NEWTON — About 1,800 gallons of untreated wastewater left the City of Newton’s collection system on Tuesday evening and reached a tributary of Anthony Creek, according to a sanitary sewer overflow report filed with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.
State overflow data for the Newton Collection System (permit WQCS00044) show the release began about 7:32 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2026, and ended about 10:52 p.m. the same night. The filing marks the overflow as not ongoing.
DEQ’s filing says the full 1,800 gallons reached surface waters, with the receiving stream listed as Anthony Creek (classification 11-130-2-(2)) and the conveyance described as an unnamed tributary. The department’s fish-kill field for the incident is marked No.
The location on the state report is listed as Affordable Moving and Storage in Newton, Catawba County, with coordinates near 35.6846°N, 81.2263°W. Public business filings for Affordable Moving and Storage LLC place that company’s physical address at 514 West 21st Street in Newton; the DEQ location field uses the business name rather than a street number.
Newton’s report reached DEQ about 2:20 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 23, through the Mooresville Regional Office. As of publication, the state’s five-day follow-up fields for cause, weather, and resolution were still blank, so Catawba First News is not attributing a cause beyond what the overflow filing itself shows.
Under North Carolina law, owners of wastewater collection systems generally must issue a public notice when an untreated discharge of 1,000 gallons or more reaches surface waters. Catawba First News had not located a separate City of Newton news release for this incident at publication time and will update if one posts.
Source note
Tip that surfaced this story: a local news report on the Newton wastewater spill. Verified independently from the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Division of Water Resources Sanitary Sewer Overflow Viewer source layer (Sanitary Sewer Overflows since Jan 2026), Newton Collection System / WQCS00044 entry for the Sept. 22–23, 2026, 1,800-gallon Anthony Creek overflow. Business street address cross-checked against FMCSA SAFER (USDOT 3195529) and the company’s public site. Tip-only cause attribution was omitted pending a completed DEQ five-day cause field or a city notice.
