History of Wilson Bay Wastewater Treatment Plant Vision of the City Council The People Speak Environmental Restoration Our Site Transforming the former Wilson Bay Wastewater Treatment Plant in Jacksonville, NC to an Environmental and Education Center dedicated to helping to restore Sturgeon to our waters and bringing pride to our hometown. Brandon Foesch holds a Rangia Clam. The discovery of this clam demonstrated that life could be restored to Wilson Bay and served to inspire members of the Sturgeon City Institutes.

Sturgeon City is part of a commitment made to help restore habitat in Wilson Bay, provide economic redevelopment and to provide environmental education to our citizens to help avoid environmental mistakes of the past.

For forty years, the City of Jacksonville had discharged its treated wastewater into the New River through Wilson Bay. Combined with the other problems of the New River, this left a thick blanket of sludge material on the bottom of the Bay, little to no life in the water column, and a wonderful natural resource that was not being used for recreation, commercial fishing or just visiting.

The City leaders decided to abandon the concept of river discharge, and build an environmentally friendly, expandable and modern land application plant. It costs more than $50 million and since 1998, all the City’s wastewater has been treated by this plant located in the northeast section of Onslow County.

With that decision, City of Jacksonville leaders declared that they had a “moral responsibility to help clean up Wilson Bay.” That led to the Wilson Bay Initiative, a program to restore water quality in Wilson Bay.

The success of that program led to the consideration of what to do with the old plant; sell it for development, use it for a park, or allow the City’s workshops at the site to expand into much needed space.

Instead the vision of Dr. Jay Levine, a scientist working with the Wilson Bay Initiative, was to use the large tanks to raise Sturgeon. Sturgeon were once native to the New River, but the thick blanket of sludge and pollution along the river, prevented these bottom feeders from returning to spawn.

The idea grew to include a concept; use the former plant as an environmental education center to help prevent the environmental mistakes of the past, make it the headquarters for the City’s water quality initiatives and use it as an example of how environmental restoration can be compatible with economic redevelopment.

Today Sturgeon City hosts restored wetlands that help cleanse the waters of Wilson Bay, the first phase of an award-winning park design that provides sweeping vistas of the Wilson Bay and serves as the home to youth and environmental education programs designed to instill appreciation for our community and its people.