HomeMy WebLinkAboutNews Article - Dam and Drought - The Fayetteville Observer
North
Carolina's
Oldest
Newspaper
The Fayetteville Observer
ESTABLISHED 1816
RICHARD M. LILLY --- President and Publisher, 1949-1971
RAMON L. YARBOROUGH
President and Publisher
ASHTON W. LILLY
Chairman of the Board
JOEL S. JENKINS
General Manager
CHARLES A. CLAY
Editor
ROBERT S. WILSON
Managing Editor
JOHN L MERRITT
News Editor
THURSDAY, AUGUST 11, 1977
Editorials
Chapel Hill, the Sahara of Orange
County, is in what can be called an extremely
awkward position as it threshes about trying
to keep from going bone-dry.
At the moment, the town's own water
supply is critically low and emergency relief
is being piped in from Durham as Durham's
situation permits. Negotiations are continu-
ing for a pipeline to Hillsborough where water
is plentiful, although the pipeline couldn't be
completed in time to relieve this summer's
water shortage. In about two weeks some
20,000 students will return to the university at
Chapel Hill. The university is digging wells as
Iast as it can and the town is studying plain,
for rationing water. Chapel Hill's mayor, in a
display of leadership that will not be
understandable to everybody, has had a well
dug in the yard at his home. And then there is
Cane Creek, a small stream in western
Orange flowing through some of the finest
dairy land in the state.
Chapel Hill's extremely awkward posit-
ion lies in its efforts to hold off creation of the
14,300-acre Jordan Lake, through still anoth-
er court appeal, at the same time trying to
dam up Cane Creek and ,turn that lush, rolling
dairy land into a reservoir, and all the while
dripping down toward its last drop.
One of the many peculiar things about the
situation is that Chapel Hill's mayor, James
Wallace, a member of the State Envionmen-
tal Management Commission, was a party to
the original suit which halted work on the
Jordan reservoir in Chatham County, only a
few miles from Chapel Hill. Wallace is a
strong advocate of pursuing the court fight,
against creation of the Jordan Lake. He is
also a strong advocate of thrusting the Cane
Creek reservoir upon those dairy farmers
and others in western Orange adamantly
opposed to it.
The difference in the two reservoirs, as
Mayor Wallace sees it, is basically one of
water quality. Chapel Hill, among others,
dumps sewage into a stream feeding into the
Jordan reservoir, so the lake could be
expected to be as polluted as most other lakes
in the state. Chapel Hill doesn't want to
improve its sewage treatment, a costly
process, although Mayor Wallace says this is
not a consideration in his position.
In Cane Creek, on the other hand, the
water is as pure as the pastures are green,
and urban sprawl, such as that surrounding
Chapel Hill's own water supply, has not yet
come to the Cane Creek community, so
land grabs would be comparatively cheap.
That doesn't mean that land acquisition
would be easy; the Cane Creek dairy farmers
have been running surveyors' off their land
regularly at gunpoint.
Chapel Hill, while maybe not totally
self-serving in its positions on the Jordan
Lake and Cane Creek, is obviously callous to
many of the factors involved. One of the
initial and still foremost reasons for construc-
tion of the Jordan dam is flood control, water
quality, of course, has no bearing on flood
control. Just because Chapel Hill is not
bothered by floods is hardly reason to write
off the $60 million project and have those
downstream from the darn continue to suffer
as they have through the years.
Those dairy farmers in the Cane Creek
community, many of whose !and has been in
the same family for generations, should not
have to suffer simply for Chapel Hill's ease
and convenience. Growth, which Chapel Hill
has more of than it can handle, always exacts
a price, but there is rio reason why innocent
dairy farmers 10 or 12 miles away should
have to pay it. The town has workable
alternatives: the. Jordan Lake, for one, whose
water would be fit for municipal consumption
if only Chapel Hill and others would stop
polluting it; and, for another, enlargement of
the town's present water supply, if only the
university, by far the biggest water custom-
er, woult permit it.
This is mainly a local controversy, but in
many ways it is also a classic confrontation
and there are lessons in it for anyone willing
to learn. One lesson, to be ignored only at
grave risk, is that regional planning and
regional development, particularly of water
resources, is absolutely essential to meet
today's needs. As incredible as it might seem,
Chapel Hill is now in its ninth year of drought,
more or less running, and still has rio clear
idea of what to do about it. Seven of those
years, of course, have been spent fighting the
Jordan reservoir.
Another lesson, one that Cane Creek is
trying to teach Chapel Hill, is that property
rights, even though they often collide with
what appears to be the common good, are
fundamental to our heritage and ought to be
respected.
Otherwise, good luck, Chapel Hill.