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Now is the time to confront water scarcity

Posted on May 6, 2010 by Staff

Grady McCallie

It’s hard to think of a natural resource more essential to our state’s economy than water.

The April 2010 issue of National Geographic magazine, devoted entirely to water, points out that water shortages are a global challenge. The editor notes that by 2025 at least 1.8 billion people are expected to live in conditions of water scarcity, measured not by how much rain falls but by whether demand exceeds supply. Whether North Carolina – green, humid North Carolina – suffers from water scarcity in the future depends on the water-management decisions we begin to make now.

North Carolina lacks a permitting program for surface water withdrawals. If you rely on water from a river and someone puts in a pipe upstream, your only remedy is to sue them and hope the judge finds their use unreasonable. That’s a recipe for long, drawn-out conflicts. Bills introduced last year and pending in the state legislature would establish a new planning and permitting system for freshwater withdrawals from North Carolina’s rivers and lakes. The bills did not move last year, but they’ve prompted much discussion among North Carolinians who spend their time thinking about the state’s business climate, economic growth, city services and the health of our rivers.

Experts will tell you that wise water management needs three elements:

• Planning models that show what will happen to river health and businesses and cities upstream and downstream if we expand water withdrawals from one point in a watershed – Armed with this information, water systems’ officials can make better decisions about how much to invest in expanded treatment works versus, for example, water efficiency programs.

• Protections to ensure that we keep enough water in the rivers for them to be healthy and self-sustaining – As the experience of several western states has shown, once a watershed gets out of balance it’s expensive to fix. It also creates unpredictability for cities and industries that can suddenly find their withdrawals curtailed in a last-ditch effort to prevent ecological collapse.

• Permitting that gives water users predictability so they can make business decisions with a clear sense of how much water will be available for them – A permit system also needs enough flexibility to allow for reallocation of water supplies to new uses over time, as some existing industries fade and others become hot new job-generators.

It’s not easy to draft a state law that can accomplish all three goals at the same time. North Carolina’s draft legislation does, though it could probably be simpler. But what happens if something gets lost along the way? We can actually look just to our north and south to spot the problems.

Over the last decade, Virginia established a surface-water permit program but it didn’t automatically issue permits to current uses (which would have been sufficient to avoid economic disruption); it permanently exempted them from ever having to get permits. The result: 90 percent of surface-water withdrawals are beyond the reach of the state program, undermining the state’s ability to keep rivers healthy or make room for growing towns or new businesses that could add jobs to the state’s economy.

Meanwhile, South Carolina is putting the finishing touches on water legislation that will establish permitting, but without comprehensive planning or river-basin modeling. The bill would let applicants take a percentage of water at a point in the river but lacks a framework to consider what that really means for points upstream or downstream. As a result, the new legislation will not actually give cities or industry predictability; future withdrawals upstream could increasingly squeeze existing downstream uses.

North Carolina can and should do better than our neighbors. The 2010 legislative session will be a tough year for lawmakers of both parties as they seek to balance a tight state budget and promote economic recovery. It is not clear whether legislators will find the time to address water management. On the other hand, the legislature faces pressing issues every year, ranging from tax reform to economic development to the need to invest in our transportation system. In any given year, water management may seem less urgent; but in the long run, managing our water resources wisely will have as great an impact on North Carolina’s prosperity as any of these more visible issues.

Grady McCallie is the policy director for the N.C. Conservation Network.

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