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conditions be tied to the allocation of the water off of Jordan Lake? Should that be added as a condition on <br />the allocation? What we hear here is a lot of very active local governments dealing with their water problems. <br />We hear Durham and Raleigh are going to look at Kerr Lake. I understand that's a tough subject to discuss <br />publicly. But in that process, are all of our interests being represented? If not all of our interests, then haw <br />da we shape the process to make sure that all of our interests are represented in that? Having been a <br />veteran of the Virginia Beach wars, you see what happens when one local government takes the lead and <br />others are playing games in the process about withholding supplies. If we're going that direction, and it <br />clearly is not too early to get started on that, I think there's a question about how do we promote the reuse of <br />these resources. Those are some of the questions I would throw out for discussion. And you may have other <br />questions that you want to raise as well. <br />Let's come back to the question of preparedness. Haw prepared are we? <br />Ed Kerwin: Not very prepared, sir. The idea of an emergency certainly, I think is really different in <br />people's minds than it was prior to September 11t", and there really isn't anything that is unimaginable <br />anymore with respect to our services. So, from that paint of view we're not as prepared as we need to be. <br />We have in our capital project things to improve the capacity of the interconnections with the City of Durham, <br />also with Chatham and Hillsborough. But, if we lost Cane Creek, I don't have a good plan that is validated by <br />our neighbors that they'll be there to meet the needs. And certainly the spirit of goad neighbors, I knave that if <br />somebody can help, they will. But we just don't have things thought through and in place where we know <br />exactly how we would respond. And spending more time talking about that would be very useful. I know that <br />was a subject on May 2"d quite a bit regarding one facility. But there are many situations like that that we <br />certainly could be better prepared than we are. <br />Dr. Moreau: And if I ask you far a protection plan, do you have a document you can hand me? <br />Ed Kerwin: We have emergency management plans, we have drills, particularly with the towns and <br />the counties. I feel like we're reasonable well prepared. But again, for what? I feel like we're reasonable <br />well prepared for a hurricane better than we were for Hurricane Fran. Are we prepared if we lose 75°~ of our <br />water supply? No. I feel like we've done a lot and we've improved a lot at a staff level with all of our <br />neighboring utilities. We interact fairly regularly and talk about these things. But, have we talked about it <br />enough? No. Is there more we should do? Absolutely. <br />Dr. Moreau: I'm not trying to suggest that we've been derelict in that because I'm aware it's been a <br />topic far a long time. I still worry about what happens if we had a major failure. What would we do? <br />Terry Roland: I can speak about that a little bit from Durham's perspective. And it's the same <br />problem OWASA has, I think, but just a little bit bigger. And that is that none of our interconnections are big <br />enough to meet the total need. Our interconnection with OWASA is good for about 3-3.5 million gallons a <br />day. Our interconnection with Cary is goad far about five. Our interconnection with Chatham is probably <br />good far two ar three, but their treatment capacity is three, and they're using one and a half of that or so. <br />Reality can't count much more on a million and a half there presently. <br />Dr. Moreau: I remember the days when the DurhamlOWASA interconnection was made and it was <br />done in a really expedited fashion. <br />Terry Roland: Certainly the line connections can be expanded pretty quickly. The problem is in the <br />treatment and supply side. We're working on an agreement and a plan far interconnecting with Raleigh that <br />would also give us some additional supply capability, but in all of the cases I think we're limited to whatever <br />our neighbors can afford to give up in terms of supply. You can build a waterline pretty quick, but you can't <br />build additional treatment capacity quickly, and you can't build additional raw water supply quickly. So that <br />becomes the limiting element. Right now the limiting element is our interconnection. But if we build bigger <br />interconnections; if we lost our whole system, we're running about 30 million gallons a day, and even if we <br />had a big line interconnection with Raleigh, I doubt seriously they have that much excess capacity that they <br />could meet that need. We would have to go to rationing which means 30 gallons a person per day which <br />would be about six million gallons a day. So we could take our demand down from 30 million to six if we had <br />to. It wouldn't be fun and it wouldn't be pretty, but we could da it. Then you could do some of the things with <br />the interconnections we have. It would take a disaster of great magnitude to get to that. <br />Ms. Speaker: I had a meeting about a month ago with the folks at Duke University, and their concern <br />from their board was what kind of redundancy did we have in case there was this catastrophe. One of the <br />advantages we have is that we do have two reservoirs, two water plants. So we have a redundancy that for <br />us is helpful. Again, are we prepared for the ultimate? Well, who is at this point? But we're probably in a <br />little better shape than a lot of utilities because of the redundancy that we have. Yes, we really need that <br />