Agenda - 08-31-1999 - 1 - Laserfiche WebLink

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13 MEMORANDUM TO: County Commissioners John Link, County Manager FROM: Paul Thames, PE, County Engine DATE: August 16, 1999 SUBJECT: Access to Jordan Lake water supplies As per the request of Commissioner Gordon, I have evaluated the responses of Hobbs, Upchurch & Associates, engineering consultants to Chatham County, to BOCC questions relative to Chatham's interests in accessing Jordan Lake water supplies. In general, Hobbs Upchurch reports that: a) Chatham County is currently limited - by both contractual and physical constraints - to approximately 1.0 million gallons per day (mgd) in raw water withdrawals from Jordan Lake through the Cary/Apex intake/ pumping facility; b) state and federal agencies (the NC Division of Water Resources and Corps of Engineers) lack the authority or the will to impose a strategy of regionalization on the use or expansion of the existing Cary/Apex intake/pumping facility or on the development of a western intake/pumping facility; c) the grant-funded interconnection of the City of Durham and Chatham County finished or treated water distribution networks has little or no long term implications on Chatham County's desire or need to access its Jordan Lake allocation as the interconnection provides access to high cost treated water which is more acceptable as a solution to limited duration water shortage problems; d) while some opportunity may exist for Chatham County to develop a small east side intake facility or to acquire additional capacity at the Cary/Apex intake/pumping facility, these opportunities are far from certain and cannot currently be considered as plausible long- or short-term strategies to address Chatham's water supply requirements; and e) Chatham County's preferred strategy to access its allocation is through a NC Division of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) controlled regional facility located on the west side of Jordan Lake. Over the last year, I have had discussions with Pat Davis of TJCOG, NC Division of Water Resources staff and others about this issue. In general, the information I have garnered from these discussions confirms that contained in items (a) through (d) above. Specifically, I have learned that there is no current regulatory authority that provides any state or federal government agency with the~power to force Cary and Apex to allow any other local government to access Jordan Lake through the existing intake/pumping facilities. While I surmise that it would be possible for the state or the Corps of Engineers to apply eminent domain to the existing intake/pumping facilities and then apply some sort of regionalization strategy to its operation, I believe this to be a very unlikely scenario. Furthermore, I cannot see how it would in Cary or Apex's interest to voluntarily allow regional access to its intake/pumping facilities except perhaps as a trade or compensation for larger allocations from Jordan Lake.