HomeMy WebLinkAboutMinutes - 20020516SUMMARY
ORANGE COUNTY WATER SUMMIT
MAY 16, 2002
The Orange County Board of Commissioners met on May 16, 2Q02 at 4:Q0 p.m. at the Southern
Human Services Center in Chapel Hill, North Carolina for a water summit.
COUNTY COMMISSIONERS PRESENT: Chair Barry Jacobs and Commissioner Moses Carey
COUNTY COMMISSIONERS ABSENT: Margaret W. Brown, Alice M. Gordon and Stephen Halkiotis
COUNTY ATTORNEY PRESENT: S. Sean Barhanian
COUNTY STAFF PRESENT: County Manager John M. Link, Jr., and Clerk to the Board Beverly A.
Blythe {All other staff members will be identified appropriately below)
NOTE: ALL DOCUMENTS REFERRED TO IN THESE MINUTES ARE IN THE PERMANENT AGENDA
FILE IN THE CLERK'S OFFICE.
NOTE: THIS WAS NOT AN OFFICIAL MEETING SINCE ONLY 2 COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
ATTENDED. THIS VERBATIM TRANSCRIPT WILL BE PLACED IN THE PERMANENT
AGENDA FILE IN THE CLERK'S OFFICE FOR FUTURE REFERENCE.
1. INTRODUCTION
A. Opening Remarks
Chair Jacobs made opening remarks. Welcome. We are pleased to have sa many people that
we wanted to have here today at this water summit, which is hosted by the Orange County Commissioners.
Commissioner Moses Carey is sitting over here by the window. Commissioners Margaret Brawn, Alice
Gordon, and Steve Halkiotis will probably be here by and by. We will take time, sa that everybody who is
sitting up here can introduce himself or herself. I will be glad to recognize other people who are here. If you
are representing one of the water providers, and you would like to come sit up here, there is still roam. So
please feel free.
My name is Barry Jacobs, I am also one of the Orange County Commissioners. We are pleased
to host this water summit. We wanted to start off with a little comment from Ambrose Pierce to set the tone,
and it's a definition of neighbor. "A neighbor is one wham we are commanded to love as ourselves and who
does all he knows how to make us disobedient." We are all neighbors, but if we da not communicate, then
we develop misunderstandings. Sometimes personalities get in the way. Sometimes we simply do not
recognize that we have common interests. So what we really are all about is trying to get beyond the frictions
and divisions. We assume that the water providers who are here today are here out of a sense of self-
interest. Self-interest is good in this setting. What we want to do is talk about the issues that brought us to
came to the conclusion that it would be a good idea to have this water summit and to have these players in
the same place at the same time. We are proud in Orange County of how long we have been committed to
protecting watersheds, water supplies. We, in fact, in discussing this meeting, we protect the water for all of
the municipalities and for Orange-Alamance. Everybody who is here, we help protect your water, because
we protect the watersheds. We are not a water provider. Obviously, we cannot keep on doing things the way
that we have been doing them over the course of the years. As growth takes place, it changes some of the
equations, it bumps us against one another, and it starts to affect the resources that we have. We are
obviously also in a difficult financial climate, more difficult for some than for others, but difficult for all of us.
That may not go away. That may make us look at things a little bit differently. And we are also in a changed
climate period, whether it is temporary or not. We went to capacity use in the Eno River system two and a
half months before we normally do because of drought conditions. We are working on an update of our
comprehensive land use plan. We first did it 20 years ago. Obviously it has been amended many times
since. But we are trying to incorporate a lot of the thinking that has changed and also trying to incorporate
the plans of those who have a participatory role in how Orange County grows.
When we talk about learning the challenges and concerns of the water providers, we think it would
be useful to have same common understanding of what we are each doing, a common language, and a
common sense of at least understanding. Before we can even talk about collaboration or cooperation, we
need to at least understand where the other person, or in this case, entity, is coming from. I think all of the
utilities are committed to providing safe drinking supplies, quality water, we want to have a sufficient quantity
of water to provide for the customers, the citizens; and we want to do it in a way that is environmentally
sensitive and that is cost effective. As far as our interests, we are trying to be very upfront. We have a
number of interests. As I said, we are not a water provider, but we are a sewer provider in the Efland area,
and we recently decided to go ahead and at least complete a master plan for an Efland sewer system. We
started the Efland sewer in the early 80's in response to some failing septic systems, and we are still
perfecting that plan now and have a million dollars in bond monies that will be applied to expanding the
current system. Even though we are talking about Orange County in general, and you all have different parts
of Orange County, we are really talking mainly about the central part of Orange County today in terms of
whom we have brought together. And you can see that there are a number of issues -anew County middle
school. The County Schaal board would like to put one near where we have an elementary school, but we da
not have sufficient water for fire suppression. Economic development, we have existing businesses and an
850-acre designated economic development district between Efland and Mebane that has no provision of
services contemplated, nor have we identified a source of those services. I would like to welcome the
members of People for Progress, who are sitting in the back several rows. This is a community that kind of
falls in a no-man's land between Mebane and Efland, not really in anybody's service area. They have water
and sewer problems, and we need to figure out a way to coordinate so that we can address those problems
in a way that is satisfactory, that brings them the service that they need. When we talk about water and
sewer boundaries, we have an agreement that was recently put in place between Hillsborough; OWASA,
which represents Chapel Hill and Carrboro, as well as Orange County; and the Orange County government
that delineates the water and sewer boundary for each utility so that we know who is going to provide where
and which areas will not have service provided unless there is a public health emergency. We do not have
those kinds of agreements in central Orange County.
I cannot go through this without mentioning conservative use of limited resources. I walked down
to Seven-Mile Creek, which is near my house, before I came here in fact. It was hard to leave. I brought one
of our other constituents, this mussel. And when we talk about all of this, we know that we have to protect
the environment. We know that, for instance, the Eno River cannot be pumped dry like it used ta. We know
that we have to provide not only for ourselves, but for our descendants. And in order to do that, we think it
would be goad to work together.
We recently co-sponsored with the Chatham County Commissioners a symposium on emergency
preparedness, looking regionally primarily at the threat posed by a possible nuclear accident at Shearon
Harris, but even more generally, looking at emergency preparedness and how we might improve it in case of
any kind of major threat to public health. And it was certainly striking, the lack of coordination, the lack of
leadership from the State, the lack of coordination an a regional level. We have put that up there because
some of the same kinds of thinking may need to be done to link us better. We have linked water lines, but we
do not have linked thinking, we do not have linked planning. These other issues, I do not think I need to read
to you, but they all come into play when we talk about providing water and protecting watersheds.
And finally, another quote from Ambrose Pierce, "Discussion, a method of confirming others in
their errors." We hope to have a good discussion. We do not come here with a sense that we want to tell
you what the outcome should be. We look forward to working with all of you. As you know, within the last
several years Commissioner Halkiotis and I have met with all of the entities that are here to just try and reach
out and say, "We would like to work together. We would like to identify common areas of interest." And we
appreciate the fact that you are here.
He asked everyone up front to introduce themselves and say whom they represent.
B. Roundtable Self Introductions
Bob Atwater, Chatham County Commissioner
Katie Calvin, City of Durham Public Works Director
Moses Carey, Orange County Commissioner
Louis Cheek, Mayor Pro-tem, City of Durham
Don Cox, Orange County Soil and Water Conservation District Supervisor
Mike Gering, Hillsborough Town Commissioner
Kenny Keel, Town of Hillsborough Engineer and Utilities Director
Ed Kerwin, Executive Director of OWASA
Faye Metcalf, Orange-Alamance Water System
Bernadette Pellisier. Chair of the OWASA Board
Eric Peterson, Town of Hillsborough Manager
Joe Phelps, Mayor of Hillsborough
Margaret Pollard, Chatham County Commissioner
Terry Roland, City of Durham Environmental Resources Director
Darrell Russell, City of Mebane Engineer
Ron Singleton, Chatham County Public Works Director
Marshall Staton, Pearson Equipment, Architects and Engineers -Representing Orange-Alamance
Bill Strom, Chapel Hill Town Council Member
Clark Thomas, Pierce and Whitman -Representing Orange-Alamance Water System
Robert Wilson, City Manager of Mebane
Chair Jacobs recognized Orange County Manager John Link and Carrboro Manager Bob Morgan.
2. PUBLIC WATER UTILITY PROVIDERS PRESENTATIONIREPORT
A. Town of Hillsborough -_ Eric Peterson
For quite a few years now, we have been purchasing water from the City of Durham up until the
past year, and we have an interconnection with them and purchase water during times of drought and to
meet our peak demands. We just completed construction of a reservoir about a year ago. As of today, it is
about 65-70% full. We are hoping that will be enough to get us through the summer without having to
purchase any more water from Durham during peak situation. Even though we have just completed the first
of two phases of the reservoir, we are projecting, based on the current scenario of current customers and
obligatory customers that we have already signed water and sewer contracts with, that the capacity will
probably be eaten up in a period of three to five years, depending on what the growth scenario looks like.
Once you take the obligatory customers, we probably have room for another 600-700 residential units in
Hillsborough, or that type of an equivalent. Unfortunately, we spent a lot of money on the reservoir and we
could be reaching peak capacity. What this means is in that three to five-year period, it may be one day per
year, it may be a dozen days per year, but we need to purchase water from someone else because we
cannot meet our peak demands. So we will have the choice in a few years whether ar not we want to
purchase water again from Durham or OWASA, or go ahead and proceed with the second phase of our
reservoir project and our water plant, which have to be done simultaneously. So we get a double whammy at
one time, we cannot do one without the other. Once that phase II expansion is completed, we can go ahead
and probably go another 10 years under an aggressive growth scenario, 15 years under a more modest
growth scenario. Sa even under modest and controlled growth conditions, we are going to be looking at a
need for along-term water source in the 15-year range. We are still reeling from the cast of our first reservoir
and are going to try to delay these expansions as long as we can so we can build up some additional capital
facility fees to make it a little more manageable. As the Mayor mentioned, we are doing everything we can to
stabilize our water rates, as they have been going up considerably in recent years. That is what we are
bringing to the table, we have aBand-aid approach for the next 10-15 years. Thereafter, we are going to
need some help and we are willing to cooperate with our neighbors and hope that somebody in here may be
able to help us out in the long run.
Chair Jacobs: Can you give us a little detail about capacity in terms of numbers of gallons?
Eric Peterson: Sure. I have a handout that has some detailed information about capacity. We
currently have 3 mgd plants and under stage II water restrictions, that combined with the reservoir output, we
can yield just under three million gallons a day. With the reservoir coming on line, we were about reaching
plant capacity. As far as getting into the phase II, that will add another 1.2 million gallons per day when that
takes place. The unfortunate thing about Flynt Fabrics leaving town a couple of years ago was we lost 20°~
of our revenue overnight. The customers felt that immediately. Our use is dawn now to about 1.1 mgd and
peak days are at about 1.9 mgd. We do have a fair amount of development that has been approved outside
of Hillsborough that has yet to come online that we are capable of servicing. So we have a fair amount of
water that is available, it is just earmarked to different developments.
Chair Jacobs: And you have purchased water from Durham before and sold to Orange-
Alamance before, is that correct?
Eric Peterson: What was happening primarily was we were passing through. Durham was
selling to Orange-Alamance, and it was getting passed through our system. There have been some other
occasions where we have sold directly to Orange-Alamance.
Chair Jacobs: And you are still a customer of Durham?
Eric Peterson: Yes, we rely on the interconnection, fortunately, between OWASA and Durham,
for emergency provisions, and Durham basically kept Hillsborough afloat and we are very appreciative of the
support for many years. Once again, in just a few years, it may be that we will be discussing with Durham
what type of a timeframe we may need to buy from them on a continuing basis until we are prepared to
expand the reservoir and the water plant.
B. Orange Alamance Water System _ Clark Thomas
My name is Clark Thomas, with Pierce and Whitman, here representing Orange Alamance today.
I'll try and address these questions one at a time. Orange Alamance is currently serving about 3,400
customers, and that is based on a certain percentage of commercial, industrial, but the majority of it is
residential. It is serving the flux of the people between Mebane and Hillsborough. Their system is kind of
strung out and it is serving quite a few people in quite a few different areas. Currently they have a water
treatment plant drawn out of Lake Orange. The water treatment plant has a capacity of 1.35 million gallons
per day and they have three wells. One well is about ready to come into operation right now. The total
capacity of the combined wells is around 305,000 gallons per day. The supply that they have varies, of
course, based on the river flaw and the level. Their current safe yield is at 370,000 gallons a day out of the
river. The historical low, based on restrictions, went down to 700,000 gallons a day in 1997 and 1998. The
average demand is around one million gallons a day, with the peak at about 1.34 million gallons per day at
this time. Based on their current demand and their current supply, they are not meeting their demand. They
are having to purchase water, and they are purchasing water from Graham Mebane and also from
Hillsborough, and also Durham. Right now they da not have any long-term contracts with these providers.
They are buying on an as need basis and as an emergency basis. So maybe this summit will help open
some of the doors to extend these talks.
Since they are not meeting their current demands, they are going to need some help in the future
also. The provisions that they are probably going to explore in the future are to obtain more sustainable
water supply will be long-term contracts, maybe installing some more wells, or even the potential purchase of
raw water. Thank you for your time.
Chair Jacobs: Could you describe far people what Orange Alamance is and where its service
area encompasses.
Faye Metcalf: Orange Alamance is anon-profit membership organization. It was organized back
in 1965 by a group of residents that had a dream of providing water for the rural areas of Orange and
Alamance Counties. In June of 1969, that because a reality. They started pumping to the first customers,
which were about 350 customers, along the area of Highway 70. And now we have approximately 3,700
customers. But we serve the areas of Efland, parts of Mebane, Graham, Haw River, and Swepsonville. It is
a pretty spread out system, but it is all in the rural areas.
Chair Jacobs: So it is capitalized by its rates and you have to be a member once you start
getting water, is that right?
Faye Metcalf: That's correct.
Chair Jacobs: And so you are helping them with along-term plan?
Clark Thomas: That's the intention, yes.
Faye Metcalf: Actually, they are doing a water resources planning study for us at the current
time.
Chair Jacobs: What's your timeframe for completing that?
Clark Thomas: Soon, hopefully within the next month.
Bill Strom: Could you talk about your administrative structure a little bit, or the members? Do the
members vote on the directors? I'm mare familiar with public water and sewer providers, sa it would be
helpful to understand.
Faye Metcalf: We have a board of directors and we have an annual meeting each year. The
membership is allowed to vote on the directors and also they are nominated from the floor, but they are voted
on by the membership. We have a board of directors which totals nine.
C. City of Durham _ Terry Roland
Terry Roland did a PowerPoint presentation. The City of Durham relies on two lakes for our water
supply. We have Lake Mickey with a total capacity of about 2.8 billion gallons, Little River Lake 4.6 billion
gallons, and a total storage capacity of 7.4 million gallons. We have a safe yield from all of those lakes, I
might mention the slide here says one billion gallons when empty. We have some physical limitations that
would put us in a tough situation to have to achieve getting that last one billion gallons of water out of the
lake. That is not to say we couldn't do it if we had to. But we don't count on it in our safe yield calculations.
We have 37 million gallons a day, based an a 50-year safe yield, using the storage that we have readily
available to us. We also have a web page that we keep up to date. Ever since last summer we've started
doing this and you can ga to our web page and see current lake levels and what our situation is at anytime.
The web page is www.ci.durham.nc.us. We set a record low level last year in bath Lake Mickey and the Little
River. Everybody knows it has been a pretty dry period. Our low levels in Lake Mickey got to 318.2 on
December 26, 2001 and the previous record low level had occurred in 1998. The Little River got down to
326.6, an January 6, 2002. That also set a record law level for us. Our current situation is Lake Mickey has
come back up about 19.65 feet, but we are still 3.15 feet below full. We were full about a month ago at Lake
Mickey, but the dry weather has started to pull it back dawn again, or the demand combined with the dry
weather. And Little River Lake hasn't filled up yet this year, which is kind of unusual for us. We have never
in the history of Durham not been full by the first of April, so we are kind of plowing new ground this year. We
are not concerned about it yet, but if it continues, we'll start to look a little closer at that. But we are about six
feet down still in Little River, but we've come up 22 feet. So we are a lot better than we were.
This is a projection of our demand. We are expecting to meet our average daily demand. Our raw
water safe yield at 37 million gallons per day, we would expect to meet about 2010, just a little beyond 2010.
of course, with the State guidelines at 80°~ of that number, we would be bumping up against that 80%
number about 2005. Because of that, we have a pending application now with the State for allocation from
Jordan Lake. Our water treatment capacity is currently 52 million gallons a day, and we have an expansion
underway now to increase that to 61 million gallons per day, but that's not finished yet. Our peak demand
would hit that 52 million gallon per day, based on the projection of previous demand, just beyond 2005 and hit
the 61 at about 2015. And again, we have the same 80°~ rule for water supply and water treatment, so we
would need to be looking at further expansion probably before that time.
The questions included a question about projection of population, and this is from our planning
department. We are projecting all the way to 2050 a population in Durham of about 329,000 people. At
2020, about 276,000.
These are our projected demands. In 2020, the projected demand is right out of our Jordan Lake
application. This is dealing with raw water supply, so the average daily 2020 demand is about 45, exceeding
our current 37. The 2050 demand is about 54 million gallons a day.
This is just something I threw in here so you can kind of see what we have been up against the
last several years, and most of you know what you have been up against. These are the lake levels of Lake
Mickey and Little River and the record low levels that we reached in 2001-2002. And you can see we came
close to that except for Little River in 1998. And I will mention, one thing we did this year and back in the fall;
having had the two dry years pretty much in a row, we typically don't see three dry years in a row, and really
didn't anticipate this year being as dry as its been. So we needed to do some work on Little River Lake and
we pulled the lake down intentionally for some of that work, and you can see that flat line on the curve there
where we were doing that work and the lake level just held steady while we were doing that. But Lake
Mickey continued to fall and meet the needs of the city, and so it reached pretty low levels. But we were able
to meet all the needs of the city during that period of time, and we did get to stage two of our water
conservation ordinance, which is a voluntary conservation, but we didn't run out of water.
Some of our potential future water supply we have in planning is the 10 million gallons per day
from Jordan Lake. We have been looking at Teer Quarry as a passible storage facility that could yield us
three to five million gallons. All of the water didn't get allocated from Jordan Lake, sa there is the potential we
might get additional allocations from Jordan Lake in the future. We have been acquiring land since about
1989 around Lake Mickey far the possible future expansion of Lake Mickey by either raising that dam or
building a new dam. That's probably our most expensive alternative. It's not easy to raise an existing dam.
The current dam is about 80 feet tall, and the new dam would be probably 120 feet tall, so it is not going to be
a cheap dam to build when we have to build it. There is the possibility of a reservoir an the upper flat as well
that could either combine with the expansion of Lake Mickey or substitute far the expansion of Lake Mickey.
We don't have any land acquired for that, and most of that would be in Person County, so there is an issue of
interlocal cooperation to get that lake to became a reality. As part of our Upper Neuse Basin Study recently,
we did realize that that upper flat lake could provide some water quality benefits for Lake Mickey, so there
might be same reasons for doing a lake above Lake Mickey just to provide water supply and water quality
benefits. And then we have a very, very long-range study we are doing with Raleigh, Cary and Granville
County, looking at Kerr Lake as a possible future water supply. If you can imagine what the inter-basin
transfer issues were with Jordan Lake and multiply that by a factor of about 10 or 100, I'm not sure which it
would be, that's not going to be a simple task to accomplish. Virginia Beach worked on it far about 20 years,
I think, before they finally accomplished theirs. It won't come without a lot of work.
One of our mast pressing concerns is that I don't want to repeat last year. I hope we're not going
to repeat last year, but we're certainly not planning any more work on Little River Lake, so we're not going to
be pulling the lake down for anymore maintenance. Because they are not full yet, we are concerned about
the coming year. This is a shot I threw in for your benefit of what Little River looked like on January 9, 2002.
This is the very upper end of it near 501 bridge. It looks pretty bad at that point.
Our mast pressing concerns really deal with the feasibility of the Teer Quarry and the permitting
and construction of that. We included that in our Jordan Lake allocation request, and that was considered by
the State. And I think they assumed we would be able to accomplish that. So that's part of the reason why
we didn't get but 10 million gallons when we requested 20. So it's pretty important to us to have the
combination of Teer Quarry and Jordan Lake. So we have a feasibility study underway on that, and we just
don't have any permits yet. So we still have to work on that part. Assuming we can get all the necessary
permits, we could develop that as a water supply. And then Jordan Lake allocation and how best to
accomplish that, we've had some discussions with Chatham County as a possible partner in developing
Jordan Lake. And we've had some discussions about partnering with OWASA and Chatham County on the
development of Jordan Lake. We could do some interim things, possibly, with Chatham and with Cary to
initially get some of the water from Jordan Lake through a pass through their system. So there are some
short-term things that we could do. Lang term, we're probably talking about another water supply intake and
water treatment facility on Jordan Lake to meet our long-term needs there. And then, of course, the feasibility
of upper flat and Kerr Lake alternatives. Whether those are possible or not, we don't know.
So that's basically the water supply situation in Durham. I'd be glad to answer any questions that
anybody might have at this point. I forgot to mention we are interconnected with Hillsborough, OWASA,
Cary, and Orange Alamance through Hillsborough. And we have contracts with Orange Alamance,
Hillsborough, Cary, Morrisville, and Chatham County. We also have a direct connect with Chatham County.
We are working on a contract and interconnection with Raleigh. We don't have that yet, but we're talking
about it. We also have discussions underway with Granville County on a possible interconnect with them.
So pretty soon we'll be interconnected with everybody an all sides.
Ed Harrison: He asked about the slide before the lake level graphs. Is there a relationship in
terms of sums between the reuse column and the projected demands of conservation, and can you talk about
each of those, why the amounts are about where you think they are?
Terry Roland: Well, I can't vouch for the math. That's right out of our Jordan application. Well,
it's pretty obvious they don't add up, but I can't explain why they don't except for rounding possibly. That's
the only explanation I have there. That was one of the requirements that as we looked at our projected
needs, we did have to look at the potential for conservation and reuse, and we're assuming a six percent
reduction in the total demand due to conservation. You have to keep in mind, we've had a pretty strong
conservation program underway in Durham for quite a long time now, and so given the magnitude of these
numbers and the fact that the State has enacted low-flow toilets and shower heads and a lot of the other
things that were sort of the low hanging fruit in the past for conservation, we think that even six percent is
pretty optimistic in terms of what we might be able to achieve. But we hope to be able to achieve those
levels. The reuse is really a function of our ability to capitalize and build that system. The biggest problem
with the reuse system is building the distribution system that it takes to get that water to the customers.
Ed Harrison: Is it programmed yet?
Terry Roland: It is not programmed in our CIP right now. We've sort of been waiting an some
big industry to come along that needed the water and they would help us with the capital side of that. So we
haven't programmed that. Given the current budget situation, we are not likely to program it until things get
better.
Don Cox: Terry, your scenario of activating the Teer Quarry -what are your plans for filling that?
Terry Roland: Well, we have three potentials there. Because of its location, Teer Quarry is
adjacent to our raw water line that comes from Lake Mickey and Little River. It's interconnected to both. So,
potentially we could take water, and it's also adjacent to our raw water intake, I forgot to mention that. We do
have emergency raw water intake on the Eno River that we can take up to five million gallons a day from the
Eno as long as the flow is above 30 CFS from March through June and 10 CFS the rest of the year. We're
not taking water from the Ena right now because of the low flaw and the time of the year. But we have taken
some water from there this year. We have that potential. As a part of the permitting, we would probably get
a permit to withdraw greater volumes from the Eno during high flow periods. We could fill that reservoir from
Lake Mickey, Little River, or from the Eno. Our planning is lacking at that potential from all three. Like this
year, Lake Mickey filled up and overflowed. Little River is still not full. So, in that case, we could have been
pumping same water from the Flat River into Teer Quarry even though there might not have been any flow in
the Eno River, because there was water still available in the Flat River. Normally, though we would expect to
fill that quarry during high flows, whether they be in the Flat, Little, ar Eno Rivers; and then pump it down in
low flow periods.
Ed Kerwin: When do you invoke mandatory conservation? At what supply inventory do you start
requiring restrictions in irrigation and that type of thing?
Terry Roland: We don't have a magic level because it is very dependent an the time of year
when that occurs. We've never gone to mandatary conservation but one time in my 28 years with the city
and that was before Little River Lake was completed. We have gone to stage II, or voluntary conservation,
several times in the past, but we've gone to mandatory only once. Mainly because, when we go to
mandatory, we start impacting people's lives pretty dramatically and their ability to make a living, so we don't
da that unless it's really pretty serious. But we have a model that the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill helped us prepare that we use to evaluate our water supply and what the probabilities are of sustaining
the current demand and we track that constantly. And we use that really as our tool to determine when we
need to go to higher levels of conservation. It depends on where we are in lake levels and what time of year.
The earlier in the year that we're at lower levels, then the sooner we would have to enact more stringent
conservation. The current levels that we're at right now, the model is predicting average daily demands,
we're still at 10Q°lo meeting our demand. Now, you have to understand, and sometimes people forget this
when they see the levels at Lake Mickey and Little River go dawn, the reason we have those lakes is to draw
them down for water supply. If we never drew them dawn, we wouldn't need them. It's normal for those
levels to go down and we really have to make that decision on a week to week basis. We did get approval
from the City Council this year, a change in our ordinance, which would allow the City Manager to make that
call so we could enact more stringent stages of conservation a little more quickly. And that's not just for a
drought situation, but same other emergency - either a disaster or whatever. We could get in a situation
where we would need to go to stringent levels of conservation up to and including the complete shut down of
some customers and we hope we never have to do that. We will do what we have to do to keep everybody
with water.
Chair Jacobs: We know that the Durham staff is working with the Orange County staff about
possible changes in the urban growth boundary. Could you just explain a little bit about - we knave it camel
into Orange County -but what's involved and how do you structure water rates for customers who are
outside your boundaries?
Terry Roland: We only have two classes of customers, and that is inside and outside the city.
We also have our bulk customers. Inside and outside the city, if they are Durham City customers, the outside
customers pay double the inside rates. The urban growth boundary was started in about 1974 by the city as
away to manage growth, and I think it's served the city well. The boundary has been amended several times
aver those years as the city grew and grew out to the boundary that existed. It's always been established
sort of in terms of how those areas could best be served with water and sewer. That's been used to help
determine where the boundary was. But it was also a growth management tool so that we didn't have a lot of
leapfrog type of development. And so it's served the city well in that regard. Inside the urban growth
boundary, but outside the city, water lines can be extended, but there is no city participation in that. Inside
the city water line extensions, the city may participate in that if they choose to. It sort of depends on the
project and what the circumstances are. But outside the urban growth boundary, if a developer wants to
extend the water system within the urban growth boundary, then that extension is all at their cost. We do
allow extensions outside the urban growth boundary for public health reasons. Those have to be certified by
the County Health Department as a certifiable public health problem. We also allow extensions outside the
urban growth boundary to serve schools and industries, but that takes special action of the City Council to
allow far extension outside the urban growth boundary. And then, of course, we do allow extensions outside
the urban growth boundary for interconnections with other utilities basically allowing those customers to take
advantage of financing the capital facilities charges that we would charge a normal customer through their
rate. The rate that they would pay, with the exception of OWASA, who has an agreement that predates these
agreements that we have now. That's a multiplier, depending on whether it's a committed contract or an
uncommitted contract. It's 1.2 times the inside rate or 1.45 times the inside rate is what our current
agreements are calling for. I think the OWASA agreement calls for an average of the Durham and OWASA
rates.
D. City of Mebane -Darrell Rusell
I've heard some comments a little earlier about working relationships between governmental
entities. Well, it can happen. For those of you who do not know, the City of Mebane and the City of Graham
jointly awn and operate Graham Mebane Lake and Water Treatment Plant. Mebane's interest in that is a 113
ownership, Graham's is 213. They have been married since 1974. I will say that that arrangement has been
very beneficial to the city over the years and the founding fathers. I think that's proved to be a very wise
decision because it has allowed Mebane and Graham to both have adequate water supply for the past 25
years. And it looks like hopefully for another 20 years as well. The Mebane water supply is located on Back
Creek Watershed. That is in Orange County and Alamance County. It is a WS2 rated watershed. The
Graham Mebane Lake has a 20-year safe yield of 12 million gallons per day. So Mebane's ownership of that
would be four million gallons per day. The Graham Mebane Water Treatment Plant is currently a 6 mgd
plant, but it is undergoing an expansion and upgrade currently to double the capacity. Completion is
anticipated hopefully within eight months. So with that time, Mebane's capacity then would be four million
gallons per day in the water plant as well as four million gallons per day in the reservoir itself. Mebane's
current water demand on an average basis is probably 1.2 mgd. We have had some peak days of 2.5 mgd.
The projected water requirements for the year 2015 is 3.96 maximum day. So, as you can see, the projected
maximum day demand pretty much equals what their capacity will be. Mebane does have two interlocal
agreements -obviously with the City of Graham and they also have an agreement with Orange Alamance
Water System to sell and buy water on an emergency basis.
Mebane is projecting a 2015 population of around 11,800. Their 2000 population is 7,914. They
da anticipate continued growth in that corridor along I-8511-40. We've talked about challenges today. I think
all of us are seeing the challenges of being able to provide adequate water at reasonable rates. This last
project that Mebane undertook, they borrowed $5,400,000 and they had to increase the rates by 50%.
Maybe that's pretty low, I haven't heard what Hillsborough is going to. Based on their projected usage, it
does appear that Mebane is in pretty good shape for another 15 or 20 years. But certainly, you always have
to start thinking for the next round. So I would say that is a challenge for Mebane to start looking at. I'll try to
answer any questions.
Chair Jacobs: Could you talk a little bit about the annexation study that you are doing?
Darrell Russell: Yes, we are currently looking at a number of areas around Mebane in terms of
what may qualify for annexation and that study is nearing completion. I anticipate it being in the city's hands
next month sometime.
Chair Jacobs: So does Mebane envision that as the basis far a growth boundary?
Darrell Russell: That has not been determined.
Robert Wilson: I don't think so. What we've had in the last year and year and a half are some
areas that have requested water and sewer services, which we have discussed with you and Orange
Alamance also. And in these areas, we wanted to look to see if they would qualify for annexations to service
water and sewer. Our policy is something like Durham's, we do not extend water and sewer services at the
City of Mebane's cost -inside or outside. Water is extended at the cast of the requester, whether it is a
subdivision or a resident needing water. So the study we're doing now is a study of areas that we have been
requested to look at by Council to see if water and sewer service could be extended and at what cost and is it
feasible by cost to get it to those areas. I've had a conversation with engineers who have indicated to me that
some of the areas will not qualify for annexation under the general statutes. It is not what the City of Mebane
would like to da ar the residents in same of these areas would like to do, but as you know, as you grow in
population, annexation gets a little more restricted. So same of these areas won't qualify for the annexation
anyway, but if they were to be annexed in those areas and water and sewer to be extended, or water as
we're talking here, it would be at the cast of someone to get it there -property owners, cast assessments, tap
fees, and things of this nature. The cost for an individual, if it were to be annexed, the cost for an individual to
get water and sewer in Mebane based on assessment costs and tap fees is somewhere around $7,000
based on a 100-foot lot. That doesn't include getting from the meter to the house. That's an extra $1,200-
1,400. Once the annexation study is done, the City Council will look at that and have public hearings and
determine, by cost I do believe, whether it is feasible to put the water and sewer in those areas. As we all
know, water and sewer casts when you annex an area 100%. I think it is probably about half and half if you
really come dawn to dollar per dollar. So there is a financial cost in running water and sewer in areas. So, as
far as doing our study, it is not a study for boundaries for growth. Our agreement that we have with Orange
Alamance Water System indicated we do a 20-year plan growth area several years ago with the City of
Graham. And in those areas, if water is needed, we would subsidize water based on growth areas. So that's
our agreement with Orange Alamance Water System. Orange Alamance Water System has helped us in the
past and given us water. We do work well with those folks, and hopefully anybody; and I think everybody in
this room would say, "If we can service someone that needs water, we will try to do so to the best of our
ability." But it really comes down to dollar figures. The way the economy is, our reimbursements this year
from the State are going to be zero, next year is going to be zero, so we need to look at other means of
raising monies.
E. OWASA - Ed Kerwin
This year is our 25t anniversary of operation. The utilities were separate systems owned by the
two towns and the University. The University and towns gat out of the utility business 25 years ago when
OWASA was formed. We are governed by ovine-member appointed board of directors from Chapel Hill,
Carrboro, and Orange County. The OWASA board has the last say with respect to policy, rates, borrowing
money. Same of the slides you are going to see will shave the high points of a 50-year comprehensive
master plan that was just completed. It didn't take us 50 years to get it completed, it took us three years. But
we've looked at 50 years into the future and started to project how much water and sewer will be expected of
us and what facility improvements we'll need to put in place to meet that. The real key assumptions in our
master plan is our service area boundaries will not change, that we're not going to be a wholesale provider of
water or sewer service, and that the growth trends we've seen in the past 20-25 years would continue in the
future. Here is our service area in red, essentially the towns of Chapel Hill and Carrboro. Our water supply
comes from three sources -Cane Creek Reservoir, University Lake Watershed, and a stave quarry, currently
being mined. Thirty years from now the mining will stop and during those times when University Lake and
Cane Creek are full and overflowing, some of that water will be diverted to the stone quarry reservoir for
storage and become part of the overall supply system.
The County and OWASA have been very proactive in protecting the watershed. In the current
system of University Lake, Cane Creek, and the small existing quarry reservoir, we've had a 30-year safe
yield of about 15 million gallons a day, and that should be adequate far the next 20-25 years. But we do have
a long-term interest in retaining our Jordan Lake allocation, and I'll talk a little bit more about that in a few
minutes. He distributed copies of the PowerPoint presentation. The green dots represent the raw water or
pumped, and you can see over time that we've been a very predictable utility or service area as far as growth
- 2-3°~ growth of water far the last 25 years, if we went back to day one for OWASA. And then these lines
represent how we expect to grow. The center line is what's expected, and then we have a low growthlhigh
growth scenario. The lakes have a safe yield of 15mgd, but we have to improve the size of the pumps and
the pipes to get it all there when we make those improvements over the next five or six years. Here we are
with a safe yield of about 15 million gallons a day, and if you go over here and find a green line, how we
expect it to grow, that takes us to the year 2030. However, if we grow higher than what's expected or, when
the key assumptions change and now we're providing water to another entity or something like that, then this
all changes, of course. And this is the basis on which we believe we have justified hanging on to some of our
Jordan Lake allocations. Currently our allocation is 10 million gallons a day. We have asked it to be reduced
to five, and we've justified that based on this uncertainty in the future within the next 20-30 years of perhaps
having a deficit. We have talked to Durham and Chatham about collaboration in Jordan Lake. A likely
scenario for us to consider in the future is buying finished water from Durham, if we are in the situation makes
much more sense for us rather than building our own conveyance system from Jordan Lake. And then in the
future, you see this safe yield jumping up to about 20 million gallons a day, a little over 20 million gallons a
day, and that's when we think the quarry reservoir will be online. And so, if all goes well, we should have
enough supply in Orange County, given those assumptions, to meet our needs for the next 50 years with
some uncertainty here.
The dark blue line is our annual average daily demand. The other lighter colored line is the peak
day demand. And you can see that the peak day demands have been increasing, and this is just depending
on the weather. If you look back here, this is 1999, and you can see we had a peak day of over 15 million
gallons a day where the annual average was a little over 8 million gallons a day, almost twice the annual
average. So this is something that is of particular interest to us because of course the water plant has to be
sized to meet that peak day demand. The water treatment plant has a current capacity of 15 million gallons a
day. Within one week, it will be 20 million gallons a day with the completion of two new filters and other
improvements that are planned. So, by the end of the month, our capacity will be up to 20 million gallons a
day. And you can see that's none too soon because the projected peak day demand, we are at that capacity
now. So with that improvement, the capacity of the water plant, again with the assumptions that we're
serving only within our service area, should be good for another 15 years.
A couple of words about conservation and demand management. We have implemented a new
rate structure. We went from a uniform rate, every thousand gallons they're charged with the same, to a rate
where from May through September each year, the commodity charge far water has increased a lot. And
then from October through the following April, the commodity charge goes down a lot. Seventy percent of our
residential customers under this rate structure, adding up 12 months of bills, will be little change. But for the
smaller percentage of the customers that use a lot mare water in the summer than they do in the winter, they
are going to see a higher bill. And that's sending a price signal to those customers to conserve, hopefully.
The Towns of Carrbora and Chapel Hill have implemented and OWASA has sent to Orange County far their
approval a new Conservation Demand Management Ordinance. A law that doesn't have the authority to
require conservation, you have to get that authority through the towns. And we have approved now, in
March, for the two towns, a new ordinance. There are three triggers in the ordinance. If the total system's
supply gets to 125 days, we ga to mandatory conservation. If the supply system gets down to 75 days of
storage, we go to a single day a week irrigation. And then below that, we're in a real emergency, and it would
be essential use only. We are going to pick up the pace with respect to our public information education
program to encourage and promote conservation.
On the water distribution side, the keys here are renewing and replacing the basic infrastructure.
And the last part about what's our biggest challenge, there are many, but keeping up with the capital
improvements that are needed is just going to be key. One of the things that we're doing now is, with a
consultant, we're developing a model looking at our water pipes. There are a lot of things that can affect haw
long a water pipe will last in your system -how old is it, the soils, what is it made of, etc. We're developing a
model that will help guide and predict our replacement program for water lines in the future. And I think this is
good information that we look forward to sharing with our utility neighbors.
On the wastewater side of our business, the real key there is making sure the inflow infiltration
doesn't overwhelm the sewer system. If it hasn't rained far a year and a half, this hasn't been much of an
issue for any of the utilities, but when we do get the rain, then we're reminded of the importance of doing that.
Like most utilities, we're doing special studies, we're looking at the system and making sure we're repairing
what needs to be repaired. Easement maintenance of course is key to that as is an effective program to
keep grease out of the system. Thirty to 50% of sewer overflows are caused by grease, and this is a matter
of growing concern. The solid red line is the capacity of our Masan Farm Wastewater Treatment Plant. It is
currently here at 12 million gallons a day. We are in apre-design study right now for the next round of
improvements at the plan that will take it up to 14.5 million gallons a day. The real high blue dots here are
peak month flows at the wastewater plant, back in the days where we got a lot of rain -Hurricane Fran,
Dennis, Floyd, all those tropical storms. Last year's peak month flow was quite low. Here are our projections
in the future, and you can see we're needing to improve the capacity of the plant soon and that's why we're
under design. That next round of improvements should last us to 2013-2014. For our biosolids, we have a
very successful land application program. We have gone through a new process at the wastewater plant that
produces class A quality product. Reclaimed water is something that is not happening now in the OWASA
service area, but we are looking at our next door neighbor, the golf course, possibly using them for irrigation
there.
Current draught, Terry talked about the lake levels and it is exactly the story you're going to hear
from us. Right now we have a 220-day supply remaining. And certainly that's adequate, that's good. But
Cane Creek, our largest reservoir, is 6.5 feet dawn. In the 12 years of existence, this time of year, the
second lowest it's ever been is only a foot down. That's scary stuff. This is something of increasing concern
and we certainly appreciate the fact that we have a new conservation ordinance in place and we feel that our
timing on the seasonal rates has been goad. If everybody washes their car tonight, maybe it will rain
tomorrow.
Emergency response, we da have emergency interconnections with Durham, Hillsborough,
Chatham County, and I just can't stress the importance of having these. And certainly we've been very
fortunate to have goad neighbors that have helped us more than we've been able to help them in the past.
What we're doing now is part of mutual aid and sharing resources and information and that type of thing.
Barry mentioned the Shearon Harris facility. Another goad example of what seems to be a lack of
information. And together, the more we can learn in knowing how to respond that's certainly going to be key.
Challenges and uncertainties, aggressive capital improvements. The leaders in the water and
sewer industry across the country say an aging infrastructure is the number one concern. A lot of our CIP is
in place to address just that. These aren't big numbers for Durham, I don't think, but for our utility these are
big numbers. In the next five years, we're expecting to spend $94 million, and aver the next 15 years, $260
million. And a lot of that is replacing and renewing aging water and sewer pipes for our system. At the
wastewater treatment plant, we may have to remove nitrogen from the effluent infuser, so that's something
that is part of a special study right now and we're paying very close attention to. And then there are so many
things to monitor such as water consumption, the growth in the area, the assumptions we made in the master
plan and projections and keeping that up to date. With that, I'll stop and answer whatever questions you may
have.
Chair Jacobs: Could you talk a little about how your seasonal rates work and also about how you
came up with the methodology far charging based on square footage that didn't cost you revenue?
Ed Kerwin: The seasonal rate, we hired a consultant, and we're happy to share that report with
anyone. We looked at a number of different conservation rate structures, and what the OWASA board
selected was the seasonal rate. We are projecting that there will be three percent reduction in demand
because of this rate structure. On May 1St, our commodity charge went from $2.90 for a thousand gallons to
$4.08. It went up a lot and it's going to stay there through September. Then the commodity charge is going
down to $2.16, much lower than it had been at the uniform rate. And again, based on our study and looking
at assumption patterns, about 70% of our residential customers, when they add up 12 months of bills, the
annual bill will be the same and maybe even a little less. But far those customers that use a lot more in the
summer for irrigation ar other purposes, they are going to be paying higher rates. The bill will look higher
from May through September and they'll be higher over the year because they want make up those savings
in the off-peak because they consumed mast water during the peak. So that's the principle of that seasonal
rate.
Question: Ed, I don't mean to put you on the spat, but the University uses a lot of water for
evaporative cooling, does this rate apply to them as well?
Ed Kerwin: We have the same rate for all of our customers, including and especially the
University. The University has 250 different accounts with us. And like dorms, they're going to be getting a
break because a lot of their water is used when it's cheaper. But the other customers such as cooling or
irrigation, those bills are going to be higher. When the University looked at it as a whole, they concluded that
it was fair and reasonable and necessary that OWASA do this. In fact, a representative of the University
spoke at the public hearing last year in support of making this change, even knowing that some of their
accounts are really going to see it and other accounts where there is actually some benefit. And for those
accounts that see that impact, they'll have added incentive hopefully to find ways to further reduce or reuse or
recycle or seek other methods.
Bill Strom: One of the early slides you put up, you shaved your service area boundary. Given
that Carrboro, Chapel Hill, and Orange County have an agreement in place that restricts annexations, my
impression is that this is a pretty firm service boundary for you that OWASA can't really anticipate that that
service boundary is going to change. Can you talk about if that is an opportunity or a challenge and haw
that's affected all the long-range planning that you've done and just sort of share the experience of that reality
with everybody here.
Ed Kerwin: Well, with this red line setting and establishing our service area, it really removed a
lot of uncertainty from our plan because we didn't have to wander how big of an area we might serve in the
future. It was clearly defined. And over the next 50 years, the projections are that there will essentially be a
doubling of the number of customers in our service area. I think the towns' and the County's plan went out 25
years. We try to stretch it out twice that long, making certain assumptions -working with the planning staff,
and the towns, and the County -because new water resources just don't happen overnight. They can take
20 years sometimes to put in place. But far the utility, it really simplified and removed a lot of uncertainty
about how big of an area we will have to meet in the future. And the towns and the County pretty strongly
agree with that defined area and with the new water and sewer boundary agreement that Barry mentioned, it
also talked about if there are failing systems or other health issues in the area surrounding the service area,
there is a collaborative process to go through of how to address that need.
Bill Strom: Has there been any unanticipated consequences on the financial side? Has that
affected your ability to borrow money or banding, anything like that?
Ed Kerwin: Not at all. In fact, last fall we closed on a $35 million revenue band and we enjoyed a
very favorable AA+ rating.
Barry had also asked about one of our fees. Our connection fee, something akin to a capacity
charge or connecting charge, far asingle-family home our fee is based on square footage. And far a smaller
home, that can be quite large. What we did is we looked at homes built a certain year and then we looked at,
"OK, they've been customers of ours now for two ar three years. Is there a relationship between how much
water people use and the size of the home?" And what we found is there is a fairly strong predictable
relationship that smaller homes use less water than larger homes. So we designed a connection fee, or an
availability fee where smaller homes pay less than larger homes. Now, fees aren't cheap, they are based on
what it actually casts us. Far instance, a home that is 1,300 square feet or less, the water connection fee is
$700. If the home has 3,800 square feet, it takes $4,300 for that same connection. That's quite a spread.
Chair Jacobs: And it's revenue neutral for you.
Ed Kerwin: It is, it's based on cost of service. It wasn't subsidizing for a certain class of
customers. It's worked out well, and again, we're happy to share what we did with anyone if that's of interest.
Chair Jacobs: And just let me add that I particularly asked that question because we read about
the concerns about trying to provide service to those who are least able to pay, this is a defensible way to
help them hook an to the systems. And so we wanted to make sure that OWASA shared that information.
Thank you.
Robert Wilson: Barry, they didn't consider in any assessments other than just the cast of that
water line. You don't have a right for assessments do you?
Ed Kerwin: No, our board can assess. What I think I heard your policy is that the benefiting party
pays the full cost. For instance, if there's an unsewered neighborhood that wants public sewer, we can
assess them and make that improvement. Although the two towns do contribute, I think Chapel Hill, for
instance, will contribute up to $4,500 in an assessment project to help defer the cost to encourage people to
get off septic tanks and hook to the public system. The OWASA board is empowered to do the assessment.
In fact, our most recent one was putting in five hydrants in the ??wood subdivision on 54 west. That's a very
small project, and those folks have been assessed, and their savings in their homeowners insurance for
having fire hydrants will pay the $25 assessment back in one year.
Terry Roland: Do you have a fixed fee, availability fee ar something that is right off the tap before
you charge for per gallon of water?
Ed Kerwin: Yes, we have a monthly service fee and then the commodity charge. The monthly
service fee for sewer and a commodity charge. There wasn't any change in the sewer side, nor was there a
cap placed on sewer. It's just the commodity charge for water.
Terry Roland: Is that fee variable depending on the size of the meter?
Ed Kerwin: Yes.
Chair Jacobs: Since we are running a little ahead of schedule, I thought we might ask Chatham
County to take the opportunity to share its concerns and I'll recognize Commissioner Pollard. I know she has
some staff members here.
F. Chatham County -Commissioner Maraaret Pollard
Yes I do, and I'm sure Ron Singleton our Public Works Director will carry forth for us. But there
are a couple of things, and I'm sure Commissioner Bob Atwater will have comments as well. I would like to
mention just a couple of things that are policy issues that concern the board and I think we've made some
progress toward and that is that right now we are in the middle of refining our land conservation and
development plan, and there is a plan to tie our water policy and our land use policy in same reasonable way.
The other thing, I think we really have paid close attention and will be paying even closer attention to the
protection of the watershed. That's been on our agenda for a number of years, and there was discussion last
year that this year we would have an Erosion Control Officer, because I think that really does determine to a
large extent, erosion control determines to a large extent the water quality. But since the budget situation is
such, I'm not sure that we'll be able to carry forth with this goal this year or not, but that's certainly in our
plans. But I think one of the most important things that Chatham County has done to bring ourselves inline
with meeting our water supply needs was the hiring of Ran Singleton who really has provided staff leadership
to our water board as well as the Commissioners in helping us to think through some of the issues of water
supply and distribution that I think that's got us to the point where we are now.
Commissioner Bab Atwater: I really can't improve on that much at all, other than to say that I
think we have an increasing awareness of protecting the watershed. In the first instance, it's the right thing to
do. But a number of other opportunities are presented in terms of some of these formula based approval
processes at the State level for water allocations that we're rewarded in that area by protecting the watershed
and it's always nice to be a good neighbor as well.
Commissioner Pollard: Ron, you might want to mention our water conservation policy as it
relates to pricing our water. I know we've done some thinking along those lines.
Ron Singleton, Chatham County Public Works Director: I'm not sure what Hillsborough's per
unit charge is, but the last time I looked, I think ours was the highest normal charge in the area. That stems
from the fact that, Grange Alamance was talking about how their system is strung out, we've got water
systems strung out all the way from Governor's Club in the northeast to the Bennett in the southwest. I have
about eight people that manage the whole system, and if people are working up in Governor's Club and we
have a line break in Bennett, it takes them about 45 minutes just to get down there. We have a 3 mgd
surface water plant drawing out of Lake Jordan. We share the Cary/Apex intake right now. We've had
problems in the past with being able to get as much water out of the CarylApex arrangement as we needed
to supply our plant. But we have an agreement in place now that allows us to, in the short term, for the next
five years, to draw up to our full 3 mgd capacity. And the agreement also spells out that we're to build our
own raw water pumping station that will use the CarylApex intake lines themselves, and that will give us
capacity immediately up to 10 million gallons a day with the option of expanding those facilities even further
than that. The CarylApex intake is sized pumping wise far 50 million gallons a day, but the intake lines that
actually go out into the lake are capable of handling about 88 million gallons a day. So we're going to take
advantage of that excess capacity and build our awn raw water pump station and line to our plant. Our plant
was designed for relatively easy expansion to 6 million gallons a day, and right now our maximum day that
we've hit is around 1.4 million gallons a day, so we have a little bit of wiggle room, but we're already doing
some pre-planning and have some numbers in our capital improvement budget for expansion, with the first
expansion to the plan probably in the next five to seven years.
The majority of our customers that we serve are in the north Chatham system served off the water
treatment plant, but we also have two other separate systems in the County -one that's based in the
Mancure area where we buy bulk water from the City of Sanford. We also have water out in the southwest
part of the County where we buy bulk water from Galdston Gulf Sanitary District and also from Siler City. And
those of you on tap of what's going an in the region realize that Siler City is having their awn problems with
water supply, so one of our concerns right now is being able to get Jordan water into the other parts of the
County. Our top priority project on our capital improvement list is what we call our p-ridge connector line,
which would bring Jordan Lake water south through the Mancure community and hook up with that system,
and then head west with it and hook up to the southwest system, which would enable us to pump Jordan
Lake water throughout our system. It would also take some pressure off of Siler City until, they're under a
program now to expand their surface water reservoir, but it hasn't been approved yet, and even when it's
approved it's probably three or four years out being constructed. So we're looking at doing something to help
out in that regard. Like I said, our standard water rate for residential customers is $4.86 per thousand
gallons. That's a pretty significant rate from what I've seen. Pat Davis shared with us some preliminary
numbers an a study he's doing. As far as in-town rates go, I think that was the highest rate in the area.
When you compare with out of town rates, we're still up there in the top 20°~. We also have an availability
fee that's based on meter size. Ed's basing theirs on building size, but we base ours on meter size with the
assumption that when the meter size goes up, the requirement to supply goes up. For our standard 5!8 3/4
inch connection, that's $1,750.
Ed Kerwin: Ours goes up based on meter size too. Our tiered approach is the single-family
home type service. Beyond that, it's like you, it's based an the size of the meter what the connection fee is.
Question: Ron, is your bulk rate for raw water or finished water? You said you were buying bulk
water from two sources.
Ron Singleton: Oh, we buy finished water from Sanford, Goldston Gulf, and Siler City. And we
buy bulk raw water from CarylApex. We pay a small charge to CarylApex for using their facility. And we are
interconnected with Durham and we have a water contract with them. We also have an interconnection in
place with OWASA on 15-501 with meters in place. John, I have the contract for that on my desk. When we
get our facilities in place to where we can pump water to other parts of the County, we will in effect be
connecting Siler City and Sanford to the group that's in this room. If you think about it, there's the possibility
of pumping water from Sanford or Siler City all the way to Zebulon and Wake County if you activate all the
agreements in between. We're all in this together, we're all getting interconnected and dependent on one
another. We're very interested in watershed protection and what's going on upstream, especially with the
efforts in OWASA and Durham, because the portions of those areas drain into the New Hope arm of the lake,
and that's where we draw our water from and that's where the major problems have been with algae growth
and taste and odor problems an a seasonal basis. I think I saw the figures at some point that 70-80°!o of the
storage of the lake is in the New Hope arm, but 70-$Q°lo of the flow comes dawn the Haw River arm, so that
leads to some slow water into upper reaches of the lake. And Cary/Apex just spent $60 million on a new
ozone treatment system to alleviate their problems, but Chatham County can't afford even a portion of that.
We're hoping that, through controls, being able to keep from having to spend a whole lot of money for
seasonal taste and odor problems.
Chair Jacobs: Ran, could you just update us a little bit an the conversations between OWASA,
Durham, and Chatham about the passibility of an additional intake?
Ron Singleton: We've had some discussions in the past, we haven't met recently about it, but
about a western intake on the west side of the lake. When CarylApex was given the intake on the east side
of the lake, the State said at that point that they would only permit two intakes on the lake, one on the east
side and one on the west side. We've been in discussion with OWASA and the City of Durham about long-
term construction of a western intake and treatment plant.
Mr. Speaker: Before we can do much with that, we've got to get an allocation, at least from
Durham's perspective. But we're hopeful. We are recommended for 10, and that's what I included in my
presentation, but it's not a done deal yet.
Chair Jacobs: Thank you. And I should mention that Orange County has had and hopefully will
have a one million-gallon allocation from Jordan Lake. One of the justifications that we gave was the need
for and lack of adequate water supply in central Orange County. And we specifically mentioned Orange
Alamance and Hillsborough. So the interconnectedness, at least in our long-range planning, plays a role in
how we might access that water.
Question: Did I understand you to say Orange Alamance would participate in that?
Chair Jacobs: Well, we just identified the need. We didn't say that it was going to happen, but
we identified the need and the utility providers that were having difficulty meeting their water needs. And I
also took the liberty, since we're still running a little bit ahead of schedule, Reverend Umstead is here along
with the other People for Progress. And I asked him to just take a few minutes to show us on the map where
the neighborhood is that we're talking about. I used to serve an the OWASA board also, and so from time to
time, all water providers have a neighborhood come to you that needs service that wasn't really planned to
get service, ar maybe wasn't planned to get service when they think they need the service. So it turns out
that this particular community doesn't fit in anybody's service area right now. Rev. Umstead, if you want to
just share with us a little bit the nature of the problem and the size of the community and just maybe show us
on a map, not everybody knows Orange County.
Rev. Umstead made a presentation and showed where they live and asked that they be
considered for water and sewer. (NOTE: He did not speak into a microphone so not all that Rev. Umstead
was recorded. } In summary he said that they are not begging, but we're trying to make you aware of the
plight of our community. Our community sits right between 4d and $5 and 7Q and Southern Railroad. One of
the areas where industry and commercial business would love to get their hands on. Orange County
supplies water up to a certain point and Mebane supplies water up to a certain point. Buckhorn Road seems
to be the barrier between the two. All we're asking is that you consider us and our community. We're not
asking far nothing, except what we need.
Chair Jacobs: Thank you Rev. Umstead. And for those of you who drive along I-85, especially
an Sunday, you'll know the exit, the Buckhorn exit, because the traffic backs up an both exit ramps coming
and going. There's a huge flea market right at that intersection. Incase you didn't know where Buckhorn
Road is, you da now.
Omega Wilson, president of the People for Progress spoke. He said that they received a small
grant to study the failure of septic tanks and are looking at three primary communities in the Mebane ETJ.
This study is being done to take a look and address the problem with facts and figures because we have had
difficulty in getting this issue on the table with the City of Mebane. We know there is a major issue here and
we also know that this issue has not been officially addressed. We hope Alamance County and Orange
County will take a lead role to address these issues.
Chair Jacobs: Thank you, and we have had a similar conversation with Alamance County
Commissioners as we've had with all the other entities here and we hope to be working with them on that
issue along with the issue of our disputed boundary with Alamance County in the near future.
At this time, I'll ask Don Cax, who introduced himself and his dual roles in Orange County, to give
us a presentation on the groundwater perspective, and then we'll take our break. When we come back, Pat
Davis from Triangle J will give us a regional overview, and then Dr. Moreau will moderate our discussion.
3. ORANGE COUNTY GROUNDWATER PERSPECTIVE -_ Don Cox
With about 40°~ of our population depending on groundwater, the County Commissioners recognized
that our comprehensive land use plan should address the protection of groundwater. In the fall of 1991, the
County Engineer, Paul Thames, called me to ask me to participate and chair a new water resources
committee. At the moment I was an the phone with him, I was watching awell-drilling rig renovating an
improperly constructed well at my house. So I bought into this groundwater resources program pretty heavily
then. We submitted the committee's final report last year. The considerations of the recommendations of our
report for inclusion in the County land use plan are just now beginning. This study was a cooperative effort
with the U. S. Geological Survey. They cost shared 5d°~ with us and there were three main topics -the
threats to groundwater, quantity of groundwater, and the quality of our groundwater resources. Ta determine
the present and future threats to groundwater, the majority of the existing wells in the County were located by
GPS systems, and all new wells that are being constructed are being located at that time, and we're updating
our database and records whenever that happens. That will let us know where the wells are in the County.
And all identified underground storage tanks, landfills, and any other identifiable threat locations are also in
that database and will be kept up to date. So if there is a spill of same kind, we'll know which location, we'll
know how many wells and what their proximity are to it, and hopefully that database will serve us well in the
future. We also emphasize and do continue to emphasize the importance of following the State guidelines
and sealing, or filling, abandoned ar unused wells to avoid their becoming a conduit for groundwater
contamination. This needs to be an ongoing effort and some landowners may need financial assistance to
comply.
With regard to the quantity of groundwater, a study done by using stream gauge measurements to
determine stream base flaws of groundwater to surface streams, sails maps, geologic structures, typography,
and land use, or estimates of groundwater yields and the recharge area requirements were made for all sub-
basins in the County. From this, the average groundwater yields and recharge areas needed can be
estimated. The groundwater quality study sampled numerous wells across the County. These wells were
located in all major hydro-geologic formations in every river basin. They were sampled for a wide range of
naturally occurring minerals, manmade chemicals, petroleum residues, and radon gas. As expected, a lot of
the wells showed high iron and manganese and radon in the known granite structures. We found very little
fertilizer, pesticides, and petro-chemical residues in the sample. So at this point in time, as of two or three
years ago, all of the sampling showed excellent water quality. But folks who have higher iron know they have
to deal with that.
A question: Why should the public water service suppliers be concerned about groundwater issues?
Sustainable groundwater resources maintain the base flows to surface streams, which support reservoir
levels and maintain stream water quality and ecology. Perhaps the biggest reason is to avoid the emergency
need to extend public water supplies to areas which have become non-sustaining in groundwater availability
ar quality. What can you do to help Orange County and its groundwater sustainability efforts? Your support
for informing the public about the importance of lot sizes and restrictions which preserve the groundwater
resource. These may need to include well head protection, impervious surface limits, undisturbed recharge
area preservation, well replacement locations, septic system drain fields, and reserve drain field areas.
Those are some of the issues. It's not going to be a popular thing to discuss about raising minimum
lot sizes in certain sub-basins in the County. But when you consider the cost of a little bit of additional land
versus 10 or 15 years dawn the road of having no water at your house, that's an interesting tradeoff.
Chair Jacobs: One of Orange Alamance's practices is to dig large wells. Do we have any
understanding of the relationship between a utility digging a large well and the effect an neighboring smaller
wells that provide service for individual lots?
Don Cox: I'm not technically able to answer that. Obviously wells close by would be impacted with
large draw downs. I understand that one of their high yielding wells is right on the banks of McGowan Creek
where their water treatment plant is. So that may be pulling surface water into it. Perhaps Dr. Moreau could
address that later in his comments.
4. DINNER
At this time, there was a break for dinner.
5. REGIONAL WATER RESOURCE OVERVIEW -Pat Davis -_ Triangle J Council of Governments
Pat Davis said that Region J is a seven county region that includes Orange, Durham, Chatham, Lee,
Johnston, Wake, and Moore Counties. According to the 2000 census, the population was just under 1.2
million people. Orange County's population was just under 120,000 or 10% of the region's population.
Based on a number of studies that have been done on the local, regional, and State level, the growth and
development decisions that have been made have had some impact on our water resource conditions, both
quality and quantity. And, of course we've had low flow conditions. This map shows in red and pink, before
Moore County joined TJCOG, water bodies that the State considers impaired. In other words, not meeting
any uses. So within the region there are about 90 stream miles that cannot support their designated uses.
And 202 miles are rated as only partially supporting their intended uses, meaning there are some signs of
decline and we need to look at how we might restore these waters to support the designated uses. The
result of our independent and collective decisions in the region have led to those ratings, and as a result
we've seen the State and others take action with respect to determining that steps are needed to protector
restore water quality. An example is the Neuse River Basin and Water Quality Rules that were put in place
by the State Environmental Management Commission back in 1996. That was done in response to the fish
kills and declining water quality conditions. So the State imposed land use restrictions, point source
discharge controls, education outreach requirements on local jurisdictions and the agricultural community in
order to try and restore conditions. And in the Cape Fear Basin an emerging issue is Jordan Lake nutrient
loading. The southern half of Orange County is in the Jordan Lake watershed. The Jordan Lake watershed
has shown signs of elevated nutrients. And there is concern by the State and some others that if those
conditions continue to worsen then recreational use, aquatic habitat, and drinking water supply uses will be
impaired. Other issues include inter basin transfers. We see it on a small scale within Orange County.
Durham has had an inter basin transfer from the Neuse Basin and from the Cape Fear basin. And you've
probably heard recently about the issue of inter basin transfers for the Cary/Apex folks as they want to get
water out of Jordan. And certainly in recent events, the whole issue of emergency response and
preparedness is certainly at the forefront.
Region J's population is projected to grow by about 3$% by year 2020. Orange County's population
is projected to grow by a similar percent to around 167,000 by the year 2020. So as that additional growth
and development occurs, there could be corresponding increases in threats to our water resources, quality or
quantity. How do those declining conditions affect you at the local government level? Well, first of all, your
local land use plans or planning strategies all have goals and objectives relating to resource protection,
sustainable wide use of our water resources, protection in the natural environment, etc. If we see impairment
within the region, that means we're not accomplishing those goals and objectives with respect to water
resources. We also may base State mandated regulatory actions such as total maximum daily load and
what's gone on in the Neuse Basin.
All of this certainly is going to affect the cost of doing business, whether it be utility service provision,
point source wastewater treatment methods, the cost incurred with reviewing and approving new
development activities, and increased costs of resource maintenance and upkeep of maintaining best
management practices that you are required to do as a result of the restoration and protection measures. We
do an analysis, a survey of water and sewer utility rates and fees within the region and we get 100%
response rate. We're compiling these results. What this graph shows, it's a benchmark on showing the
monthly combined water and sewer charges for a typical single-family residential customer using 6,000
gallons per month of water. Rates and fees are under increasing pressures for a number of reasons. So we
need to think, "How do we minimize the cost of business to our respective customers and residents within our
jurisdictions or utility service areas?"
I'll start to switch a little bit to same supply issues on a regional scale. One question that folks might
have is does the region have enough water to meet projected demands and for how long. In 1997, the
region's water supply systems that our local government awned had an average daily demand of 116 million
gallons per day. The manmade water supply reservoirs within our region had a combined safe yield of 167
million gallons per day. Now, keep in mind that in addition to the manmade reservoirs, our region uses a
number of river withdrawals. Based an local water supply plans, the region's water supply utilities are
projecting that the region's average daily water demand in the year 2020 will be around 220 million gallons
per day. We already know that another 62 million gallons per day exists in Jordan Lake, but it's not allocated
to anybody in the region yet. If you look at the year 2020 projections and the additional supply alternatives,
the expansion projects that are on the books, we could see existing and planned reservoir yields of 300
million gallons per day. In Orange County, on average, we get aver 6,000 gallons per day through
precipitation. If you look at year 2020 projected populations that number drops to below 5,000 gallons per
day. We're relatively water rich.
Ne was showing a map at this point, This just shows the portion and amount of the demand by
system within the region and then the components of demand by system. What this points out is the region
has a number of independent service providers. These arrows Shaw interconnections as of 1997 and haw
much water was being transferred as of 1997. Our challenge is how do we get it around where it's needed
when it's needed in the amount it's needed and at an affordable cost. At the same time, the challenge is how
to protect those resources in the long-term in the face of additional growth and development and associated
impacts.
This map just shows simply a skeleton network of the interconnections that exist in our region, from
the water supply system standpoint. Unfortunately, the capacity of those system interconnections isn't all that
great. In terms of long-term thinking, we need to look at the capacity of our interconnections and how the
region is able to respond to different emergency situations. The issue under consideration now, spearheaded
by Orange County and several other jurisdictions is Shearon Harris. Are we prepared in the event of some
unforeseen very low risk but high impact situation that could occur?
We are also working together in the area of watershed protection an a number of initiatives. And
Orange County and the jurisdictions of Orange County have been at the forefront in some of that thinking,
and Durham has as well. There have been good partnerships in the region. Are we at the level where we
know we're going to have long-term protection of all of our resources? No. We certainly have room for
improvement, but we're headed in the right direction, and believe me, we're quite a ways ahead of a lot of
other places around the country, so we're fortunate.
Essentially what this graphic shows is all the different water quality planning efforts and initiatives -
watershed protection plans that are underway from water quality modeling efforts that are underway. There's
a lot going an, a lot of positive and proactive thinking and involving a lot of interlocal collaboration and a lot of
local funding as well. I would add that some of these projects aren't just involving Region J's partners. Same
of these partnerships span across regions. We know that has to be the case if we're going to achieve
protection in the long term.
Same things to consider are that our demands are increasing, many of our facilities are getting older,
our costs are increasing, and our conflicts are increasing. Case in point, stone quarry reservoir. Prior case in
point in Orange County -Cane Creek Reservoir. Our projects take much longer than they used ta. Our
expectations of our customers are increasing, and we also need to be more proactive. Maybe we need to get
mare proactive instead of spending millions of dollars on restoration and getting out there and focusing an
protection. And as part of our local land use planning processes, our site design processes, we are actually
doing things that are more sustainable far the long term and more proactive. So in order to do that, we need
to have more comprehensive assessment tools.
There are a number of cooperative approaches within the region -system interconnection. Some of
you may have been following what's going on with Raleigh in terms of actually merging their operations with
Garner and other jurisdictions. They're moving ahead with what you might consider more centralized larger
system approaches. That may not be feasible here. It's been looked at in previous studies. Orange
County's Water Resource Task Force report of 1981, Long Range Water Management Task Force report of
1987, Orange County Water Supply study in 1987. Orange County has been there in looking at these things.
Hopefully through discussions like this, we can consider different ways of doing things so that, not only do we
meet the needs of our utility customers, but we also protect the natural environment, and we make better
decisions from a local land use planning and growth management standpoint so that we truly can achieve
sustainable resources management and also hopefully reduce costs to customers and increase reliability.
Bill Strom: Pat, in your role with Triangle J, is there a formal committee or role that you play there
that could start to bring this group together on a regular basis?
Pat Davis: There are a couple of things that are ongoing. One is there is Smart Growth Committee
that is looking at land use planning, growth management strategies, and how we grow and develop in order
to achieve more of our goals and objectives and do that in a sustainable way. The Smart Growth Committee
is an important point. Anyone who is interested in that committee certainly can came let me know and I'll be
sure that you get added to that distribution list if you're not already. Another committee is the Water
Resources Advisory Committee. Those committees are open to suggestions or requests from member
governments around the region as to potential topics to discuss and consider. There's a tang list of actual
projects that have been undertaken through those community efforts. As information, there will be a joint
meeting of the Smart Growth Committee and the Water Resources Advisory Committee on May 23`d at the
Raleigh Durham Airport. This will be the first joint meeting of those two committees. Then there's also the
board of directors, an executive committee in which the jurisdictions that are members of Triangle J appoint
delegates to use that forum.
Barry Katz: You showed a slide of the streams in the Triangle J area. Just looking at that slide, it
seems to me that the greatest area of impaired streams was in the Raleigh area right in Wake County, which
also has the highest level of growth and development. Is it inevitable that poor water quality in streams goes
along with higher densities or not?
Pat Davis: I would say under traditional land use site development practices, and then also what we
do once we develop land that there is that inevitability. At the same time, I'm optimistic that we can rethink
the approach to help us avoid that same result.
Barry Katz: There is an element of residences that you can perhaps work with. All those people that
are residents in those areas are also consumers and travelers, etc. Can you actually manage the impact of
people when you also consider the fact that they must buy food, they must drive, you know, the amount of
impervious surface simply by having a high concentration of people seems to be almost impassible to
overcome.
Pat Davis: There is definitely a relation between the amount of impervious surface and population.
6. DISCUSSION -_ Dr. David Moreau
Chair Jacobs We've heard several references to Dr. Moreau. Naw we actually get a chance to
meet him. You can see that not only is he one of the foremost experts on water matters in the State, but Dr.
Moreau is also Chair of the Environmental Management Commission.
Dr. David Moreau: Well, I was asked to come and lead a moderated discussion of issues. I think
many of those issues have been laid out. Dave Stancil has listed some questions that are on your program,
and they're basically questions that have been raised here and are directly to the point. The question is, Are
existing interlocal agreements sufficient to regionally protect scarce water resources? The follow up to that
is, are we prepared for drought conditions? If not, what else should we do? I think you could add to that list,
Are we prepared to deal with a major accident involving one of our systems? The scenario I worked with a
student on was, What happens if a truck barreling down Interstate 85 careens off the Neuse River bridge, is
carrying hazardous material, and ends up in the Raleigh water supply? We talk about terrorist actions, we
talk about nuclear accidents. We had an incident here about 15 years ago on one December night about five
days before Christmas. It was raining heavily and there was a cattle farm over near Wake Forest. It became
evident to the farmer that the water was going to run over the dyke in his pond, in his manure holding pond.
He went out to try to relieve it by twisting the valve and the valve stem broke. Eventually, the dyke failed and
wiped out 20 miles of the Neuse River, right below the Neuse River dam. If that facility had been three miles
west of there, it would have come right dawn on top of the Raleigh water intake. We can imagine these
terrorist actions and other things, but there are a lot of things. I think when we started on the Cane Creek
reservoir, we identified 18 dairies within that watershed. And there were some that had major concerns. The
question we ask is this discussion about the interconnections. But if I ga to you and ask you, "What are you
going to do in the case of this scenario or that scenario?" Are we prepared sufficiently to respond to that?
What would we do? Beyond that is, if we're not prepared, then what should we do to get prepared? Because
with the increasing development around here, the scenario we play out is not sa rare, in fact there was a
truck that ran off the Neuse River bridge. Fortunately it was carrying television sets, it was not carrying
hazardous material. When they were paving over there on this side of the bridge and where they had the van
where the Butner kids were killed, there was a whale string of accidents that occurred right there. Situations
that were created with no design, but just created the circumstance where that could happen.
I think another issue that is before us is, Are we doing enough to protect the watershed around Jordan
Lake? In the inter basin transfer decision, one of the conditions that was tied to that was that Cary and Apex
adopt a protection program similar to those that were adopted for the entire Neuse basin. Should similar
conditions be tied to the allocation of the water off of Jordan Lake? Should that be added as a condition on
the allocation? What we hear here is a lot of very active local governments dealing with their water problems.
We hear Durham and Raleigh are going to look at Kerr Lake. I understand that's a tough subject to discuss
publicly. But in that process, are all of our interests being represented? If not all of our interests, then haw
da we shape the process to make sure that all of our interests are represented in that? Having been a
veteran of the Virginia Beach wars, you see what happens when one local government takes the lead and
others are playing games in the process about withholding supplies. If we're going that direction, and it
clearly is not too early to get started on that, I think there's a question about how do we promote the reuse of
these resources. Those are some of the questions I would throw out for discussion. And you may have other
questions that you want to raise as well.
Let's come back to the question of preparedness. Haw prepared are we?
Ed Kerwin: Not very prepared, sir. The idea of an emergency certainly, I think is really different in
people's minds than it was prior to September 11t", and there really isn't anything that is unimaginable
anymore with respect to our services. So, from that paint of view we're not as prepared as we need to be.
We have in our capital project things to improve the capacity of the interconnections with the City of Durham,
also with Chatham and Hillsborough. But, if we lost Cane Creek, I don't have a good plan that is validated by
our neighbors that they'll be there to meet the needs. And certainly the spirit of goad neighbors, I knave that if
somebody can help, they will. But we just don't have things thought through and in place where we know
exactly how we would respond. And spending more time talking about that would be very useful. I know that
was a subject on May 2"d quite a bit regarding one facility. But there are many situations like that that we
certainly could be better prepared than we are.
Dr. Moreau: And if I ask you far a protection plan, do you have a document you can hand me?
Ed Kerwin: We have emergency management plans, we have drills, particularly with the towns and
the counties. I feel like we're reasonable well prepared. But again, for what? I feel like we're reasonable
well prepared for a hurricane better than we were for Hurricane Fran. Are we prepared if we lose 75°~ of our
water supply? No. I feel like we've done a lot and we've improved a lot at a staff level with all of our
neighboring utilities. We interact fairly regularly and talk about these things. But, have we talked about it
enough? No. Is there more we should do? Absolutely.
Dr. Moreau: I'm not trying to suggest that we've been derelict in that because I'm aware it's been a
topic far a long time. I still worry about what happens if we had a major failure. What would we do?
Terry Roland: I can speak about that a little bit from Durham's perspective. And it's the same
problem OWASA has, I think, but just a little bit bigger. And that is that none of our interconnections are big
enough to meet the total need. Our interconnection with OWASA is good for about 3-3.5 million gallons a
day. Our interconnection with Cary is goad far about five. Our interconnection with Chatham is probably
good far two ar three, but their treatment capacity is three, and they're using one and a half of that or so.
Reality can't count much more on a million and a half there presently.
Dr. Moreau: I remember the days when the DurhamlOWASA interconnection was made and it was
done in a really expedited fashion.
Terry Roland: Certainly the line connections can be expanded pretty quickly. The problem is in the
treatment and supply side. We're working on an agreement and a plan far interconnecting with Raleigh that
would also give us some additional supply capability, but in all of the cases I think we're limited to whatever
our neighbors can afford to give up in terms of supply. You can build a waterline pretty quick, but you can't
build additional treatment capacity quickly, and you can't build additional raw water supply quickly. So that
becomes the limiting element. Right now the limiting element is our interconnection. But if we build bigger
interconnections; if we lost our whole system, we're running about 30 million gallons a day, and even if we
had a big line interconnection with Raleigh, I doubt seriously they have that much excess capacity that they
could meet that need. We would have to go to rationing which means 30 gallons a person per day which
would be about six million gallons a day. So we could take our demand down from 30 million to six if we had
to. It wouldn't be fun and it wouldn't be pretty, but we could da it. Then you could do some of the things with
the interconnections we have. It would take a disaster of great magnitude to get to that.
Ms. Speaker: I had a meeting about a month ago with the folks at Duke University, and their concern
from their board was what kind of redundancy did we have in case there was this catastrophe. One of the
advantages we have is that we do have two reservoirs, two water plants. So we have a redundancy that for
us is helpful. Again, are we prepared for the ultimate? Well, who is at this point? But we're probably in a
little better shape than a lot of utilities because of the redundancy that we have. Yes, we really need that
intercannectionvith Raleigh because they're the only ones with the capacity to help us out. Certainly we car
improve our interconnections with everybody else as well.
Terry Roland: Raleigh is interested in the interconnection as we are because they have the same
problem and worse in that they only have one water plant. If they lase their one water plant, they would be in
a lot worse shape than we would be. They are very interested in the interconnection as well.
Dr. Moreau: They abandoned that Johnson plant, didn't they?
Terry Roland: Their long-range plan is to build a new facility, I think, to develop those supplies that
they used to rely an, they're going to redevelop those and redevelop another plant. Sa they will get some
redundancy in the not too distant future as I understand it. But they don't have it right now. We actually got
to test our redundancy during Hurricane Fran. I'll just mention that. Duke Power provides our power service,
and 9Q°f° of the Duke Power grid system went down. We lost a lot of things, and we lost one of our water
plants, but our largest plant stayed online by the sake of one power line between it and the main source of
power. But we did stay up and running far that whole time, we never lost our water system during Hurricane
Fran. We lost one waste treatment plant for about eight hours, though. North Durham went completely
under water, well it took us eight hours to get it back online.
Dr. Moreau: Let me ask if there are questions that you want to pursue. There were questions that
were raised.
Bill Strom: We are talking about hundreds of millions, maybe billions of dollars to build in
redundancy, capacity, etc. One tool that we have that legislative and not necessarily taking that type of
investment is land use planning. The notion of are we doing enough to protect Jordan Lake and our other
upland watersheds is something that some of us as elected officials could deal with, but I'm sure curious to
hear folks talk about that issue some more and address the nitrification concerns that Pat Davis talked about
and see haw we can certainly address those issues on a regional basis. Chapel Hill is doing some things,
Orange County is doing some things, but it would be very interesting to see what folk's attitude is towards
making a bigger investment through land use planning and protecting those watersheds.
Dr. Moreau: I think we've taken some very good steps on the upland reservoirs and protecting those
areas, but what we see now is Cary and Apex moving westward and expanding into that direct drainage area
into Jordan Lake. And with the Durham expansion in that direction, with South Pointe and all the other things
that are going along with South Pointe that are going to follow, that whole area is really experiencing a very
high level of development. I'm not sure that we have taken adequate steps to protect that area. We did
minimally on the eastside of the lake with the conditions attached to the inter basin transfer. I don't think any
conditions have been attached to any allocations, though. How would you react to that?
Terry Roland: I'd like to speak to that because I guess I've been here too long. Because Jordan
Lake and Falls Lake, watershed protection goes back to 1983 when those lakes were first being planned to
be impounded. Pat Davis has been around that long and can talk about it. Triangle J played an important
role in that process and we have, I think in North Carolina, as a result of that effort at Triangle J and the
efforts of the region for watershed protection, one of the best watershed protection rules in North Carolina
that covers the whole state now that exists in the whole country. We've been a leader in that in the whole
country. As far as the City of Durham, we attempted to do a lot in that effort to protect not only Falls and
Jordan Lake, but we kept the emphasis up for protecting our awn upland supplies and the concern started out
more with Falls and Jordan and we wanted to make sure that our upland supplies were protected and
couldn't expect those other folks to protect our lakes if we weren't willing to protect theirs. So that's always
the way we've looked at it. I think in the case of the City and County of Durham we probably provide more
levels of protection for Falls and Jordan Lake than mast of our neighbors with the exception of maybe Orange
County. I think they've done just about as much or maybe more than we have. But I think Durham has really
done a lot in that regard. Our buffer areas are as big or bigger than anybody's as far as what we call our
protected area for Falls and Jordan Lake. They are bigger than the state minimum requirements. We have
urban growth boundary limitations and lot size limitations that provide protection of that. In the long range
perspective, we were always looking at Jordan Lake especially as a potential future water supply. Sa we
have a keen interest in making sure that that's protected. As a result of some of that, we also, in expanding
our two plants, we have two wastewater treatment plants, water reclamation facilities we call them; that we
expanded in the 90's, and both of those were expanded with treatment capabilities well beyond permitted
requirements at the time they were built. They're both capable of doing total nutrient removal, nitrogen and
phosphorus, biologically. They both have extra filters, ultraviolet disinfectant, they're state of the art water
treatment plants, and we built those before they were mandated by any State regulations. Sa when the
Neuse Basin rules came into effect, we were already able to meet those. I think with the Jordan Lake
nitrogen requirements coming dawn the pipe, we're going to be able to meet those as well with our South
Durham facility. The County is working on upgrading their plan and it doesn't have that capability yet. But
they're working on a planned expansion for that to meet those nitrogen requirements. As far as the city is
concerned, we've tried to look ahead and provide that level of protection for Jordan Lake particularly and
Falls Lake as well. In the case of Jordan, hoping that we would someday be drinking that same water we
discharge to. We have a particular interest in protecting that water I think that no one else probably will have.
Because I don't believe anybody else will be in the unique situation of discharging into and drinking out of the
same reservoir.
Dr. Moreau: Would you send me a copy of that protection program for Jordan? I have not seen it
recently. I'd be interested in that. One point I do want to make is that Ed Holland, you were Triangle J when
that started. Ed was sort of a key staff person in that. I think there's some really goad things that came out of
that process for the region as well as for North Carolina. A lot of people have put a lot of effort into that. And
I don't think sometimes some of the newer folks coming in know that history and don't realize where we've
come from. We've come a long way. That's not to say we don't still need to do more. But we've done a lot.
We just need to recognize that we've done that. It would be a lot worse if we hadn't done that too.
Dan Okun: We need to prepare and learn what to do by looking at what they are doing in the
western part of the United States. Growth is making the demands increase which we will have to pay far.
We need to consider what is happening around the country. We could manage or reclaim our water for other
uses. Water reclamation requires early planning. Make reclamation very economical. It can be done for
small and large communities alike. We have state regulations for non-portable uses.
Dr. Moreau: One of the questions is haw da we initiate that process of water reuse. We've had a
couple of aborted efforts, Motorola, I guess, was negotiating with Durham. Wasn't there a study on
Meadowmont?
Dan Okun: The best example is what Cary has done with a golf course using reclaimed water. It can
be done if there is some initiative on the part of the communities and the engineers. We need to examine our
options and get it in the early planning stages.
Don Cox: One of the big problems is that there is no demand for reclaimed water. One way to
create the demand is through the local subdivision ordinances. It would require local communities to say this
is what you have to do to develop this subdivision.
Dan Okun: Whenever there is a water shortage, people will use reclaimed water to water their
shrubs and lawns. This is beginning to be done just because people must conserve water.
Bill Strom: I wasn't on the Council in Chapel Hill when it was discussed at Meadowmont, but it's not
going to happen by the private sector necessarily. There's a legislative approach that's going to have to be
taken in the communities by elected officials that think this is important. For example, Dr Moreau you
mentioned Meadowmont, and a dual system was proposed and it was negotiated away because the
developer took it away as other requests were made and the approval was negotiated out. It really does
require some legislative will to change the paradigm.
Chair Jacobs: As I recall, even the University was approached about it's golf course and decided to
just suck water out of Morgan Creek rather than be part of doing something a little mare creative. My
question had to do with inter basin transfer. Could you just outline why we don't like inter basin transfer? My
understanding is the State sets a threshold of two million gallons per day where you raise the flag of concern.
If it's something that we discourage, why talk about such a large amount? If it's less we shouldn't worry
about it, or it's not worth regulating? How do we get to that?
Dr. Moreau: Well, you have to agree on some sort of diminimus level. You're not going to regulate
every little garden hose that crosses a ridgeline. And frankly, I don't know why two million gallons a day. It
may have been just looking at what already existed in making that judgement. The real argument against
inter basin transfer is one of water rights. There may have been others, but I remember Senator Roby Nash.
When you start talking about running that water from Siler City to Zebulon, there was this proposal in 1957 to
run water from the Yadkin River to Burlington -the so-called seven cities proposal. Senator Nash spent his
lifetime in the legislature making darn sure that was not going to happen. The legislation that was written in
same of the very cumbersome stuff that OWASA had to deal with in getting the permit for Cane Creek came
out of that legislation that was very restricted on who could do that. The case an Jordan Lake was very
political dealing with Senator Rand and the perception that the Cape Fear River in Fayetteville was going to
be dried up by this transfer. Eight million gallons a day was transferred against a minimum low flow in
Fayetteville of 575 million gallons a day. The whole issue on Virginia Beach was a water rights, not only a
water rights, but a perception that somebody is going to get something that's mine. There is an
environmental argument that the mixing of these waters may have an adverse effect an the ecology. That's a
more recent argument, I think that the real prevailing argument is one of, "You're taking something that
belongs to me."
Dan Okun: We made the law and shackled ourselves.
Dr. Moreau: That's true, Dan, but it took a decision of the United States Supreme Court to give New
York water out of the Delaware River. Your paint is obvious but it still does not get around the fact that these
are hard fought battles. The Virginia Beach case went on for 18 years. We have a problem in this state. I
don't know exactly what the situation is on Person County, but there are laws on the books in this state that
say you can't take water from one county, and I think these are county specific. That you can't take water
from this county and build a reservoir in this county to use in some other county.
Mr. Speaker: Actually, it doesn't deal with the water so much as it does the condemnation of land.
That's the issue. One local government can't condemn land in another jurisdiction without that jurisdiction's
approval. Which, in effect, says you can't build a water supply.
Don Cox: You have to look at the impact of moving water from one basin to another. Does it make
sense when you look at the impact of inter basin transfers?
Dr. Moreau: That act was passed in '93. Prior to that, there was nothing. But that took a major effort
to get that law changed in '93 to where there is a process for considering it now.
Terry Roland: Actually, there was a law prior to '93, and the irony of it is that inter basin transfers
were prohibited in North Carolina until the new law was passed, unless the river basins were solely within the
State of North Carolina. And the only two that that condition exists on is the Cape Fear and the Neuse.
According to Milton Heath, the reason that law was written the way it was written was so that Research
Triangle Park could became a reality. It was served by Durham from Neuse Basin water, and it was
discharging to the Cape Fear basin. If they hadn't made that change in the law, inter basin transfers would
have been prohibited completely in North Carolina. It was prohibited except where the river basins were
solely within the State of North Carolina. It wasn't until '93 that we changed it so that inter basin transfers
could be done in other places besides between the Cape Fear and the Neuse. Prior to that I think that was
the only place you could do it.
Dr. Moreau: It had to do with the authority, if you were acting jointly, and that's where OWASA and
everybody else, there were multiple jurisdictions involved in it and that's what triggered it. And that's what
triggered the Randleman stuff. That law was written to stop the Southern Cities Project, the 'S7 law. And the
power companies are the ones that did that because the only basins on which you can generate power in
North Carolina are interstate basins. They wrote the law very cleverly that you can make the inter basin
transfer so tang as the basins were solely within the State of North Carolina. And the Neuse and the Cape
Fear were the two basins, and you could not generate electricity on either one of them. That's the story I got.
7. NEXT STEPS
Chair Jacobs: At the break I heard a lot of people saying they thought this was a good discussion
and they got valuable information. But to just have a meeting and then walk away, although it's always good
to be educated and to get to know people better. Just speaking as an Orange County Commissioner, I would
like to see how we can get water with our sewer system. I'd like to make sure that our citizens have
adequate water supplies so that when we do our comprehensive land use plan update that we can
incorporate the plans of jurisdictions within our jurisdiction and that we can make sure, to the best of our
ability that water and sewer provision follows the land use plan. I'll just put that out, I'd like to see how we
can work toward those kinds of things. That's our self-interest. And we said at the beginning we wanted
people to purpose their self-interest. That is what brings us together even though we're all altruists and care
about water and our neighbors. I'm just real interested in haw we can keep this conversation going.
Margaret Pollard: I'd like to see us address, at some point, how do we prepare citizens far safe
water conservation during a crisis? I think that just to have people conserve water without thinking about the
public health implications with that might not be meeting our total responsibility.
Dan Okun: Orange County has a Commission for the Environment and there is a committee on
water resources. If anyone has water related activities or needs, they need to send it to this commission
which will look at it.
Dr. Moreau: Barry, are you suggesting some sort of countywide, not just county boundary, but region
that encompasses Orange and its immediate neighbors? I'm not talking about necessarily the Research
Triangle region, but are you suggesting development of some plan for water and sewer services within this
smaller region?
Chair Jacobs: Well, after going and sitting dawn and having lunch with representatives from all of
these different entities, it is clear that we all have issues. With all due respect to our awn Commission, other
governments may not want to come to our Commission. We need to create some place where we can -
even if it's just to empower our staffs to brainstorm - to bring the plans, to bring the maps, to look at where
we overlap, where we conflict, where we might be able to cooperate. I don't pretend to know or to dare tell
someone else haw they should do their business. It's clear that we're all just going in our own directions. So
we need some agreement to keep working together, whatever that venue is. And it's always easy for an
elected official to say, "I'm going to empower the staff to ga do more meetings, and when they develop
something we'll came back and talk same mare." That's the vision I have.
Terry Roland: Pat's already talked about the Water Resources Committee of Triangle J, and I realize
there's some folks that aren't in Triangle J, but we could probably expand that invitation list to make sure that
everybody that's interested participate in that process. That is the committee that worked on the watershed
issue in the 80's, and that's probably the best existing mechanism we have for continuing with discussion,
and it's a good place for it, I think. So we could use that committee to continue that discussion.
Dr. Moreau: Well, clearly a lot of the information and considerations that go an there would be
relevant here. It might take a subcommittee with expansion to include Orange Alamance. Burlington has lots
of water over there. They have a lot of excess supply. And that hasn't been brought into this discussion.
John Link: I think the idea of pursuing the TJCOG structure is good. I am interested in same kind of
congruence. I want to look at it from a practical perspective of providing water and at the same time
addressing the land use issues which have been brought forward.
Ed Harrison: I got a lot of my post-graduate education in water resources at that committee, starting
with seminars. I also met same of the first local government managers that I'd ever met that I didn't work far,
and all of you are improvements over them. I think it's a place that managers could fit into. The committee
has been sometimes in the past a little bit too much inside baseball. I think the mare pragmatic questions
that John is talking about really need to be talked about there. I think that because this involves local
government decision-makers so much on so many levels, it really has to be a little less not technical. I thrive
an the technical stuff, but I don't think that the local governments necessarily need to have all that. This set
of presentations today has been nicely balanced in that regard. It's a committee that because the COG has
been so busy with very important focus work, hasn't met quite as often lately. But I think we're seeing a
reason to do it again. It could split off in geographic subsets if it had to. Also, I want to echo, as someone
who has spent a decade on the Durham Environmental Affairs Board, there is very good thinking that can
happen on citizen boards like that if you bather to ask them the right questions ar let them think of the right
questions themselves.
Joe Phelps: It has been a good meeting. I agree that I think that we could meet again maybe in
smaller groups and get more accomplished that way. I would like to say something. I did read the resolution
sent by the Board of Commissioners, and you had something in here and I'll read it quickly for those who
don't have it. It says, about three quarters of the way down, "Whereas, the environmental impact and
financial cost associated with the development and construction of new reservoirs renders the development
of new reservoirs and water supplies within Orange County unlikely." I don't want to restrict what we may
decide today for someone 30 or 50 years from now of not ever building a reservoir in Orange County. That
particular statement concerns me a little bit. I don't know what the intent of it was. I don't think Hillsborough
is going to grow tremendously over the next 50 years, but I don't think at this point in 30 years we'll have
enough water. So I don't want to proceed along those lines if that was meant to be that way. I'd be open to
suggestions, but I don't think we should ever close the door on some future generation. Like Jahn said, I kind
of agreed with him. Everybody has a need for water here, and then Pat says that we have plenty of water
and someone mentioned Burlington. I'm not sure about Burlington. They would probably sell water as long
as they could, but they'll probably grow too and at some point quit selling water I don't want to restrict any
furture governing body from doing what is necessary to provide water to our citizens.
Chair Jacobs: I have a question for the folks from Mebane. Do you feel comfortable being part of
this committee of Triangle J to work on some issues together even though you're not part of that COG?
Robert Wilson: Yes. I think that we all have the same interests here of water connections
throughout. Contrary to what you've heard tonight, Mebane didn't deny anybody water. We're just like any
other city, we have jurisdictions that we have to stay within. We try our best to work within those jurisdictions
and serve people outside of our jurisdiction. But water, as we've all explained here, comes at a cast. And
someone has to pay for that cost -you, Durham, Hillsborough, Mebane. There's an end where you can
afford to extend your lines. We've met with the County of Orange. We've met with Alamance to service the
folks of West End, Buckhorn Road area -outside of our ETJ, Buckhorn Road, Perry Hills. But the West End
area, we're working with those folks to get water and sewer to areas in the counties or outside of our ETJs,
water and sewer without getting mud on our face every time we go to meetings. I'd be more than happy to
attend another meeting to try to come up with some reasonable concern of connections.
Chair Jacobs: It soulds like we're at a good stopping point. We thank you for coming.
Commissioner Halkiotis is not here, but in his stead, Commissioner Carey has kindly volunteered to make
some closing remarks.
8. CLOSING REMARKS
Well, there's no way in the world that I can be Steve Halkiotis tonight. But it occurs to me that we
came here tonight and started out with self-interests in mind, and that's good, that's ok. But I think we've
learned here tonight that all of our self-interests are intertwined with the interests of each other, and it
behooves us to work together to try to meet the needs of all of our constituents. I think this has been a good
meeting and I want to thank Barry and all of the staff and all of the other people who put this together
because it's been very informative and I'm sure that something good will happen from this. But it depends on
the willingness of all of you to work together to make that happen. So, on behalf of the Board of
Commissioners, I want to thank you for coming tonight and encourage everyone to continue to work together
regardless of the next forum that it's in. And I'm sure that Barry and Steve and others in the leadership
positions, as they've been meeting with each of you, can decide on how best to proceed from this point
forward. Thank you far coming.
9. ADJOURNMENT
With no further items to discuss, the summit was adjourned at 8:3Q p.m.
Barry Jacobs, Chair
Beverly A. Blythe, CMC