Raleigh mayor pledges water savings

Some fear drought lessons will be lost

RALEIGH -- Even as they repealed the most severe water-use restrictions on residents and businesses, Raleigh officials said Monday that that water conservation will no longer be merely an occasional goal.

"We need to keep treating water as an important resource," Mayor Charles Meeker said, announcing an immediate return to Stage 1 water restrictions, which will limit many water uses to once a week. "We need to be conserving water all the time and not just during a drought."

But the city's decision also raised concerns that Raleigh is quickly forgetting the lessons of a deep drought that hasn't ended, even though recent heavy rains have filled Falls Lake.

"Area reservoirs are coming back toward full, so I assume interest in long-term conservation will evaporate like in previous times," said John Hilpert, 62, coordinator of the Cedar Cross Retreat Center near Louisburg. "Then, in a few years when the next crisis hits, we blame our leaders."

Meeker said if it were up to him, there would be be no returning to the city's old ways. "We're not going back to all-day, any-day watering," he said.

The decision to keep some restrictions was supported by meteorologists and the manager of Falls Lake, who say it's too early to completely relax restrictions.

Groundwater and streamflow levels still haven't recovered from the withering dryness, and even with normal rain, it would take months to end the drought.

"We've got a little wiggle room now, but we're not out of the woods," said Terry Brown, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' senior water control manager in charge of Falls Lake. "We've got a big, long summer ahead of us. We have to be very careful about what we're doing, and keep a conservation mind-set."

Helen Yoest, the owner of Raleigh's GardensGardens, said she's concerned that for city leaders, "rain causes memory loss."

Yoest said Raleigh should have dropped back only to its Stage 1.5 restrictions, which would have continued the ban on watering lawns and gardens.

"We don't need to water our grass," she said. "We've always watered too much anyway. Look outside: everything's green."

Raleigh water customers are likely to stay under Stage 1 restrictions at least until the city reviews the ordinances it has on the books. Those ordinances have been widely criticized by businesses and residents for being unfair and arbitrary.

Sharing the pain

City Council member Mary-Ann Baldwin said that in addition to determining whether the rules are fair, the city needs to establish triggers, such as lake levels, for when the stages of conservation go into effect.

"Going through this process showed that there's inequity in the system," Baldwin said.

The city's car wash certification program, for example, allows some car washes to remain open even if they recycle or reclaim no water. Meanwhile, other businesses that rely on city water do not have similar city-sponsored certification programs.

Daniel Currin, a vice president with the N.C. Green Industry Council, said he'd like to see Raleigh toughen its car wash certification program and expand it to other businesses, such as landscapers and people who install irrigation systems. Businesses that make serious attempts to conserve water throughout the year should be rewarded, he said.

"From our standpoint, things have completely changed," Currin said. "The business we're in is not the same business we were in a year ago. We're as much in the water-conservation business as the landscape business."

Meeker said the city will continue to focus on permanent conservation, including encouraging homeowners, businesses and others to install low-flow devices and adopting tiered water rates early next year. Tiered water rates charge customers higher rates the more water they use.

At least one water expert said Raleigh is making a wise move.

"I certainly hope Raleigh and Durham and other communities will figure out what their year-around program is before they completely go out of their conservation program," said Bill Holman, a senior fellow at Duke University's Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions. "Once you go out, it's hard to get back in."

Raleigh officials are also asking the Corps of Engineers to raise the normal operating level of Falls Lake by 2 feet to increase its storage capacity. But such a change would require a federal-state study of Falls Lake, which has not been started and would probably would take years to complete.

Meeker said Monday he would ask the corps to make the change without completing the study, something Brown said he won't do.

Brown said jacking up the reservoir's full pool level would jeopardize public recreational facilities, kill shoreline trees and cut into the lake's flood storage, which helps protect Smithfield, Goldsboro and Kinston downstream.

"That could create quite a problem," Brown said. "Given the reduced flood capacity, coupled with the lake being 1.4 feet higher than intended, my flexibility is pretty tight."