Planning urged ahead of warming

Ex-interior secretary: N.C. vulnerable

Planning could help North Carolina prepare for rising sea levels that are predicted as part of global climate change, Bruce Babbitt, a former secretary of the interior, said Thursday.

Babbitt, who held the position in the Clinton administration, made his comments to a group meeting in Raleigh on the state's future water supply.

"We all understand it's upon us," Babbitt said of global warming. "The carbon dioxide in the atmosphere already has set in motion rising sea levels over the next several centuries."

He predicted North Carolina would be one of the states most affected by rising sea levels, along with Florida and Louisiana, and could see the disintegration of the Outer Banks within the century.

Higher temperatures are expected to further raise sea levels by expanding ocean water, melting mountain glaciers and causing portions of Greenland and the Antarctic ice sheets to melt, federal scientists say. An international panel has projected that sea levels could rise from about 7 inches to 2 feet in the next century.

Babbitt, who also served as governor of Arizona, said it was "quite impressive" that North Carolina's legislature had established a panel to grapple with the topic of climate change. He said the federal government's decision to move the Cape Hatteras lighthouse back from the advancing ocean was an apt illustration of the decisions states and communities will face as sea levels rise.

"The only question now is, did we move it far enough?" he said.

Other issues facing the state will be the availability of clean water as growth increases. North Carolina is the sixth fastest-growing state in the country, and its population is expected to increase by 50 percent to more than 12 million people by 2030, state demographers say.

Along with more people, water demand is expected to increase by 35 percent to 2.2 billion gallons a day -- even as the open land that helps provide clean water shrinks.

Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue, who spoke at the conference, said the state needs policies to protect water resources, so it can avoid the kind of water wars that have communities trying to take water from other river basins.

"We've traditionally been a water-rich state," Perdue said at the event, which was organized by Duke University's Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions. "I don't think we can take that for granted any longer."

As the population grows, undeveloped land that filters pollutants and helps replenish groundwater is being cleared for new subdivisions and shopping centers. Since the 1960s, 2.1 million acres of forestland has been converted to residential and urban development in North Carolina -- more land than any other state has converted. Another 4 million acres of forestland will be lost in North Carolina in the next four decades, federal foresters project.

The toll that is taking on water quality shows in coastal waters where it's no longer safe to take shellfish and in polluted streams inland that threaten some drinking water supplies.

At least 10 percent of the state's 38,000 miles of streams are polluted. And runoff pollution has contributed to the closing of about a fifth of once-productive coastal estuaries in the past two decades.

Babbitt said preventing water pollution comes down to land-use decisions. He said North Carolina is ahead of many states in its attempts to preserve open land and provide buffers along rivers and streams to reduce the pollution caused by runoff.

"You're not behind in this area," Babbitt told the conference. "You're a little ahead of other states, but that is not saying much."

He said states had to come to grips with protecting important watersheds and move toward statewide land-use plans that guide development and set priorities for managing important watersheds. He noted the state had made some attempts at plans to protect the Neuse River and Tar-Pamlico River basins after it faced environmental crises such as major fish kills.