Our programs are designed to restore Gills Creek, educate the surrounding community, and advocate for its continued protection.
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Join GCWA THIS THURSDAY at noon on a virtual tour of the Sonoco Recycling plant with Jane Hiller of Sonoco. Learn how to recycle responsibly, and what happens after our recycling leaves our homes. Jane Hiller directs the Sonoco recycling education center and helps agencies, businesses, citizens and schools learn to "recycle right." Jane also coordinates the SC Green Step School Initiative and serves on the board of EEASC (Environmental Education Association of SC).
Please click the arrow below to register for the event.
Join us on Thursday, September 17th as Karen Jackson gives us an up close and personal look into what is living in Gills Creek. Many of the insects we see flying around rivers, streams, and ponds start their lives in the water. They have amazing adaptations to their surroundings, such as gills to extract oxygen from the water, retractable jaws for catching prey, and silk-producing glands to build protective cases. Many of these aquatic organisms not only depend on clean water for survival, they also benefit ponds and streams. We’ll also discuss how macroinvertebrates can be used in water quality assessments and how you can sample safely in our local streams.
Karen Jackson is an area Water Resources Agent in the Pee Dee region with Clemson Extension. She’s based out of Richland County and focuses on stream bank repair, residential wells, groundwater use, and pond management. Karen has a background in stream ecology and benthic macroinvertebrates. When not at work, she enjoys spending time outside and in the river with her dog, Behr.
Please click the arrow below to register for this free event.
The Gills Creek Watershed Management Plan 2020 Update is complete!
The 2009 Gills Creek Watershed Management Plan has been updated in order to reflect changes in the watershed’s condition over the last ten years and to provide a more explicit listing of projects within the Gills Creek Watershed, along with predicted costs and expected results.
GCWA is grateful to the Richland County Conservation Commission for funding to complete this update. We appreciate McCormick Taylor’s efforts to accomplish the work within our budget, and we are grateful to our Technical Committee members and to the many residents and stakeholders in the watershed who took the time to provide information to guide the Plan update.
Public input allowed pollutant “hotspots” within the watershed to be identified, helping to guide many of the specific projects within this Plan. The Plan also addresses EPA's nine required elements of watershed-based plans, including information such as: pollutant causes, sources, and amounts; current and predicted future development conditions; flooding concerns; best management practices; community engagement; and a schedule for implementing the plan, as well as measures of its success.
This updated Plan will provide myriad options not only for GCWA, but for local governments and others in the watershed. It is meant to be a living document, adjusted as needed to reflect watershed conditions and accommodate new threats, opportunities, and community concerns. We welcome any feedback regarding this Plan update, which can be submitted here: https://arcg.is/PujOn.
To view the Gills Creek Watershed Management Plan - 2020 Update, visit our webpage: https://www.gillscreekwatershed.org/what-we-do/key-documents.
We are currently revising the Gills Creek Watershed Management Plan and need your help to identify problem areas and issues. You—our members and friends—are on the ground in the watershed and may be more familiar with areas of severe erosion, runoff, and contamination then our consultants. And you may know of issues that no one else has thought about.
Please go to https://tinyurl.com/GCWAWMP to share your knowledge and improve the new Watershed Management Plan. Thank you!
Our community suffers from a major, unsightly problem: litter. It’s everywhere you look: on the street, in parking lots, in the ditches, even in our neighborhoods.
All of this trash ends up somewhere, and for a large portion of Richland County, that somewhere is Gills Creek.
Gills Creek used to be a true community asset with clean water, abundant wildlife, even a swimming club. These days, it’s polluted with high levels of bacteria, mercury,and other contaminants that make swimming inadvisable if not downright dangerous. The most obvious problem, though, is the litter.
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