
{"id":17161,"date":"2011-04-07T10:05:42","date_gmt":"2011-04-07T14:05:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=17161"},"modified":"2011-04-07T11:35:03","modified_gmt":"2011-04-07T15:35:03","slug":"owasa-continues-work-on-forestry-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2011\/04\/07\/owasa-continues-work-on-forestry-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"OWASA continues work on forestry plan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Susan Dickson<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>Staff Writer<\/em><br \/>\nThe Orange Water and Sewer Authority continues to gather public input on a draft forestry-management plan that drew fire from the community after it was released late last year.<br \/>\nThe OWASA board of directors in December decided to extend the public-comment period for the utility\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s plan for 1,900 acres in Orange and Chatham counties following intense public outcry surrounding the plan. OWASA is developing another draft in response to those comments, but has not yet determined a timetable for that process, according to board Chair Gordon Merklein.<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We still are getting input from resource experts as well,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Pat Davis, OWASA sustainability manager.<br \/>\nThe Carrboro Board of Aldermen, Chapel Hill Town Council and the Orange County Board of Commissioners in December requested that OWASA not act on the forestry-management plan at the time. Merklein said that the board will not make a final decision on the plan until they make additional informational presentations to and consider comments from all three boards.<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We do not have any active forest management work in progress or any scheduled at this time, so there is no immediate need to finalize the plan,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Merklein said in an email. The board and staff had originally targeted March for completion of the draft, but it has been temporarily set aside to allow them to focus on the fiscal year 2012 budget.<br \/>\nThe original draft of the plan broke up the 1,900 acres into 17 properties with different types of forests, including areas around Cane Creek, Mt. Mitchell, Thunder Mountain and other parts of Orange and Chatham counties. David Halley, owner of True North Forest Management Services, the company hired by OWASA to develop and implement the plan, said the plan included protection for riparian buffers and involves hardwood and pine thinnings, cutting of low-quality trees, small-group opening harvests, controlled burnings of understory and reforesting. It also included clear cuts in some areas and herbicide control of hardwood sprouts and weed species.<br \/>\nResidents expressed strong opposition to the plan, citing concerns about the use of herbicides, the effects of clear cuts on wildlife, the disruption caused by forestry operations and the effects of the plan on drinking water.<br \/>\nOWASA\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s primary objective for the plan, according to authority officials, is to protect water quality. Other objectives include establishing and maintaining riparian buffers, enhancing forest conditions, minimizing the impact of forestry-management activities on adjacent properties, restoring and enhancing the overall quality of OWASA-owned woodlands and generating revenue through sustainable timber harvests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Orange Water and Sewer Authority continues to gather public input on a draft forestry-management plan that drew fire from the community after it was released late last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17161"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17165,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17161\/revisions\/17165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}