Agenda - 10-30-2002 - 1 (AOG) - Laserfiche WebLink

Browse Search

17 gallons per day. The manmade water supply reservoirs within our region had a combined safe yield of 167 million gallons per day. Now, keep in mind that in addition to the manmade reservoirs, our region uses a number of river withdrawals. Based on local water supply plans, the region's water supply utilities are projecting that the region's average daily water demand in the year 2020 will be around 220 million gallons per day. We already know that another 62 million gallons per day exists in Jordan Lake, but it's not allocated to anybody in the region yet. If you look at the year 2020 projections and the additional supply alternatives, the expansion projects that are on the books, we could see existing and planned reservoir yields of 300 million gallons per day. In Orange County, on average, we get over 6,000 gallons per day through precipitation. If you look at year 2020 projected populations that number drops to below 5,000 gallons per day. We're relatively water rich. He was showing a map at this point. This just shows the portion and amount of the demand by system within the region and then the components of demand by system. What this points out is the region has a.number of independent service providers. These arrows show interconnections as of 1997 and how much water was being transferred as of 1997. Our challenge is how do we get it around where it's needed when it's needed in the amount it's needed and at an affordable cost. At the same time, the challenge is how to protect those resources in the long-term in the face of additional growth and development and associated impacts. This map just shows simply a skeleton network of the interconnections that exist in our region,from the water supply system standpoint. Unfortunately, the capacity of those system interconnections isn't all that great. In terms of long-term thinking, we need to look at the capacity of our interconnections and how the region is able to respond to different emergency situations. The issue under consideration now, spearheaded by Orange County and several other jurisdictions is Shearon Harris. Are we prepared in the event of some unforeseen very low risk but high impact situation that could occur? We are also working together in the area of watershed protection on a number of initiatives. And Orange County and the jurisdictions of Orange County have been at the forefront in some of that thinking, and Durham has as well. There have been good partnerships in the region. Are we at the level where we know we're going to have long-term protection of all of our resources? No. We certainly have room for improvement, but we're headed in the right direction, and believe me, we're quite a ways ahead of a lot of other places around the country, so we're fortunate. Essentially what this graphic shows is all the different water quality planning efforts and initiatives— watershed protection plans that are underway from water quality modeling efforts that are underway. There's a lot going on, a lot of positive and proactive thinking and involving a lot of interiocal collaboration and a lot of local funding as well. I would add that some of these projects aren't just involving Region J's partners. Some of these partnerships span across regions. We know that has to be the case if we're going to achieve protection in the long term. Some things to consider are that our demands are increasing, many of our facilities are getting older, our costs are increasing, and our conflicts are increasing. Case in point; stone quarry reservoir. Prior case in point in Orange County- Cane Creek Reservoir. Our projects take much longer than they used to. Our expectations of our customers are increasing, and we also need to be more proactive. Maybe we need to get more proactive instead of spending millions of dollars on restoration and getting out there and focusing on protection. And as part of our local land use planning processes, our site design processes, we are actually doing things that are more sustainable for the long term and more proactive. So in order to do that, we need to have more comprehensive assessment tools. There are a number of cooperative approaches within the region —system interconnection. Some of you may have been following what's going on with Raleigh in terms of actually merging their operations with Garner and other jurisdictions. They're moving ahead with what you might consider more centralized larger system approaches. That may not be feasible here. It's been looked at in previous studies. Orange County's Water Resource Task Force report of 1981, Long Range Water Management Task Force report of 1987, Orange County Water Supply study in 1987. Orange County has been there in looking at these things. Hopefully through discussions like this, we can consider different ways of doing things so that, not only do we meet the needs of our utility customers, but we also protect the natural environment, and we make better decisions from a local land use planning and growth management standpoint so that we truly can achieve sustainable resources management and also hopefully reduce costs to customers and increase reliability. Bill Strom: Pat, in your role with Triangle J, is there a formal committee or role that you play there that could start to bring this group together on a regular basis?