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

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20 us is helpful. Again, are we prepared for the ultimate? Well, who is at this point? But we're probably in a little better shape than a lot of utilities because of the redundancy that we have. Yes, we really need that interconnection with Raleigh because they're the only ones with the capacity to help us out. Certainly we can improve our interconnections with everybody else as well. Terry Roland: Raleigh is interested in the interconnection as we are because they have the same problem and worse in that they only have one water plant. If they lose their one water plant, they would be in a lot worse shape than we would be. They are very interested in the interconnection as well. Dr. Moreau: They abandoned that Johnson plant, didn't they? Terry Roland: Their long-range plan is to build a new facility, I think, to develop those supplies that they used to rely on, they're going to redevelop those and redevelop another plant. So they will get some redundancy in the not too distant future as I understand it. But they don't have it right now. We actually got to test our redundancy during Hurricane Fran. I'll just mention that. Duke Power provides our power service, and 90% of the Duke Power grid system went down. We lost a lot of things, and we lost one of our water plants, but our largest plant stayed online by the sake of one power line between it and the main source of power. But we did stay up and running for that whole time, we never lost our water system during Hurricane Fran. We lost one waste treatment plant for about eight hours, though. North Durham went completely under water, well it took us eight hours to get it back online. Dr. Moreau: Let me ask if there are questions that you want to pursue. There were questions that were raised. Bill Strom: We are talking about hundreds of millions, maybe billions of dollars to build in redundancy, capacity, etc. One tool that we have that legislative and not necessarily taking that type of investment is land use planning. The notion of are we doing enough to protect Jordan Lake and our other upland watersheds is something that some of us as elected officials could deal with, but I'm sure curious to hear folks talk about that issue some more and address the nitrification concerns that Pat Davis talked about and see how we can certainly address those issues on a regional basis. Chapel Hill is doing some things, Orange County is doing some things, but it would be very interesting to see what folk's attitude is towards making a bigger investment through land use planning and protecting those watersheds. . Dr. Moreau: I think we've taken some very good steps on the upland reservoirs and protecting those areas, but what we see now is Cary and Apex moving westward and expanding into that direct drainage area into Jordan Lake. And with the Durham expansion in that direction, with South Pointe and all the other things that are going along with South Pointe that are going to follow, that whole area is really experiencing a very high level of development. I'm not sure that we have taken adequate steps to protect that area. We did minimally on the eastside of the lake with the conditions attached to the inter basin transfer. I don't think any conditions have been attached to any allocations, though. How would you react to that? Terry Roland: I'd like to speak to that because I guess I've been here too long. Because Jordan Lake and Falls Lake, watershed protection goes back to 1983 when those lakes were first being planned to be impounded. Pat Davis has been around that long and can talk about it. Triangle J played an important role in that process and we have, I think in North Carolina, as a result of that effort at Triangle J and the efforts of the region for watershed protection, one of the best watershed protection rules in North Carolina that covers the whole state now that exists in the whole country. We've been a leader in that in the whole country. As far as the City of Durham, we attempted to do a lot in that effort to protect not only Falls and Jordan Lake, but we kept the emphasis up for protecting our own upland supplies and the concern started out more with Falls and Jordan and we wanted to make sure that our upland supplies were protected and couldn't expect those other folks to protect our lakes if we weren't willing to protect theirs. So that's always the way we've looked at it. I think in the case of the City and County of Durham we probably provide more levels of protection for Falls and Jordan Lake than most of our neighbors with the exception of maybe Orange County. I think they've done just about as much or maybe more than we have. But I think Durham has really done a lot in that regard. Our buffer areas are as big or bigger than anybody's as far as what we call our protected area for Falls and Jordan Lake. They are bigger than the state minimum requirements. We have urban growth boundary limitations and lot size limitations that provide protection of that. In the long range perspective, we were always looking at Jordan Lake especially as a potential future water supply. So we have a keen interest in making sure that that's protected. As a result of some of that, we also, in expanding our two plants, we have two wastewater treatment plants, water reclamation facilities we call them; that we expanded in the 90's, and both of those were expanded with treatment capabilities well beyond permitted requirements at the time they were built. They're both capable of doing total nutrient removal, nitrogen and