Agenda - 11-18-2014 - 6a - Laserfiche WebLink

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7 1 Commissioner Pelissier asked if monitoring done by other organizations is recognized 2 by the state. 3 Tom Davis said the results of monitoring done by other organizations will be included in 4 the modeling that is being done. 5 Pam Hemminger said both of these will be taken into the monitoring project, and the 6 data will be recorded as group data from the sites. 7 Commissioner McKee said he realizes this is a drinking water source that needs to be 8 clean. He asked if he is correct that the best management practices that were put into place in 9 the 70's, 80's and 90's will not count. 10 Pam Hemminger said anything done before 2006 does not count. She said there will be 11 some credit for a few things that have been done, but there are only 5 or 6 things on the list 12 right now for credits. 13 Tom Davis said the other consideration is that the best management practices have 14 lowered the base line loading for the lake. 15 Pam Hemminger said it is frustrating because Orange County went out of their way to 16 put best practices in place. She said most of the land in the watershed in Orange County is 17 forested land, and staff is hopeful that the re- modeling will help them significantly. 18 Commissioner McKee said over the past 40 years the agricultural community has put in 19 thousands of miles of fill borders, waterways, and sediment control structures that should count 20 for something. He said the farmers want to keep the nutrients on their land. 21 Commissioner McKee asked if the first water quality test on these sites is considered a 22 base line. 23 Tom Davis said no. He said many of these locations will be sampled every month to get 24 results during different stages of stream flow, and this will be input into a model. 25 Pam Hemminger said this data will be compared against the 2006 numbers to possibly 26 come back with more reachable numbers. 27 Commissioner McKee said this means 2006 is the baseline. 28 Tom Davis said this is correct, and the best practices previously put in place will lower 29 that baseline. 30 Commissioner McKee said his other concern is that the financial impact of this will not 31 only affect the County; but it will also flow back to farmers and homeowners in the form of 32 additional rules and monitoring. 33 Commissioner Gordon expressed her appreciation for the work that has been done. 34 She asked if there has been any thought about the quality of what is being produced in these 35 areas. She said forested land should be lowest in putting out nutrients. She questioned 36 whether the County would fare better if this was measured on some absolute amount of 37 nutrients coming out. 38 Pam Hemminger said that is one of the reasons that the state decided to do this as a 39 group project. She said every jurisdiction wants to know if they have a problem that needs to 40 be fixed. She is hopeful that Orange County will find out that it is doing pretty well, but the 41 problem is that the lake is still dirty. She said maybe the Lake was just never intended to be a 42 water drinking source at the upper end. She said the lake is clean and drinkable at the lower 43 end where Raleigh pulls the water out. She said most of the land in Orange County is forested, 44 but there are also failing septic systems along the routes and some agriculture. She said 45 everything will be measured by what is in the lake, but the state has agreed to look at the data 46 from the jurisdictions. 47 Chair Jacobs asked if there are discussions about giving local governments more 48 authority to intervene. He asked if there has been discussion about recommendations to 49 change how jurisdictions do business and development in watershed areas.