Falls Lake cleanup plan still has unknowns

DURHAM -- Toughened development rules approved by the Durham County commissioners Monday are Durham's first step toward cleaning up Raleigh's drinking water.

All the jurisdictions in Falls Lake's watershed have many more steps to go. And plenty of questions -- dealing with science, engineering and fairness -- must be resolved.

"There are a lot of inconsistencies and things that aren't known in this whole process," said Lindsay Mize, director of the South Granville Water and Sewer Authority in Butner.

Durham's new rules require larger and more efficient sediment traps and quicker stabilization for cleared ground to reduce and slow stormwater runoff into Falls' tributaries. They bring Durham into compliance with a Falls-protection law for the entire watershed, which the General Assembly approved last summer as part of a measure to speed up a more comprehensive program for bringing the reservoir up to federal water-quality standards.

The law, sponsored by Wake County state Sen. Josh Stein, imposes a Jan. 15, 2011, deadline for the state Division of Water Quality to devise the program and submit it for the Environmental Management Commission's approval. The Division of Water Quality had wanted an additional 18 months.

"A quick process," said Creedmoor Mayor Darryl Moss. "A lot of the data gathering is going to have to be expedited, which is some concern."

Moss and Mize are part of a "stakeholders" group that also includes planners, engineers, scientists, conservationists, developers and elected officials from Granville, Durham, Wake,Orange and Person counties and the other affected jurisdictions. The Division of Water Quality convened the group to try and come up with effective rules that all can live with.

The Falls Lake process is similar to the one that led to a Jordan Lake cleanup program the legislature approved this year. But testing shows that reaching the same federal water-quality standard in Falls Lake is going to be much harder and potentially far more expensive.

How much is "the billion-dollar question," said John Cox, a Durham stormwater engineer who estimated the Jordan Lake program would cost taxpayers in that watershed more than $2 billion over a 20- to 30-year period.

Another question is: Who pays?

Raleigh and Wake County have taken a position that cleanup costs should be borne by jurisdictions responsible for pollution - not too subtly pointing a finger at Durham and Granville counties and other jurisdictions, which get their drinking water elsewhere but whose streams feed the more-polluted upper section of the lake.

"That's a real concern for us," Moss said. For sewage treatment, Creedmoor is already "spending roughly $1 million a year to protect Raleigh's drinking water and we draw not one drop of water from Falls Lake."

John Huisman, project manager with the Department of Water Quality, said avoiding a jurisdictional confrontation is one of the stakeholder process's goals.

"Only time will tell how things progress," he said. "There's been a lot of open communication."

Heavier pollution in the upper lake could be due to the shallow depth rather than the quantity of pollutants, Moss and Cox and others have pointed out. Also, the water samples being used for the rule-making came from only 10points around the lake and were taken in a single year - 2006, in which measurements could have been thrown off by lingering effects of the 2005 drought.

"From an engineering perspective, there's never enough data," said Syd Miller, water resource manager at the Triangle J Council of Governments.

Evidence reported to the stakeholders shows that a large percentage of Falls' pollutants - nitrogen and phosphorus - comes from forests and the atmosphere, sources that are difficult if not impossible to control. That could mean achieving the mandated quality standards is, for all practical purposes, impossible.

"Generally, there is an engineering solution for just about anything," Miller said. "It's theoretically possible to treat every drop of water that falls on the ground. The better questions is: How do you balance the competing needs?"

And in Falls Lake's case, can state officials and stakeholders put together a plan that meets the deadline and actually protects the lake?

"That," Miller said, "is a good question."

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