Raleigh authorities, unhappy with draft Falls Lake cleanup rules, want faster action than the state is prescribing to head off an expensive upgrade for the city's water-treatment plant.
The same authorities also point toward Durham as a primary polluter.
In a Dec. 28 memo to the Raleigh City Council, assistant utilities director Kenneth Waldroup and other city administrators object to the 10-year and 25-year time frames for the proposed two-phase program. Citing data to show the lake's water quality steadily worsening, the memo suggests cutting those deadlines to five and 10 years.
The memo also blames declining water quality on "increased urbanization of the upper watershed." The upper watershed is primarily in Durham County.
Falls Lake provides drinking water for about 450,000 Wake County residents. The entire lake is classed as "impaired," and state law requires a plan to clean and protect it. The state Division of Water Quality is to present draft regulations for public comment Jan. 14.
Falls' cleanup has become a point of contention between Raleigh and Durham. Raleigh and Wake County say the costs should be borne mostly by jurisdictions producing the most pollution. Durham says the lake's users should share the burden and that it has been unfairly portrayed as the party most responsible for excess levels of nitrogen and phosphorus impairing water quality.
The memo uses Durham's Ellerbe Creek as an example of a polluting stream feeding the upper watershed.
It includes comments by N.C. State University aquatic ecologist JoAnn Burkholder rebutting several "assertions" by the Durham stormwater division that question the data on which the rules are based.
Durham water officials have not estimated the cleanup's potential cost. Cleanup measures for Jordan Lake, which is similarly impaired though not to the extent of Falls, have been estimated to cost city taxpayers more than $500 million over 20 to 30 years.
Raleigh, according to the memo, could face a bill of more than $450 million to improve pollution-handling capacity at its E.M. Johnson water-treatment plant if Falls' condition is not improved dramatically and fast.
Waldroup and his colleagues also objected that the proposed rules do not deal with fertilizer management or specify requirements for state and federally owned land.
