estimated 84,000 gallons of waste spilled into an unnamed tributary of Doctors Creek, which eventually flows into the Northeast Cape Fear River. The leak started early on Saturday, February 15, and continued until early Sunday, February 16.
The permittee took action by removing the waste from the tributary and returning it to a secondary lagoon at the farm site. DWR staff verified these cleanup efforts and collected samples at various points including the discharge point, upstream, and downstream to assess water quality impacts from the spill. It was noted that there are no known public water system surface water intakes along the affected path.
DWR will maintain monitoring of water quality in the area. Future actions based on this incident will be documented and available in the permit file on Laserfiche.
