City Council - Regular Meeting

Thanks, Mayor, and thank you for allowing me to join you this evening. Uh, as always, uh, as the council governments, we're appreciative of the partnership and support with you and your city manager and your whole team. You've got a great team here. Uh, I don't have to tell you that. Of course, we're grateful, Mr. Jernigan, serving on our board and executive committee as well and his leadership in the region. So, I'm going to talk a little bit about interbased today. This is a really, as you mentioned, mayor, a very important issue for our area. So, I'll talk a little bit about IBTS, the Kataba River Basin, Charlotte Waters request transfer water out of the basin, the alternatives, our coalition, and the legislative study that's underway. For the benefit of the public, I'd point out what an interbasin transfer is. And it's a process where a a local utility withdraws water from a river basin, in this case, the Kataba River basin, and uses it in its system, transfers and discharges that water into another river basin without returning it. If they return the water after it's gone through treatment process, that doesn't count as an IBT. But this case uh they want to transfer it over from the Kataba to the Yadkin Rocky River Basin. So we've done a great deal of uh research on this already and what the academic resources say is that uh this is not a good thing for source basins like the Kataba River Basin. It pro provides uh both negative impacts on the economic and environmental front uh according to the research. Now, Charlotte Water has a 30 3 million gallons per day IBT certificate. Concord Canapapolis has about 20 million of which 10 million comes from the Kataba. And then Morsville has a grandfathered IBT of about 9 a.5 million. And this is what the map looks like in the North Carolina between the river basins and how they're regulated. You'll

note there that the Kataba River Basin is one of the smaller river basins in the the state. Now, the Kat River Basin actually was the first river in the United States completely planned and developed for electricity production and started out in the early 20th century and completed with the creation of Lake Norman in 1963 about 1,800 miles of shore shoreline. Uh it's the most densely populated river basin in North Carolina. Uh it serves about 2 million people through 18 different utilities. Now, the key takeaway here is that the Kataba River Basin is a threatened river. In fact, twice it's been named as the most endangered river in America uh over the last 20 years. And that is mainly due to the un quote unprecedented demand for clean water due to exponential exponential population growth of the Charlotte metro area in North and South Carolina. So, we have that to contend with. And then you throw in conditions like drought conditions, right? What does that mean for us? Well, this chart that I'm showing you, the way to read this chart is this is the US drought monitor of drought conditions in North Carolina dating back to 1998. Uh, the way to read it is the higher the bars are on the chart during that time period, the more the greater percentage of North Carolina was under drought conditions. The darker the colors, the more severe the drought was. So in '98 to 2002, we had a very severe drought. And in ' 0709, we had a very severe drought. Why is that important for our water systems? This is a diagram our engineering team put together. You see the water treatment plant there at the top on the right. They pump water out of our reservoirs during drought conditions. It goes from the blue line there, normal elevation, and it gets closer and closer to that red line. And in that red line represents a uh lake

level or river level where we have to have uh a certain amount of water above our water intakes for our water systems to function properly. Without that we can't function and then we don't have public water supply in that scenario and we want to obviously avoid that. In the 98 to 2002 uh drought, it was uh one of the largest uh documented uh def uh precipitation deficits on record and it's primarily concentrated in our part of the state. That map that show there, the pink, the way to read that, it has to deal with water flows rates. Uh the pink areas are the where the most severe droughts occurred during that time frame. Uh and during that time, Duke Energy said that water intakes in some reservoirs would be exposed if the drought had lasted another year from its four years. Now, the 2007 2009 drought was the most severe drought ever in North Carolina history. And at the same time, we've got documented where the city of Hickory was trying to reduce its water usage by 20%. Uh we saw portions of the basin by drop by over 8 to 10 feet during that time frame as many of you and Miss Sandy certainly was the manager here when we were going through all that and the the the uh precautions we had to take and the measures to employ to protect our water sources. Lake Norman dropped during that time frame to just 3.1 ft above the cooling intake for the nuclear power plant. Meanwhile, Charlotte continued pulling water from the Kataba River and still to this day loses more than 19% of every gallon it takes from the Kataba River. In fact, that's about 23 million 23 million gallons per day that it loses through leaks in its system. Now, Charlotte Water might say the IBT isn't a big deal. This is just part of the process.

uh all that and it's not really significant. What we would say is point out this fact that Charlotte Water published its water conservation goals for extreme droughts of 10 to 20% in water production during those times. They use about 125 million gallons per day. So that equates to about 12 to 25 million gallon conservation target and their potential IBT is 63 million gallons. So what they are proposing is to transfer two and a half to five times more water than they hope to conserve during extreme droughts. So either this is a big deal or their conservation targets are inadequate. One of the one of those two things are occurring. So about the request. So they're currently transferred 33 million gallons per day from a certificate they were issued in 2002. Uh that was supposed to last until 2030. They want to increase it now to 63 million gallons perhaps. And the what if you look at the map on the right side that's Mecca County. They pull the water out of the red dots from the intakes. They treat it at the blue squares there. That's their treatment plants. And then they're transferring across that purple line on the eastern side of Mechenberg County which flows to the Rocky River and Yadkin River basins. That results in if you t count the 30 million gallons per day that they want to increase it and conservatively in other words estimating high on the usage what that would translate to that basically means they want to put another 300,000 people in eastern Meckllinburgg county

that's about that's approaching what our population is for our entire region at 375,000 people in our 4count area so this has lots consequences for our region. It's driven a lot by the growth on the eastern side of Charlotte, as you see there, the population increases in surrounding counties, and it comes at a cost to western North Carolina that were significantly concerned about. Now, previous studies that Morgan belongs to a group called the Kataba Watery Water Management Group, as do the other water producing uh utilities up and down the river chain in North and South Carolina. and it does studies to plan for coordination of utilizing the river system and planning ahead. And the last time it did its water supply plan, which is in the process of updating now, but in 2014, that plan cited uh studies that said that by midentury, the Kataba River basin's reservoirs, the safe yield for those reservoirs would be exhausted. That's 2050 due mostly to continued population economic growth and that would be unsustainable once we reach that point during drought conditions. That safe field becomes very important during drought conditions. Keep in mind also our engineers have looked at the availability of water in the Kataba River and we've mapped all the wa the water flows going back to the 1960s and charted that and it shows that actually it's not le it's not even actually the the flow of the Kataba River appears to be decreasing over the last half century. So we're using more of the water and Charlotte wants to transfer more water out of the Katabra River Basin at the same time while the water flow is decreasing over time. This results in concentrations of pollutants and can drive up the cost of our treatment of all the river of all the

utility systems up and down the chain when the water levels drop and it results in lower flows. Now, at the same time, water rates in Charlotte are more affordable as a percentage of median household income than 90% of other North Carolina utilities. And Charlotte customers pay less the same amount of water. At the same time, they're losing 19% of their water. This chart on the right side shows the black dot is the median affordability for all utilities in North Carolina. The blue dot is the utilities in our region. We do well. We're we're more affordable than the state average. And then you see Charlotte all the way over on the left side, the orange dot and that shows that they they basically are have a very coste effective system and uh very cheap water rates. Now uh normally I'd say great for them. That's good. But they want to use that to at our expense by transferring the water out of it. And so this means that interbasin transfers means cheaper water for Charlotte and more expensive water at the same time for everyone else in the Kataba River Basin. Now the legal impacts of this is the more of these IBTs, especially the large ones that we approve, the more precedent this creates. And so that's why we have to resist this and consider the long-term implications of it all. And so what are the alternatives? Well, Charlotte's already looked at that. They looked at them in 2002 and uh the you know they want to keep doing what they're doing now which is transferring water over to the Yadkin Rocky and Yadkin River basins which results in maximum harm to other communities in the Kataba River basin. Maximum benefit to Charlotte. They have two primary options. There may be others but there's two primary options they can take to avoid this IBT. One is to purchase or take water from the Yadkin River Basin or return the water after they've used it through the wastewater treatment process back to the Kataba

River Basin because again that doesn't count if you return the water. They looked at the cost of that back in 2001 and the cost of one of those options or each of those options was 16 or $82 million each and they didn't choose that. Now, they're saying according to their their estimates, uh, that each option is over $800 million each. You do one of those options to solve the problem. Now, that's a 10 to 50 times increase over that 20-year period. I'm not, we're not saying we accept those estimates at this point, but even if you did, for the purposes of this argument, consider that they have a $651 million annual budget and they plan about $2.3 billion in projects. capital projects over the next five years. According to avoiding an IBT would only require about a 12% increase in their uh Charlotte water capital budget over the next 15 years to avoid that IBT or eliminate it. So at the same time they've not invested in those project water source projects in the 21st century. They've backed recently a sales tax increase for transit infrastructure. They received COVID money of $141 million that they did not use on infrastructure that they could have. And bottom line, Charlotte pays less for water. They received federal funds for water infrastructure. They supported a tax increase for other nonwater infrastructure. They have the means. They just don't have the desire to pursue alternatives for water. Now, in response, local governments in our region uh and Mcdow County have formed a coalition to resist this uh and its negative impacts on our communities. Morgan is part of that coalition and the council of governments is coordinating that effort at the request of our local governments um in those five counties. And our key points would be is our region's future could be limited because of these large IBTS. And we're not

opposed to Charlotte growing. We just don't want it to occur at our expense. and the limited resources of the Kataba River should not be used to subsidize huge growth outside of our river basin. And Charlotte should imple implement policies and infrastructure to avoid the IBT. And lastly, IBTS are going to make our the impacts of our severe droughts worse for our communities. Now last year we were successful in getting House Bill 850 passed which placed a moratorium on large interbasin transfers uh exceeding 15 million gallons um from increasing until March of 27. It also directed that the North Carolina Laboratory at UNC Chapel Hill to study the issue and they're supposed to study the statutory process for approval of surface water transfers such as this and provide recommendations. We've got a series of of recommendations we want them to look at and we're engaged with them on. One would be a shock clock to use a basketball term for large interbasin transfers where once you initiate an IBT, you've got a 15 or a 20year period of time to build the infrastructure necessary to eliminate your IBT or avoid it. And then second is a percentage of their income ought to be placed into a drought mitigation fund for impacted communities to use. If an IBT is approved within that relevant basin, that could be used to lower the intakes for the water system or provide interconnections between utility systems that would allow them to operate in emergency conditions during droughts. So, what we're asking our utility members, coalition members to do is to engage with your state legislators to use key po using these key points. Uh we'll have additional data and uh and points free along the way. Uh, also we're going to send you more information about engaging with UNCC collaboratory to share your local perspective and a letter as they gear up with that study that will be due in early 2027. The next 50 years of growth in our region will be determined by this issue.

So, we want to make sure everyone uses every opportunity to keep this issue at the forefront because it really impacts both our future, our children's future, and our grandchildren's future. especially poignant that we're considering 250 years of history uh for our country. Thinking about the history makes me think about mayor as you mentioned the future and what it lies and what we leave behind for our successors and our and our children in Grand Cherwood. So, I'll be glad to answer any questions to council.

Uh questions for council. I I I do have one, Anthony. Uh most of that water going into Lake Norman for them to draw uh obviously originates pretty much in Lake James through the Kataba River and Limbble River, which means they'll actually have to to get more water down there. They've got to draw Lake James down, Lake Road, Lake Lookout to get it into Lake Norman. Is that correct?

Yes, sir. So the the the river system is managed by Duke Energy. Correct. And so it's very much interrelated. And so to maintain those necessary water levels for public utility intakes, they will move the water up and down the chain accordingly to provide adequate water. And what we saw in those previous droughts is that Lake James is our last line of defense when it comes to drought, severe droughts. It is our fail safe. And so if we pull down too much water, that's going to be that's that's our that's our Alamo in terms of water supply.

Thank you. Other questions? We really encourage the the public to get involved in this. Contacted their legisl legislators in Raleigh because eventually they'll have they'll have the say so on issuing that. No, it's the Environmental Management Commission. Correct. So So we're asking to change the law in North Carolina so that these large IBTs are temporary and not permanent. But the the study will do it. But the environmental management commission is the entity that the general assembly has designated as the one that approves or disapproves these requests. Will your PowerPoint be available on our website? I think that's important. It's very good. Thank you.

Great information. Keep up the the struggle. We're we're for you and we hope we can do any anything we can do. Please let us know. Thanks. Have a good one. Thank you.