Gov. Mike Easley’s recently released legislative plan for drought relief — which includes new water conservation, efficiency mandates, and expanded enforcement authority — has stirred concerns that the initiative might violate private property rights.
Under Easley’s proposal, large private water users in business, industry, and agriculture would have to register with the state and report monthly their water usage. The plan, released March 11, also calls for the state to identify “all other large water users” and would grant the secretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources the authority to “require additional reporting as necessary during periods of drought.”
Opponents contend the governor is using the drought to expand governmental powers and exercise greater control over the lives of N.C. citizens.
Chad Adams, director of the Center for Local Innovation, said the registration and monitoring of private water sources has the “look and feel of Cuba and can turn neighbor against neighbor.”
“State officials are making decisions without having a good understanding of water issues,” Adams said.
Purpose of monitoring
At the end of February, aides from the governor’s office met with lawmakers, including members of the state Senate’s Agriculture, Environment, and Natural Resources Committee, to discuss drought relief. According to Rep. Bill Faison, D-Orange, one of the governor’s aides, Franklin Freeman, said the proposal “could include the monitoring of private well-water users by metering and fining.”
Sen. Joe Sam Queen, D-Waynesville, a member of the committee, said he understood from the discussion that “only private wells of large water users in business, agriculture, and industry, might be monitored, not family wells.” In fact, Queen said, “I do not know a single legislator of either party who is interested in monitoring the family well.”
Queen said he agrees that there needs to be an “inventory of water users” so the state can develop a “balanced and fair plan into the future.”
Both lawmakers were asked whether such a law could violate private property rights. “I would weigh those issues carefully,” Queen said, “and I agree that we need to look at everybody’s interests, not just special interests.”
Faison said monitoring private wells is a “bad idea. I would not only not support it but would oppose it should it become part of the governor’s proposal. I see no point to it. Water comes out of your well and goes back to the same site, not like surface water that comes from the watershed and is used, distributed, and discharged elsewhere.”
Jerad Bales, director of the N.C. Water Center in Raleigh, the local office of the U.S. Geological Survey, said there are two issues at work if the state is considering regulating private water users. First, the state needs to know what the groundwater level is. Second, the state needs to know the rate at which private well users are withdrawing the water to determine whether it can be sufficiently recharged.
Bales cited data from last year showing the state’s Coastal Plain had more water being pumped out than was being recharged. “Most municipal systems don’t draw their water from groundwater like private well owners do,” Bales said.
The USGS already has a network of wells scattered around the state to monitor groundwater levels in addition to surface monitoring systems. Many of these monitoring sites provide real-time data on groundwater levels. The wells range in depth from 30 to 460 feet below the land surface and penetrate different soil types, including bedrock.
When asked why the state would need to monitor private well owners, Bales acknowledged that the best way to determine true water levels was by means of unpumped wells, not pumped wells, but he said that “North Carolina has a thin groundwater network, unlike other states.”
After being pointed to specific site-monitoring data, Bales confirmed that groundwater levels have risen in some areas of the state even during the drought.
Critics wonder whether the real purpose of monitoring might be to generate additional revenues and expand “smart growth” initiatives. To that, Queen said,” I can’t predict the future.”
Faison, on the other hand, speculated the cost to implement such a measure might outweigh any expected revenues. “Who would pay for the cost of the meter? Would it be the state or the individual homeowner? If 40 percent of North Carolinians have private wells, that means an expenditure of $20 to $60 million, depending on the cost of the meter,” he said. “I can’t imagine any legislator would want private citizens to bear that cost. Then there’s the cost of collecting the self-reports of consumption. Who would audit?”
“The governor can propose,” Faison said, “but the legislators are the ones who make the bills. There’s no bill to talk about yet.”
Confounding data
The N.C. Drought Management Advisory Council provides drought assessment, hydrological, and other climate data to state officials. Despite decades of climate research, scientists disagree over findings.
Opponents are concerned that state officials are relying on confounding and even conflicting data to formulate policies and laws that further infringe on private property rights.
The U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. National Weather Service, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who are members of the advisory council, advance global warming theories and the need for regulation. Yet, materials from the USGS and NOAA websites contradict many of these theories, calling into question public policies based on such data.
An article on the USGS Web site attributes changes in water availability and variability to normal processes in the global water cycle that occur “in the blink of an eye and over millions of years.” The water cycle, a complex combination of precipitation, runoff, infiltration, replenishment, and discharge, continues over time and space, continually shifting the amount of available freshwater.
As for harmful human activities that might contribute to the frequency of drought, flood, and storms, Thomas Huntington, a USGS researcher, examined 100 years of data on the global water cycle. In a press release March 16, 2006, Huntington discussed his finding that, even though the global water cycle has intensified over the past century, “the potential effects of the intensification” were not observed, meaning there had been no “increase in the frequency or intensity of tropical storms over the past century.”
Similarly, a USGS study of the Great Lakes in 2007 reconstructed water-level history and compared that to recorded data starting in the 1840s. The study reported large periodic fluctuations in water availability and lake levels, from extremely low to very high, had occurred throughout the millennia.
The report also found that both flooding and drought are necessary to maintain balance in the ecosystem. Aerial photographs highlighted the effects of government-imposed regulation on lake levels, including vegetation loss and shifting of plant communities from one area to another. The magnitude of both natural and human-induced effects was studied, and the researchers reported “natural factors are dominant — particularly over the long term.”
Karen McMahan is a contributing editor of Carolina Journal.