Is Water Quality So Bad That I Shouldn’t Let My Kids Play in Our Local Creeks?

After testing local creek water, I’m rethinking whether it’s safe to allow my children the freedom I had to explore nature

Little Sugar Creek in Charlotte, North Carolina, where writer Cate Stern has monitored water health

The first week of summer I threw my three kids in the car and drove to Charlotte-Mecklenburg County’s Land Use and Environmental Services Agency. As we pulled into the parking lot adjacent to a nondescript government building, they finally piped up: “What are we doing here?” I suppose they were expecting a pool or an airconditioned trampoline park on that hot June day. “I’m picking up my chemical kit,” I told them.

I’d recently volunteered to monitor water with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Storm Water Services, a joint municipal/county utility which operated out of this particular building. As part of the gig, I committed to testing the same section of Little Sugar Creek, one of the area’s largest creeks, and sharing the results with Storm Water Services. No, I don’t have a science background, and yes, historically I’m a person who’s talked more about saving the environment than actually trying to do something about it.

My family and I moved to Charlotte five years ago. With mountains hours to the west, beachfront hours to the east, and no major body of water to anchor its skyline, the city has been described as lacking defining geographical features. Some have even gone so far as to wonder why Charlotte? Why did it spring up where it did? But others have argued that the city’s extensive creek system—approximately three thousand miles—defines Charlotte both in terms of neighborhood planning and the bucolic greenways that bring citizens out to jog and bike next to the babbling water. I tend to agree with the latter characterization.

We’ve spent a lot of time on the greenway trails—winding our way to playgrounds, walking the dog, and watching for the heron that sometimes shows up. But in a complete deviation from my own childhood experience, we don’t go into the water. Actually, I did let my kids wade in a few times, but that stopped when I was met with looks of such concern. “That water is filthy,” everyone seemed to say.

When my eldest entered third grade, she joined her school’s environmental club, The Green Team. That winter she came home with a flyer for a poster contest run by the North Carolina Association of Soil and Water Conservation Districts. The theme was “Soil and Water . . . Yours For Life,” and from the package’s educational material I first learned about stormwater runoff and the risks development poses to the health and safety of surface water. The issue is particularly troublesome in Charlotte, which is one of the country’s fastest growing metro areas.

To put it simply, the more we develop land with things like driveways and hardscape backyards, the less soil and vegetation we have to soak up and filter the rainwater. And at least in Charlotte, the water runs over many things—fertilized lawns, pet waste, and driveways with oil drippings—on its way out into the street and down the storm drains. The water then ultimately runs into the creeks. Not only does the stormwater bring more pollutants, it also flows in higher amounts and faster velocities, which fills creeks with sediment and mud. Between the pollutants and the sediment, aquatic life fails to thrive as it should.

Over the years my children participated in this poster contest, I learned about methods to soak up and filter stormwater, like permeable pavers and rain gardens, and I dutifully oohed and aahed at the resulting posters. Somewhere along the way, my casual interest in surface water health bloomed into a concern that my kids were missing out on an experience I loved when I was their age: playing in the local creeks. Growing up in Orchard Park, New York, my friends and I would run through neighbors’ backyards until we reached the water where we’d skip stones, jump from rock to rock, and find tadpoles and crayfish. Creeks were where kids played and explored their environment and one of a few places they ran into other kids out from under the watchful eye of adults. It felt like a distinct world, something separate from school, home, and the bustling human life beyond the tree line.

My kids’ childhoods differ from my own in more than just this one sense, and that’s not a problem. We live in a different area; their family is larger; they have iPads and better fashion sense. But something about the connection to nature is evergreen, and despite the pull of technology and urbanization, I don’t think we evolve beyond our need for it. In 2005, author and co-founder of the Children & Nature Network Richard Louv introduced the phrase “nature-deficit disorder” to describe what we lose by increasing the distance between ourselves and nature. Among other benefits, studies have shown exposure to nature positively influences children’s mental health.

Cleaning up public waterways for recreation is becoming a greater priority. From Paris to Baltimore, governments are investing in restoring and monitoring water quality so citizens can enjoy these communal spaces. We should include creek systems in this effort, because of their prevalence and ease of access for children. By exploring creeks, children can foster a sense of independence, work on balance and problem solving, and observe life cycles of animals like frogs, fish, and birds.

Now that we are more aware of things like water quality, I dance around this issue of balancing my kids' safety and healthy interaction with their environment. Sometimes it feels like I’m building a wall around them with just a few controlled and sterilized experiences allowed. The thing is, I’m confident there was pollution thirty years ago, too. Did it harm me? I sure hope not. With a bit of education on water quality sign—smell, discoloration, recent rainfall, etc.—I might encourage my kids to get into the creeks anyway.

I was nervous the first day I scrambled down the bank. For as much time as I’d spent walking next to Little Sugar Creek, I’d never stepped into the water. I left the kids at home in case the creek was full of copperheads as my Nextdoor app would lead one to believe. Or maybe I’d inadvertently lead them into a pool of acid rain and never live down the guilt. After setting my supplies on a large rock midway across the water, I filled my sample cup to measure the temperature. Next I tested for turbidity—basically water clarity—and then I submerged a small vial, added two tablets and shook until they disappeared. The resulting color provided a rough estimate of the parts per million of dissolved oxygen, the level of oxygen gas in the water. I finished up by measuring the pH, which thankfully clocked in at a nice and neutral seven.

Once I finished, I looked upstream, savoring the submersion in otherworldliness. Two weeks later I brought my family back with me, and I tried to restrain the concern in my voice as my girls stepped around stones, slipping in their rainboots and bracing themselves with their hands in the water. Ahead of us a duck plunged its head over and over. A woman rested creekside a few yards beyond. The daughter of a family far less bothered by the faint sulfurous smell walked all the way across the creek bed. This wasn’t the exact childhood I remembered—one of spotting tadpoles and splashing friends—nor did it need to be. We were all in the water, though, and that felt like a step in the right direction.

Cate Stern is a recovering lawyer and writer living in Charlotte, North Carolina. She writes on Substack and her work has been published with The New Times’ Tiny Love Stories, Motherly, HuffPost, and more. She is currently working on a novel about a family that moves south for restoration—of a house, their marriage, and a local waterway—but finds themselves at the center of controversy in their new town.