The Watershed Atlas  ·  No. 01 — Lower Eighteenmile  ·  the atlas  ·  No. 04 — Golden Creek

Upstate  ·  Hardening —

The Watershed Atlas · No. 04

Golden Creek

A small creek near Easley — one of the three (with Twelvemile and Eighteenmile) that a big group wrote a watershed plan around years ago. It’s the least built-up watershed in this atlas, which makes it the most hopeful: still mostly catching its own rain, and right at the moment where stewardship is cheapest.

1.5 sq minear Easley, Pickens Countydrains toward Lake Hartwell87% one soil group
Terrain and stream map of Golden Creek
Terrain & streams · USGS 3DEP 1 m LiDAR hillshade + NHD flowlines.

The ground

Still mostly green — for now

Golden Creek drains a square-and-a-half of Pickens County near Easley: old fields, woods, and spreading residential edges. It sits on the same weathered Piedmont clay as its neighbors — 87% hydrologic group B — but it’s held onto more of its cover than any other watershed here.

In 2023 forest still covered about a third of it. That’s the good news. The trend line is the warning.

32%
Forest cover, 2023 — the most of any watershed here
16%
Impervious surface, 2023 — just over the 10% line
87%
Soils in hydrologic group B

What's changing

Just over the first line

Impervious cover rose from about 12% of the watershed in 1985 to 16% in 2023 — recently across the Center for Watershed Protection’s first threshold, where streams begin to degrade past 10% hardening. Golden isn’t in trouble yet. It’s at the tipping point, which is exactly where a plan is worth the most.

Impervious cover, 1985–2023

Share of the 979-acre watershed that is impervious. Dashed line = the 10% degradation threshold (Center for Watershed Protection). Source: USGS EROS Annual NLCD, 30 m.
Land cover map
Land cover, 2023 · NLCD.
Impervious surface map
Impervious surface, 2023 · NLCD.

Where the green is

Woods giving way to lots

Developed land went from about 50% of the watershed in 1985 to 61% in 2023; forest fell from 41% to 32%, and old farm ground from 8% to 5%. Set against the built-out watersheds in this atlas, Golden is what the others looked like a generation ago.

Golden Creek

Land cover by area · 2023

Lower Eighteenmile · No. 01

Composition, not size · same year
2023

Water quality — the 303(d) list

What it drains into

Golden Creek is small enough that it isn't a separately monitored segment on the state's 303(d) list.

But it drains straight into the Twelvemile–Golden Creek plan area (Lake Hartwell system) — which is listed, for the turbidity and nutrient pressures documented across that multi-creek watershed plan. Whatever this watershed sheds, it sheds into an already-impaired water.

Source: EPA ATTAINS (the national clearinghouse for state Clean Water Act §303(d)/305(b) assessments), current reporting cycle. “Cause” = the pollutant; “use” = what it keeps the water from supporting (swimming, aquatic life).

What the water does now

Small and steepening

The curve-number model shows the shift. Golden’s runoff curve number rose from about 68 to 69 as it hardened — modest, because there’s still green to soak up rain:

Runoff volume per storm — 1985 vs 2023

Total runoff leaving the 979-acre watershed by storm size. Curve-number model with pervious CN estimated from the SSURGO soil mix; storm depths from NOAA Atlas 14. Acre-foot ≈ 326,000 gallons.
The 2-year storm sheds about 6 acre-feet more than in 1985 — small, and that’s the point.

Golden still absorbs most of what falls on it. Every acre kept in cover here holds that number down. This is the watershed where “slow it, spread it, sink it” costs the least, because most of the sinking is still happening on its own.

Why it matters now

The cheapest watershed to keep

By the time a watershed reads like the Reedy or Hunnicutt, fixing it means undoing pavement. Golden isn’t there. Protecting the forest it still has, and guiding how the new lots grade and drain, keeps it out of the impaired column entirely — for a fraction of the cost of a cleanup.

That’s the whole case for meeting a watershed at the tipping point instead of the bottom.

Slow it · spread it · sink it

The receipts

Every number, from open data

Delineated from the USGS gage near Easley (02186090, 1.53 sq mi — matching the published drainage area); every figure computed locally from public sources.

Watershed boundaryUSGS SS-Delineate v1 from gage 02186090 (Golden Creek near Easley) — 1.53 sq mi.
Impervious & land coverUSGS EROS Annual NLCD Collection 1 — Fractional Impervious Surface and Land Cover, 30 m, 1985–2023.
Streams & terrainUSGS NHD flowlines; USGS 3DEP 1 m LiDAR hillshade.
Soils / hydrologic groupUSDA SSURGO via Soil Data Access — area-weighted.
Runoff modelTR-55 / SCS Curve Number; pervious CN estimated from the SSURGO HSG mix.
ImpairmentsEPA ATTAINS §303(d)/305(b) assessment service, current cycle.