Agenda - 05-07-2013 - 5a - Laserfiche WebLink

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6 1 Commissioner McKee said that is his concern, as there were a lot of best practices put 2 in place in the late 70's, 80's and 90's that will be lost. He also said that he does not believe 3 that 77% can be reached. 4 Gail Hughes said the phosphorus has been discussed many times in the Watershed 5 Oversight Committees, which is the agricultural oversight committee. She said researchers 6 have said that even if no more fertilizer was ever put on the ground, the phosphorus reduction 7 goal would still not be attainable. 8 Commissioner Gordon said Orange County voluntarily put in lot reduction sizes and did 9 a lot to preserve water quality. 10 Dave Stancil said one of the dilemmas noted in 2010 is that the loading rates are 11 expected to be low, partially because of all the measures already in place. This means, by the 12 letter of the law, it is hard to reduce something that is closer to zero by 40% and 77% than it is 13 when starting from a larger number. He said this is why the opportunity to re-visit the nutrient 14 strategy is important. 15 Commissioner Gordon asked if it was possible to go to a performance base. 16 Dave Stancil said this argument has been made in the past and he expects this to come 17 out again. 18 Chair Jacobs invited Pam Hemminger, Chair and Orange County Representative with 19 the UNRBA to come forward. 20 Chair Jacobs said the letters at the Commissioners' places articulated a lot of Orange 21 County's concerns about water preservation. 22 Commissioner Pelissier said her petition was to send a copy of these letters or a revised 23 letter to DENR as soon as possible. 24 Pam Hemminger said, from a political view, the big picture is that the lake is impaired 25 and the state is expected to do something about it. The state has put the task back on the local 26 jurisdictions, and each jurisdiction will be graded on the quality of the water in the lake as a 27 whole; therefore it won't matter what one county has done or what the others haven't done. 28 She said that this does not mean that efforts shouldn't be made to get credit for things being 29 done, but this is a group project and the grading will be based on what the State finds in the 30 lake. She noted that Orange County has the largest land mass in the watershed area and most 31 of this is forested and agricultural land. 32 She said she does not know how you can reduce forested land's output by 40% and 33 77% of these nutrients other than building a big retaining lake to hold it down. She said there 34 are issues about this modeling program because it does not take into account the amount of 35 nitrogen and the distance put in. She said Department of Water Quality (DWQ) has not been 36 monitoring the lake because of cutbacks. She said she wants to know how much Orange 37 County and its tributary, the Eno River, is contributing nutrients into the lake and as of now, no 38 one knows where the nutrient problem is coming from. She noted that the biggest players are 39 Raleigh and Durham, which have mostly urban interests, and thus have more credits and 40 BMP's established by the state. She said that part of UNRBA's goal is to make sure that a long 41 list of BMP's is available to the county, and to try and help the agricultural community. She said 42 that the recommendation is that the County move forward with four years of monitoring. 43 She said that there are seven separate tributaries coming into the lake and everyone is 44 being graded on this group project. She referenced the question of why the County couldn't get 45 a delay and said that the EPA would be likely to come in if there were a delay. She said things 46 are moving in the right direction. 47 Commissioner McKee asked how long since DWQ stopped monitoring and Pam 48 Hemminger said about two years. 49 Commissioner McKee said he feels that Orange County needs to be doing their own 50 monitoring in order to have scientific data to back up arguments.