Water demands may stress Cape Fear basin

Fayetteville (NC) Observer

October 2, 2007

By Nomee Landis
Staff writer
Projects are planned that would pull millions more gallons of water from the Cape Fear River in the near future.
Some of it will fill water glasses in towns such as Cary, Dunn, Fayetteville and Sanford.
Some of it will be used at the Smithfield Packing plant in Tar Heel to clean up after the slaughter of thousands of hogs every day.

Some of it will be sprinkled on crops or lawns or poured into swimming pools.
But how could new demands on the Cape Fear’s water stress the river system? How will water be divided equitably among the growing communities from Greensboro to Wilmington? And how much water will people need in 2010, 2030, 2050?

On Monday, a group of about 40 people representing towns and cities, utility companies, state wildlife agencies and industries gathered to hear about the projects that are pending and begin a conversation on long-range water planning for the Cape Fear River basin, the state’s largest. The meeting was at the Public Works Commission building off Old Wilmington Road.

John Morris, the director of the N.C. Division of Water Resources, told the group that the agency is planning for long-range water needs across the state on a basin-by-basin basis. A hydrologic model is being used to help plan in the Cape Fear basin.evaporation, irrigation practices, projected water uses and many other sets of data to predict the effects of various demands on the river.

The division is using the model for long-range planning. It can also be used before significant projects are approved.
For example, the Lower Cape Fear River Water and Sewer Authority is working with Smithfield Packing Co. to build a new water intake and treatment plant on the river at Tar Heel. Construction on that is expected to be completed in 2010, said Don Betz, the authority’s executive director.

That plant will ease the stress being placed on the groundwater aquifers beneath the Bladen County packing company. The new intake will allow Smithfield to use river water instead of withdrawing nearly 2 million gallons a day from the aquifer.

But what impact might that have on the river? That is what state officials want to know, especially as the state considers the cumulative effect of other withdrawals.

Betz told the group that its water customers in Bladen, Columbus, Pender, New Hanover and Brunswick counties will require about 96 million gallons a day from the river by 2030, a 100 percent increase from current needs.

Paul Snead of Progress Energy told the group about a proposed expansion of the company’s Shearon Harris nuclear plant in Wake County that could add two additional reactors at the site. That project would require raising the level of Harris Lake, which is on Buckhorn Creek in the Cape Fear River basin, by 20 feet.

It would also require withdrawing as much as 87 million gallons of water a day from the Cape Fear to supplement the plant’s water needs.

Progress Energy is in the early planning stages of that project. If the new reactors are built, Snead said, it will be at least 2018 before they are operational.

In addition to these new withdrawals, the cities and towns that withdraw river water are growing.

Wilmington’s usage is expected to grow from about 18 million gallons a day now to about 31 million gallons in 2030.

Fayetteville residents are projected to demand about 59 million gallons a day in 2030, up from an average of about 26 million gallons today.

North Carolina is the 10th most populous state in the country, and it has been predicted that in the next 25 years, the population of the state will double.

North Carolina and most of the Southeast have never faced water woes, said Bill Holman, a visiting senior fellow at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions. That is changing, he said.
The state’s Environmental Review Commission has been tasked by the General Assembly to study whether the state should implement a permitting system for water use. Morris said discussions like the one that took place Monday, along with information that is obtained from the use of the model, will help guide that discussion.