Use of the Neuse: the river's condition has improved over the past two decades, but better may not be good enough.

• Author: Bailey, David

EImer Eddy washes another bite of kippered herring down with a swig of beer and basks in the sun on a rock that, over the years, has become his favorite spot on the Neuse.

After four hours of canoeing, the 72-year-old retired insurance agent is getting his second wind just above the U.S. Highway 401 bridge. "You wouldn't believe you're just a few miles outside of North Carolina's capital city, would you?- he says.

For long stretches, Eddy reflects, the river he's spent the morning paddling down looks pretty much as it must have to the Indians and early settlers - a kingfisher one jump ahead of the canoe, darting from one overhanging branch to the next, a red-shouldered hawk hovering ominously above the hardwood forest, a Carolina wren flitting about under the rhododendrons. Mottled sunlight spills down through the branches and plays off the river's ripples and cascades - unburdened with the silt and mud that discolor other rivers. Eddy, a man given to talking about "those environmentalists" with a note of disdain in his voice, loves the Neuse and says he relies on it to recharge his batteries when he grows a little weary of the world.

But back in 1952, the Neuse was a different river: 'If you threw a line in to fish, it would stretch out in a long curve with the current and have fibers about an inch or two long on it - very thin fibers - and they'd build up and build up. And when you'd reel your line in, it would make a big, gooey gob around the bobber," Eddy says, cupping his hands and then looking at them in disgust as if the blob were back.

"If you'd leave your line out there, well, eventually, it would break." Who knows where the fibers had come from - maybe Burlington Industries, whose plant he had pointed out earlier. Maybe one of the textile mills on the Flat or the Eno, two small rivers that empty into the Neuse.

The point is, the fibers are long gone. So are the foul industrial discharges Eddy used to see pouring from pipes along the bank. Eddy is no scientist, but he's convinced the condition of the Neuse has improved in the past 40 years.

Grudgingly, environmental experts agree. Although some will tell you it's too little, too late, a recently released U.S. Geological Survey report indicates some positive trends on the Neuse, such as rising oxygen levels and a decrease in silt and nutrients. And that, at least, is a good beginning. But it's best not to be in a hurry. Man has spent at least a century ruining the Neuse. There's no reason to think the river will recover overnight.

"Because the level of treatment has improved, we've seen improvements in many of the waters all across North Carolina, not just the Neuse," says Douglas Rader, senior scientist with the North Carolina Environmental Defense Fund. "It's true in virtually every river basin."

On other other hand, Rader says, we've been hard on our rivers, stretching to the limit their ability to recover: "It would be difficult to take a new major industry and simply insert it into any major river in North Carolina," he says. We have a lot of degraded water. We have programs in place that are causing great improvements to occur, but much more will need to be done with the growth we all know is coming."

The Neuse is a good example of a river struggling to assimilate the effects of growth. The river and its tributaries stretch over more than 3,288 miles. Only 27 percent can fully handle what man puts in the river and wants to take out of it - from drinking water to fish, according to the evaluation the N.C. Division of Environmental Management makes every other year. In other words, nearly three-fourths - 73 percent -of the Neuse system is polluted or in jeopardy of being polluted.

DEM classifies rivers and streams into four categories. The healthiest stretches of water, in DEM's language, "support their use." In other words, they deliver what people living along that part of the river want. Below that are waters whose ability to support their use is threatened, those that only partially support their use and those that can't support their use.

Under this formula, 38 percent of the Neuse and its tributaries are threatened, 30 percent partially support their use and 5 percent fall short of the minimum state standards.

In short, less than a third of the river is up to snuff. Upper stretches, like the one Eddy canoes...