The folks who warn about development near drinking water reservoirs sometimes are called alarmists and worry-warts. And it's true that even after several sewage spills in the upper Falls Lake watershed, Raleigh will continue to draw water from the lake and process it for use by hundreds of thousands of people. Drink up!
However, ruination of the lake should not be the standard for determining whether there's been too much pollution, or whether malfunction-prone private sewage treatment systems should continue to operate. The rules need to be stricter, and they need to be more stringently enforced.
Yes, enforcement - now there's a sore nerve. Because it happens that the state agency responsible for oversight of such sewage systems has been put through the budget wringer by a hostile General Assembly. If the Department of Environment and Natural Resources couldn't prevent a string of at least five spills involving Aqua N.C.'s Hawthorne facility going back to 2004, how is it likely to do any better from here on out?
Aqua N.C. operates a sewage system serving five northwest Wake County developments near Falls Lake. The worst of the spills occurred on June 8 when a main pump and its backup equipment went on the fritz, sending 50,000 gallons of raw sewage into a tributary of Upper Barton Creek, which feeds into the lake. An alarm system also failed, and then when the pump was replaced, it broke again, releasing another 10,000 gallons of mess.
DENR has issued a violation notice, specifying corrective steps that need to be taken, and it's considering fines. The company says its equipment has been fixed. But as to the wisdom of allowing a private sewage system in an environmentally sensitive location, there wasn't much. Mayor Charles Meeker of Raleigh is right to question rules under which the system, outside the city limits, was permitted.
State authorities should at least be given the resources to keep up inspections and enforce the rules as best they can. Too bad that with ongoing budget cutbacks, DENR is likely to have an even harder time safeguarding water supplies that should never have been placed at such risk in the first place.
