N.C. policymakers have relied largely on mandatory water-use restrictions and voluntary conservation efforts to battle record-breaking drought. Some water-supply experts, however, say increasing the supply of potable water is a better way to reduce the impact of future dry seasons.
But that presents a problem: Local governments find it increasingly difficult to overcome environmental regulations that often delay bringing new water sources online years or even decades.
“The demands for water have significantly increased, but our raw water storage has not. That’s due to a number of things, one being that it has become so environmentally sensitive to get a reservoir in place,” said Woody Yonts, chairman of the Drought Management Advisory Council for the N.C. Division of Water Resources.
After experiencing the worst drought since records were first kept, North Carolina is returning to normal water levels. By mid-May, half of the state’s water systems were still under mandatory or voluntary water-use restrictions, but only 17 counties, all in the southwestern part of the state, remained in extreme drought.
Faced with parched conditions and dwindling water supplies, state officials have lobbied to increase government control to handle shortages caused by rising demand.
In March, Gov. Mike Easley announced a legislative drought relief package that requires large private water users to register with the state and report their usage. The plan also tightens conservation standards and expands enforcement authority.
The General Assembly’s Environmental Review Commission approved the plan at a hearing May 19, but some lawmakers expressed doubts about the package before giving their endorsement.
Farm lobbyists oppose the plan because it requires farmers to register with the state and report their water consumption, while property rights activists worry that streamlining the drought management process would expand state government’s control over residents’ private property.
One obstacle the plan fails to address is supply. Some regions of the state suffer from too few waters sources to begin with, and rapid population growth only compounds the problem.
Growing pains
North Carolina’s population has grown from 5.7 million residents in 1977 to 9.1 million in 2007, according to data from State Demographics. Much of that increase is concentrated in urban centers. Charlotte and Raleigh, for example, rank as two of the fastest-growing metro regions in the country.
New residents put an added strain on the state’s infrastructure and natural resources, and shortages are developing because of rising demand.
“North Carolina has always been known as a water-rich state. It’s humid and has lots of rainfall on average every year,” Yonts said. “But as more people find out about how wonderful this place is, they’re coming, and since our supplies haven’t increased as much as they probably should have, our demand has gone up and increased water use.”
The amount of water used by industrial, commercial, and residential consumers combined rose by 27 percent during the 1990s. The two counties that registered the heaviest overall drains on the water supply in 2000 were Mecklenburg and Brunswick. Guilford and Buncombe counties had the highest rates of domestic water use.
Raleigh was one of the cities particularly hard hit during the height of the drought. Falls Lake, the capital city’s sole supply of drinking water, reached record low levels during the closing months of 2007. Officials predicted the reservoir would go dry by summer if parched conditions continued, but plentiful rains this year restored water levels to normal.
Increasing the number of water supplies in a metropolitan area can help reduce future strain caused by drought, said Phil Fragapane, an engineer with the Division of Water Resources.
“Responding to water supply impacts due to drought is about either increasing water supplies or decreasing water demands,” he said. “In the cases where expanding existing water supplies is feasible, this is one option for dealing with the impacts of drought.”
Despite escalating demand for municipal water, it’s been years since a major impounding reservoir went online in North Carolina. Randleman Dam and Lake, in the Triad, is one of the newest. The lake is expected to go into service after its water treatment plant opens in two years.
The West Fork Eno Reservoir, which services Hillsborough, is another source completed recently, although its water capacity is smaller than that of Falls Lake. Plans are also moving forward for a 1,300-acre reservoir along the First Broad River in Cleveland County near Charlotte. The Corps of Engineers is still considering the proposal.
Environmental roadblocks
State and federal environmental regulations often mean lengthy delays for local governments wanting to increase municipal water supplies. “It’s getting difficult to find these windows of opportunity where there is a suitable place environmentally and hydrologically to add additional storage through a new reservoir or expansion of an existing one,” Yonts said.
The primary purpose of reservoirs is to control floodwaters, not create a supply of drinking water, according to Penny Schmitt, chief of public affairs for the Wilmington District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps has a say in the permitting process since reservoirs affect protected regions.
“The reason the Corps gets involved is because usually a reservoir is built making use of a natural stream in some way. That would interfere with the stream and associated wetlands,” Schmitt said.
Creating a new reservoir often takes decades. The history of Randleman Lake, for instance, dates to 1968 when Congress authorized $11 million to fund the project. The Piedmont Triad Regional Water Authority took over construction in 1987 after the Corps of Engineers withdrew support, deciding the cost of the reservoir outweighed its flood-control benefits.
If a city wants to build a reservoir, it has to secure enough land and seek an individual permit in accordance with both state and federal wetlands regulations, Schmitt said. The Endangered Species Act can play a role in permitting if endangered wildlife is present on the site designated for the reservoir.
Regulatory agencies also require builders to mitigate any environmental damage by restoring an amount of wetlands equal to the number of acres affected by construction.
Officials in Canton, Ga., found out recently just how thorny the permitting process can be. Stretched by growth, the city, in conjunction with the Cobb County-Marietta Water Authority, decided in 2005 to build a reservoir to increase its supply of drinking water.
Part of the process required working with the State Fish and Wildlife Service to protect endangered species on the reservoir site and obtaining a biological opinion that builders agreed to uphold before, during and after the project, according to Cole Blackwell, manager of Canton’s Hickory Log Creek Dam and Reservoir.
The city also had to estimate how much damage construction of the new reservoir would cause. “We had to mitigate that damage,” Blackwell said. “For example, if ten acres of wetlands are destroyed, we had to replace ten. And we had to find [a given amount] of miles of stream and restore them.”
The mitigation requirement was the aspect that made the project particularly tough, Blackwell said. “That was a huge part of this thing. That process cost almost as much as the dam itself,” he said.
Smaller options
Local governments and municipalities can seek to quench rising water demand by constructing smaller facilities on existing lakes, but the process is still protracted.
Raleigh is pursuing this option. The city is in the process of building a new water treatment plant that will draw from Lake Benson and Lake Wheeler. The plant is expected to be online by 2010. Once operational, it will supplement Raleigh’s only other water treatment plant near Falls Lake.
Getting the new plant permitted was “arduous,” said Dale Crisp, director of the public utilities department for Raleigh. The process took 5 1/2 years from the city’s first discussions with the state and federal regulatory agencies until the utilities department was able to break ground, Crisp said.
“It was surprising. We didn’t anticipate it taking that long,” he said.
The Fish and Wildlife Service played a role in the approval process, since a region downstream from the plant was designated habitat for the dwarf wedge mussel, an endangered species.
Raleigh has pursued other avenues of increasing water supply, too. The city has asked the Corps of Engineers to boost water storage capacity in Falls Lake by increasing the guide curve by two feet, but the Corps has resisted the idea because it would limit floodwater mitigation.
Dredging the reservoir to increase water capacity is also not a feasible option, Schmitt said.
“Any reservoir the Corps has ever built has been built to take advantage of a river value. Nobody has ever undertaken work to deepen a natural feature like that,” she said. “If you were going to do it, you would have to find a place to put all the material you removed. That’s not easy.”
Groundwater regulations
Environmental regulations might delay the creation of new municipal water supplies, but some users of non-city water say burdensome government parameters are targeting well owners, too, and putting their private property rights at risk.
About half of North Carolina’s population relies on groundwater sources for drinking water, according to the N.C. Groundwater Association. The N.C. Division of Water Quality regulates construction of individual private wells, but legislation approved by the General Assembly in 2006 has homeowners worried that more intrusive monitoring procedures could be in store.
The bill, H.R. 2873, directs counties to work through local health departments “to implement a private drinking water well permitting, inspection, and testing program.” The measure requires collected samples of well water be sent to the State Laboratory for Public Health in Raleigh for testing.
That’s prompted opposition from property rights organizations who say the legislation is an effort to keep tabs on residents who own private wells. The activist group Citizens for Change in Buncombe County is circulating a petition asking the legislature to overturn the new well-water regulations.
“We feel like they are collecting information on everybody who has wells so that eventually they’ll know who we all are,” said Peggy Bennett, program director for Citizens for Change.
The cost of implementing the testing requirements at the state level is expected to be $1.4 million for the current fiscal year, according to the bill’s fiscal impact statement. That doesn’t include local costs.
“It’s another tax. It’s not to help people get clean water. It’s to make money for the state, and it’s going to hurt people,” Bennett said.
The bill becomes effective July 1, when all counties are required to have a system in place for implementing the regulation and testing requirements.
Future drought
Expanding water capacity is going to be a concern for cities in the state, but encouraging conservation is still important, Yonts said. “The immediate thing is trying to get people to use water more efficiently and use less water,” he said. “We need to see how we can do a better job in our homes and also in our industry in recycling water and being more efficient all the way around.”
While many local governments use mandatory and voluntary water-use restrictions to reduce consumption during droughts, free-market advocates say a pricing system in which users are charged higher rates for consuming larger amounts of water is a more effective option for reducing shortages.
Water resources could be managed most efficiently through this type of market-based pricing, said Sam Staley, director of urban and land-use policy for the Reason Foundation.
Under the system, municipalities establish a flat rate based on typical water consumption for a household and then increase the price incrementally as users consume more water. Cities such as Charlotte and Greensboro already use this approach of increasing block pricing.
“Market-oriented approaches to water pricing have the advantages of preserving choice, encouraging innovation, and ensuring the people who want the water the most get it,” Staley said.
“This would automatically promote conservation, but also provide strong financial incentives to find new sources of water to meet growing demand,” he said.
David N. Bass is an associate editor of Carolina Journal.