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,117. Joyce Brown, Hillsborough taxpayer. 215-A Vance Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27516
<br /> More and more our lives are being directed by bureaucrats, select, elitist
<br /> committees, consultants and competing elected bodies. Public relations and
<br /> money determine our votes rather than information._
<br /> This is not public participation nor a real
<br /> democratic process.
<br /> Last summer I asked you what happens to a river when it is dammed. The
<br /> question was ignored so I went to the American Rivers Conference held in
<br /> Washington after the election to try to get some answers. Among the hundreds
<br /> of river experts there, I did not find one that thought that dams saved rivers,
<br /> rather the opposite.
<br /> Over ten years ago the Rockefeller Brothers Fund Task Force made a study
<br /> which found that dams diminish rivers by enhancing evaporation from impound-
<br /> ments, are unwise, economically inefficient and environmentally destructive
<br /> and permit and stimulate unwise settlement and development. Heedless of
<br /> warnings, Orange County is continuing down this very path, led by the
<br /> engineering/dam building mentality. The taxpayers deserve a second opinion
<br /> from another specialist with a completely different viewpoint.
<br /> What is astounding is that our elected bodies are willing to take away
<br /> the land of long-time taxpayers and people of the communityto, in effect,
<br /> give to developers and corporations from outside, who don't give a hoot about
<br /> Orange County, but only about profits. It does seem that in our democracy,
<br /> just like in Animal Farm, some people are more equal than others.
<br /> I'm also ever amazed by the inconsistency of those who shout loudly
<br /> about their own private property rights, but are quite willing to have other's
<br /> private property rights taken away for, among other things, reservoirs.
<br /> Another astonishing thing is that municipalities and county areas are
<br /> allowed to grow unchecked, allowed to mismanage a precious resource like
<br /> water, and then rather than being penalized, are actually rewarded by being
<br /> allowed to take rural private property for reservoirs. It is too bad that we
<br /> are governed by politics and politicians, not by wisdom and justice.
<br /> The case for mismanagement is strong. According to the Water Resources
<br /> Department in Raleigh, Hillsborough has been losing as much as 40 to 50% of
<br /> its water. During the Scotswood hearings, Hillsborough gave inaccurate water
<br /> estimates. The Eno has been under investigation by the State since 1981 and
<br /> various warnings issued, yet water permits and hook-ups continue, jeopardizing
<br /> water supply for the whole community. The public deserves to know how many
<br /> new water permits have been issued by the major users of the Eno since 1981 ,
<br /> and also why all of you who have so badly abused the Eno for years, should
<br /> . yet once again be handed one more reservoir. The recent hiring of a water
<br /> engineer is no indication that an honest appraisal of past and present
<br /> practices has been made or that the future will be any different.
<br /> As our droughts continue in both severity and length, with predictions of
<br /> more to come, and water an ever-serious problem, we pursue a water policy
<br /> which could cause serious water loss from ever-increasing evaporation from
<br /> impoundments, but the policy increasing our population. At the American Rivers
<br /> Conference, I also learned that only so many dams should be built on any river
<br /> system. To my knowledge, no studies have been done by non-engineers, non-
<br /> pro-dam people, and the State does not qualify as non-pro-dam, to study
<br /> evaporation water loss under various drought conditions and the future
<br /> possibilities for damming the Eno, as well as studies of alternatives.
<br /> Could it be possible that with our rivers, streams and reservoirs filled
<br /> with silt as a result of damming, reservoir levels lowered from evaporation,
<br /> the natural river system destroyed, the river filled to capacity with treated
<br /> sewage and waste-water, and then unable to build, more reservoirs, we could be
<br /> destroying the water supply for future dwellers in Orange County? This is not
<br /> to say that this will happen, but to raise the question. The real question is
<br /> not where to put a reservoir, the real question is do we know what we are doing?
<br /> Nineteen-eighty-eight should have been the gear that we recognized that
<br /> our resources are finite, we have limits, that the earth is not something
<br /> humans can continue to manipulate, manage and abuse at will without serious
<br /> consequence. As we continue our same destructive practices, it is evident that
<br /> the message hasn't yet gotten across.
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