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

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18 Pat Davis: There are a couple of things that are ongoing. One is there is Smart Growth Committee that is looking at land use planning, growth management strategies, and how we grow and develop in order to achieve more of our goals and objectives and do that in a sustainable way. The Smart Growth Committee is an important point. Anyone who is interested in that committee certainly can come let me know and I'll be sure that you get added to that distribution list if you're not already. Another committee is the Water Resources Advisory Committee. Those committees are open to suggestions or requests from member governments around the region as to potential topics to discuss and consider. There's a long list of actual projects that have been undertaken through those community efforts. As information, there will be a joint meeting of the Smart Growth Committee and the Water Resources Advisory Committee on May 23`d at the Raleigh Durham Airport. This will be the first joint meeting of those two committees. Then there's also the board of directors, an executive committee in which the jurisdictions that are members of Triangle J appoint delegates to use that forum. Barry Katz: You showed a slide of the streams in the Triangle J area. Just looking at that slide, it seems to me that the greatest area of impaired streams was in the Raleigh area right in Wake County, which also has the highest level of growth and development. Is it inevitable that poor water quality in streams goes along with higher densities or not? Pat Davis: I would say under traditional land use site development practices, and then also what we do once we develop land that there is that inevitability. At the same time, I'm optimistic that we can rethink the approach to help us avoid that same result. Barry Katz: There is an element of residences that you can perhaps work with. All those people that are residents in those areas are also consumers and travelers, etc. Can you actually manage the impact of people when you also consider the fact that they must buy food, they must drive, you know, the amount of impervious surface simply by having a high concentration of people seems to be almost impossible to overcome. Pat Davis: There is definitely a relation between the amount of impervious surface and population. 6. DISCUSSION —Dr. David Moreau Chair Jacobs_We've heard several references to Dr. Moreau. Now we actually get a chance to meet him. You can see that not only is he one of the foremost experts on water matters in the State, but Dr. Moreau is also Chair of the Environmental Management Commission. Dr. David Moreau: Well, I was asked to come and lead a moderated discussion of issues. I think many of those issues have been laid out. Dave Stancil has listed some questions that are on your program, and they're basically questions that have been raised here and are directly to the point. The question is, Are existing interlocal agreements sufficient to regionally protect scarce water resources? The follow up to that is, are we prepared for drought conditions? If not, what else should we do? I think you could add to that list, Are we prepared to deal with a major accident involving one of our systems? The scenario I worked with a student on was, What happens if a truck barreling down Interstate 85 careens off the Neuse River bridge, is carrying hazardous material, and ends up in the Raleigh water supply? We talk about terrorist actions, we talk about nuclear accidents. We had an incident here about 15 years ago on one December night about five days before Christmas. It was raining heavily and there was a cattle farm over near Wake Forest. It became evident to the farmer that the water was going to run over the dyke in his pond, in his manure holding pond. He went out to try to relieve it by twisting the valve and the valve stem broke. Eventually, the dyke failed and wiped out 20 miles of the Neuse River, right below the Neuse River dam. If that facility had been three miles west of there, it would have come right down on top of the Raleigh water intake. We can imagine these terrorist actions and other things, but there are a lot of things. I think when we started on the Cane Creek reservoir, we identified 18 dairies within that watershed. And there were some that had major concerns. The question we ask is this discussion about the interconnections. But if I go to you and ask you, 'What are you going to do in the case of this scenario or that scenario?" Are we prepared sufficiently to respond to that? What would we do? Beyond that is, if we're not prepared, then what should we do to get prepared? Because with the increasing development around here, the scenario we play out is not so rare, in fact there was a truck that ran off the Neuse River bridge. Fortunately it was carrying television sets, it was not carrying hazardous material. When they were paving over there on this side of the bridge and where they had the van where the Butner kids were killed, there was a whole string of accidents that occurred right there. Situations that were created with no design, but just created the circumstance where that could happen.