The future of the Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association—and the nearly 500 acres of protected lands it owns and manages—is up in the air after the environmental nonprofit’s dissolution.
ECWA’s board voted to dissolve in January after significant staff and leadership turnover and declining organizational capacity, board president Shannon Arata told the INDY. ECWA has not issued any public statement about its dissolution.
“It’s a series of events that happened over a number of years,” Arata says. “It’s no one person’s fault. There’s no finger pointing at all. It’s just, small nonprofits with big dreams and turnover. It happens. But unfortunately, it happened in a way that put ECWA as a very small nonprofit in a bad place that we’re working through.”
The organization is now undergoing restructuring. There could be a “smaller ECWA” in the future, Arata says. The organization still owns all its properties, which include five public nature preserves, four private parcels, and one conservation easement. If at any point ECWA has to let go of its properties, they would go to a comparable 501(c)(3) or a city or county organization. Arata emphasizes that dissolution does not mean ECWA’s preserves will be sold to developers.
“That’s not at all the case,” Arata says. “It’s not allowed under the law, nor is it something the board would ever approve.”
Arata says the board has convened a “community advisory group of past ECWA supporters and past board members, and is also working with some other 501(c)(3) partners” to figure out next steps.
“Where this goes, we don’t know exactly yet, but a lot of good has come out of the process and a lot of needed organizational work,” Arata says.
ECWA was founded in 1999, initially protecting just six acres of land along Ellerbe Creek. Over 25 years, the organization expanded its conservation efforts while running programs centered on water quality restoration, invasive species management, and community education. It also engaged in advocacy work, including successfully pushing the Durham City Council in 2023 to permanently protect 215 acres of city land as a nature preserve for a great blue heron rookery.
Community members began noticing signs of trouble several months ago when ECWA’s headquarters at 904 Broad Street was listed for rent. Some also noticed changes in the Beaver Queen Pageant: this year marked the first time since 2005 that the quirky fundraiser—which just held its twenty-first iteration last Saturday at Duke Park—operated independently of ECWA, with the Beaver Lodge forming its own nonprofit and directing proceeds to Keep Durham Beautiful instead of ECWA.
For nearly two decades, ECWA and the pageant had been natural partners. The pageant, a campy affair where contestants don beaver costumes and compete with punny aliases like “Clint Eatswood” was born from environmental activism, originally started to celebrate a successful effort to stop the state Department of Transportation from removing a beaver dam near East Club Boulevard. That wetland habitat would later become ECWA’s Beaver Marsh preserve.
ECWA typically handled operational tasks for the pageant: looping in volunteers, securing city permits, managing the website, processing donations, booking vendors. But by last year, ECWA no longer had the capacity to manage those logistics, according to Greg Palmer, who helps organize the pageant.
“They were down to maybe two or three employees,” Palmer says, of ECWA. “The people that had worked on it for probably eight to ten years, the people that were so familiar with it, [were gone], and the people that were in were completely new.”
In February 2022, ECWA’s website listed 11 staff members and 16 board members. By August 2024, the organization had dwindled to just two staff positions—executive director Nicole Llinás, who came on in late 2023, and director of operations Phil Seib—and eight board members, only two of whom remained from the 2022 board. As recently as September 2024, ECWA was still attempting to hire a land conservation manager.
Tax records show ECWA’s revenue peaked at over $3 million in 2011 due to a major grant and has since averaged around $500,000 annually, though fluctuating considerably year-to-year. In its most recent tax filing, the organization reported $5.7 million in assets, with a revenue of $967,000—higher than usual—largely from grants and individual contributions, and expenses of $868,000, mostly costs like installing rain gardens, maintaining parks, and doing community engagement.
Arata says the board plans to release a broader public statement about the future of ECWA soon.
“The good and bad part about this timeline is that things are changing very rapidly, so we want to get our communication right,” Arata says.
“The mission will live on, no matter what happens with ECWA,” she adds. “The board is positive about all of the work that’s going on, and we’re happy with all the good that’s coming out of it. When decisions are made, we’ll let you know, but it’s going to be a process.”
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