Hurricane Floyd Runoff Suffocating North Carolina Estuary

October 10, 1999  New Bern, North Carolina ­ On Friday, October 8th, the non-profit North Carolina Coastal Foundation met in Raleigh to discuss how effective coastal management has been. The impact of Hurricane Floyd dominated the discussion. Dr. Hans Paerl, a marine scientist at the University of North Carolina said, "What we're seeing is an ecological event on the catastrophic scale."

Hurricane Floyd dumped twenty inches of rain on eastern North Carolina on September 16th. The water killed about fifty people as it filled the river basins to overflowing. The flood waters tore through houses, hog lagoons and sewer plants that had been constructed along the Neuse and Tar Rivers. Everything was dumped into Albemarle-Pamlico Sounds, the second largest estuary in the United States.