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

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11 1 Chair Jacobs said this situation was what raised the issue to the County 2 Commissioners. 3 Commissioner Price said there are other locations with regulations based on water 4 availability. 5 Chair Jacobs said this is one of the reasons that public hearings are valuable to the 6 Board, as it allows them to hear public concerns, and it raises issues that might not have been 7 heard otherwise. He said this is not just a scientific investigation; but there was some hope or 8 intention that this would result in an impact on where things are sited. 9 Commissioner Price questioned whether they have a right to regulate this. 10 Commissioner Pelissier said when she was on the Commissioner for the Environment 11 she was told that there was another County that has its zoning areas designated based on re- 12 charge rates. 13 Dave Stancil said Guilford County is the only other county where this level of detail has 14 been done. 15 Chair Jacobs said there was some discussion of this when the rural buffer was formed. 16 He said it would be nice to have a narrative to go with this and to work toward making this a 17 utilitarian effort. 18 Dave Stancil said staff can provide some context and work with Craig Benedict to show 19 how the protocol relates to the questions that have been asked. 20 Tom Davis said data collection is on- going, and it would be good to install an automatic 21 rain gauge to get the precipitation information. He said he has prepared annual reports, and 22 these are available on -line. 23 Tom Davis said there has been a lot of media coverage about hydrilla in the Eno River. 24 He said a task force has been formed to work on this issue, and they are working toward 25 developing a two year management study to address this issue. He anticipates coming to the 26 Board in the future to request funding for this. 27 28 4. Jordan Lake Allocation Application 29 Kevin Lindley said this process has been going on for several years in developing an 30 allocation request. He said there is an existing one million gallon per day allocation with Jordan 31 Lake and the County has been paying a maintenance amount of $2,200 per year for this 32 allocation. He said this is a level two allocation, which means it is not planned to be used in the 33 near future. He reviewed the following background information from the abstract: 34 35 BACKGROUND: Orange County is in the process of applying for an increase in its existing 36 Jordan Lake Allocation. The County currently holds an allocation of 1.0 million gallons per day 37 (MGD) and is applying for an additional 0.5 MGD. This allocation is meant to provide a secure 38 water supply through the year 2045 for portions of the County designated for economic growth. 39 The County does not have a public water utility and there are no plans to develop a water utility 40 service. Rather, the County will rely upon municipalities located adjacent to the economic 41 development regions to provide the finished water. The Jordan Lake Allocation will be used to 42 supplement the water supply of these municipalities, as needed. 43 There are three areas of economic interest (see Attachment A) which staff used to develop 44 estimates of future demand, the Buckhorn- Mebane area (western Orange), Hillsborough area 45 (central Orange) and Eno area (eastern Orange). These areas already have or will have water 46 supplied by the City of Mebane, Town of Hillsborough, and City of Durham, respectively. The 47 water from Jordan Lake can be accessed via Durham's interconnect with the Town of Cary. The 48 water would then be used to augment the Durham supply or sent to Hillsborough via the 49 interconnect shared between Durham and Hillsborough. 50