Orange County NC Website
not taking water from the Ena right now because of the low flaw and the time of the year. But we have taken <br />some water from there this year. We have that potential. As a part of the permitting, we would probably get <br />a permit to withdraw greater volumes from the Eno during high flow periods. We could fill that reservoir from <br />Lake Mickey, Little River, or from the Eno. Our planning is lacking at that potential from all three. Like this <br />year, Lake Mickey filled up and overflowed. Little River is still not full. So, in that case, we could have been <br />pumping same water from the Flat River into Teer Quarry even though there might not have been any flow in <br />the Eno River, because there was water still available in the Flat River. Normally, though we would expect to <br />fill that quarry during high flows, whether they be in the Flat, Little, ar Eno Rivers; and then pump it down in <br />low flow periods. <br />Ed Kerwin: When do you invoke mandatory conservation? At what supply inventory do you start <br />requiring restrictions in irrigation and that type of thing? <br />Terry Roland: We don't have a magic level because it is very dependent an the time of year <br />when that occurs. We've never gone to mandatary conservation but one time in my 28 years with the city <br />and that was before Little River Lake was completed. We have gone to stage II, or voluntary conservation, <br />several times in the past, but we've gone to mandatory only once. Mainly because, when we go to <br />mandatory, we start impacting people's lives pretty dramatically and their ability to make a living, so we don't <br />da that unless it's really pretty serious. But we have a model that the University of North Carolina at Chapel <br />Hill helped us prepare that we use to evaluate our water supply and what the probabilities are of sustaining <br />the current demand and we track that constantly. And we use that really as our tool to determine when we <br />need to go to higher levels of conservation. It depends on where we are in lake levels and what time of year. <br />The earlier in the year that we're at lower levels, then the sooner we would have to enact more stringent <br />conservation. The current levels that we're at right now, the model is predicting average daily demands, <br />we're still at 10Q°lo meeting our demand. Now, you have to understand, and sometimes people forget this <br />when they see the levels at Lake Mickey and Little River go dawn, the reason we have those lakes is to draw <br />them down for water supply. If we never drew them dawn, we wouldn't need them. It's normal for those <br />levels to go down and we really have to make that decision on a week to week basis. We did get approval <br />from the City Council this year, a change in our ordinance, which would allow the City Manager to make that <br />call so we could enact more stringent stages of conservation a little more quickly. And that's not just for a <br />drought situation, but same other emergency - either a disaster or whatever. We could get in a situation <br />where we would need to go to stringent levels of conservation up to and including the complete shut down of <br />some customers and we hope we never have to do that. We will do what we have to do to keep everybody <br />with water. <br />Chair Jacobs: We know that the Durham staff is working with the Orange County staff about <br />possible changes in the urban growth boundary. Could you just explain a little bit about - we knave it camel <br />into Orange County -but what's involved and how do you structure water rates for customers who are <br />outside your boundaries? <br />Terry Roland: We only have two classes of customers, and that is inside and outside the city. <br />We also have our bulk customers. Inside and outside the city, if they are Durham City customers, the outside <br />customers pay double the inside rates. The urban growth boundary was started in about 1974 by the city as <br />away to manage growth, and I think it's served the city well. The boundary has been amended several times <br />aver those years as the city grew and grew out to the boundary that existed. It's always been established <br />sort of in terms of how those areas could best be served with water and sewer. That's been used to help <br />determine where the boundary was. But it was also a growth management tool so that we didn't have a lot of <br />leapfrog type of development. And so it's served the city well in that regard. Inside the urban growth <br />boundary, but outside the city, water lines can be extended, but there is no city participation in that. Inside <br />the city water line extensions, the city may participate in that if they choose to. It sort of depends on the <br />project and what the circumstances are. But outside the urban growth boundary, if a developer wants to <br />extend the water system within the urban growth boundary, then that extension is all at their cost. We do <br />allow extensions outside the urban growth boundary for public health reasons. Those have to be certified by <br />the County Health Department as a certifiable public health problem. We also allow extensions outside the <br />urban growth boundary to serve schools and industries, but that takes special action of the City Council to <br />allow far extension outside the urban growth boundary. And then, of course, we do allow extensions outside <br />the urban growth boundary for interconnections with other utilities basically allowing those customers to take <br />advantage of financing the capital facilities charges that we would charge a normal customer through their <br />rate. The rate that they would pay, with the exception of OWASA, who has an agreement that predates these <br />agreements that we have now. That's a multiplier, depending on whether it's a committed contract or an <br />