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For the Record 9/18/08

Posted on September 18, 2008 by Staff

A rational pause

The 300 East Main Street project is big, both in size and in how it is likely to change the eastern edge of Carrboro’s burgeoning downtown.

The project, the result of a decade of discussion and “visioning,” and at least four years of serious back and forth between the town, developers and some of the key entities — mainly The ArtsCenter and Cat’s Cradle — that will be affected.

The lengthy public hearing Tuesday night included the kind of passion you might expect, both for and against, and ended without a vote by the Carrboro Board of Aldermen.

There is a pause now, with a vote expected at a special meeting on Sept. 30. Given the heat and light from the hearing, a short pause makes sense in order to see that concerns raised have a chance to be thought through.

But it is clearly time to make a decision and, as many pointed out Tuesday night, time for the town to seize the opportunity and prepare the way for a new era.

Conservative thinking

Like a lot of government entities in the water business, the Orange Water and Sewer Authority is in a bit of a pickle. For years now, OWASA has been encouraging — and pleading and insisting and cajoling — its customers to conserve water. And, as during the aftermath of the 2002 drought, the authority is now feeling the financial pinch of the frugality of ratepayers. After 2002, overall demand failed to rise back to pre-drought levels. This year, the pattern is repeating.

In the OWASA service area, there now are thousands more rain barrels and cisterns, along with low-flow toilets, fixed leaks and 2.5-gallon-per-minute (or less) showerheads.

That’s great, of course, because it means that people have adapted to drier conditions and adopted water-conserving habits. But conservation has hit OWASA’s bottom line hard.

Positions are frozen, budgets tight and spending for infrastructure slowing.

We know it’s difficult for many people in this community to feel empathy with anything defined as a utility, but this particular situation presents a conundrum worth contemplating and, if possible, solving.

OWASA’s conservation-driven financial crunch is an example on a much smaller scale of what regulators are faced with in trying to craft a new energy policy.

Since conservation is the ultimate way to green up the power grid, it makes the most sense to start there. But power companies are having a hard time with the concept.

As a Duke Energy lobbyist reminded the Legislature’s climate change committee when it opened hearings a couple years back, power companies are not accustomed to encouraging people to use less of their product.

That’s probably why there is such a gulf between Duke’s Save-a-Watt effort and other measures proposed by utilities and those who would like to hasten a sweeping restructuring of our energy systems.

Regulators are well aware that the costs of converting a significant chunk of this state’s energy production to greener methods requires significant participation by the private sector.

In less than two weeks, OWASA’s rate increase takes effect and customers will reap their portion of the fruits of conservation. It will be interesting to see how this community responds to the increase and to the challenge of maintaining and growing infrastructure with slower revenues going forward.

No doubt, there are energy company officials keeping an eye on how their brethren in the water business fare.

Get yer sweaters out

Fans of the autumnal equinox take note: Officially, fall starts Monday (Sept. 22) at 11:44 and 18 seconds. Fall weather, though, arrives a bit earlier with lows over the weekend in the mid-50s.

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