The surprising announcement during Saturday s Onslow County Republican Convention may have caught local citizens off guard, but the inner workings behind the news started around a year ago.
Chief Deputy of the Onslow County Sheriff s Office, Colonel Chris Thomas, is looking to move up one rank in the department after announcing his candidacy for Sheriff. Thomas was promoted to Col. in January 2019 after joining the department as Major when current Onslow Sheriff Hans Miller was elected in 2014.
Miller s vision when taking office six years ago was to help modernize the department by bringing it into the 21st century through policy and procedural changes.
Jan Farmer collects debris along the shoreline of Stump Sound at Morris Landing Clean Water Preserve in Holly Ridge. Photo: Dylan Ray
Last month, a grassroots group of volunteers walked around Sneads Ferry and collected 34 bags of trash by hand. After a couple of hours, their haul weighed in at a whopping 680 pounds.
The group calls itself Debris Free Sneads Ferry, and it was organized and led by Hannah Faith Kushner. Kushner, of Sneads Ferry, said she considers litter in the area to be a tremendous problem.
Debris Free Sneads Ferry is just one of a handful of emerging efforts to clean up the area around Stump Sound. The sound touches a handful of municipalities and unincorporated areas, which poses challenges to managing issues like litter. Who is in charge of addressing this problem?
Researchers and volunteers at Stump Sound in Onslow County. Photo: N.C. Coastal Federation
A $75,000 grant will go toward plans to improve and maintain the water quality of Stump Sound in Onslow County, known for its oysters.
The North Carolina Coastal Federation received the grant from North Carolina Land and Water Fund for the development of a plan to address water quality and reduce localized flooding.
Stump Sound is designated as Outstanding Resource Waters, open shellfish waters, and a primary nursery area by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.
While the classifications are to protect the existing uses of the sound for shellfishing, in recent years water quality has declined. Shellfish beds are now often closed to harvest following more frequent rain events because of larger amounts of polluted stormwater runoff flowing into the sound from surrounding land uses.