Sharks and Piranhas

A hypothetical question one might ask:  Is it worse to be attacked by two or three sharks, or would it be worse to be attacked by multiple piranhas taking a lot of little bites?  That is what some of us who live in the Roanoke River Basin are starting to wonder.

For twenty years we fought one of the big sharks, Virginia Beach, that wanted to take the waters of Lake Gaston and Buggs Island lakes for their own use.  We lost that battle, but the Roanoke River Basin Association fought so hard that Charlotte, North Carolina gave up their plans to build a pipeline to just south of Danville rather than find more suitable solutions closer to home.  (To help pay for that costly project, Charlotte was proposing to sell water to the Greensboro area.)

Now come the smaller requests.  Instead of efforts to take large quantities, we now have communities that are in the basin using the waters that are willing to sell part of what is rightfully of use to their citizens to higher bidders.  In each case, rather than reserving the water for businesses, industry, and homeowners that we would like to have join our communities, these communities are willing to sell our future for pieces of gold and silver.

In each of these cases, basin communities would sell what they could to faster growing communities that surround the Raleigh, North Carolina area.  In some cases even crossing to other water basins to supply the growth of those suburbs.

The latest is the Kerr Lake Regional Water System; the water system that currently serves parts of Henderson, Warren and Vance Counties.  Their current effort is to expand their water withdrawal serving their communities but to also pipe processed water to western Franklin County, an area that is now a suburb of Raleigh.  They are proposing to double the capacity of their water treatment plant but are holding their request of water transfer to slightly below the level that would trigger the government to do a full Environmental Impact Study.  Clearly their intent is to attack us with smaller bites more frequently in hopes that we, who want to protect and preserve the waters of the basin, will not fight them.

If you are one of those who love our lakes and rivers, I ask you to take a few minutes to send a letter to the address below.  It does not need to be long but rather simply asking the folks in Raleigh to follow their own law and do a complete Environmental Impact Study.  What they are proposing is an Environmental Impact Statement.  A statement has limited serious research of how the proposed transfer will affect the waters of our region.  Send your letter to the address below within the next two weeks:

Tom Fransen, Section Chief

DENR-Division of Water Resources – Planning Branch

1611 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC  27699-1611

Protecting our water resources for our use from uranium and coal ash will be marginalized if we each do not take every step that we can as individuals. No matter where you live in the basin, write asking for the study and ask your friends to do the same.

We love to hear from you!  You can contact us at Sen.Ruff@verizon.net, 434-374-5129, or Post Office Box 332, Clarksville, VA  23927.