Battle Over Catawba is Part of a Steady Stream: The Southeast’s Water Wars Are Myriad and Complex, and Results Have Been Slow to Arrive
By Bruce Henderson, The Charlotte Observer, N.C.
Jun. 24–South Carolina’s legal salvo over the Catawba River, fired at its northern neighbor this month, was the latest sign of strain in a Southeast that has always seemed awash in water.
Surging growth in water-poor places and first-come, first-serve policies have invited conflict. Drought heightens tensions — this year the region endured a record dry spring.
Based on recent history, neither courts nor attempts at collaboration offer quick solutions.
South Carolina worries that, after the Charlotte region is done with the it, too little of the Catawba will flow over the border to fill water tanks and pipelines, and lubricate industrial development and growth.
The 10 million gallons a day that the N.C. Environmental Management Commission has granted to Concord and Kannapolis represents only 0.4 percent of the Catawba’s average daily flow. But S.C. Attorney General Henry McMaster expects a cascade of requests like Concord’s and Kannapolis’ and asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene.
The suit objects to an N.C. law that allows water to be transferred from one river basin into another. If South Carolina isn’t getting its share of the Catawba, McMaster said, the court could reverse transfers going back “to the beginning of time.”
North Carolina has first-hand experience in the perils of such challenges. For 14 years the state fought off Virginia Beach’s plan to pipe water from Lake Gaston on the N.C.-Virginia border — only to lose in the end.
The Carolinas were able to hammer out an agreement over use of the Yadkin-Pee Dee River, however, during the depths of the 1998-2002 drought. Court battles that began in 1990 still haven’t settled conflicts among Georgia, Alabama and Florida over rights to the Chattahoochee River. They’re still in the federal courts.
South Carolina and Georgia are trying to avoid courtrooms over an overused aquifer they share. S.C. officials blame Savannah, which gets most of the water, for saltwater that’s creeping into wells on Hilton Head Island as the fresh water recedes.
Federal scientists recommended that pumping be reduced by 85 percent. But after a year of negotiation, Georgia said more study is needed.
“This is when I want to run screaming into the street,” said Robert Waldrep, a former state senator from Anderson who leads the S.C. negotiators. “Georgia has always been friendly when we meet together. It’s just that, in my mind, they’ve talked so much more than they’re willing to do.”
Money, as is often the case, is at the core of the conflict. It would cost Savannah three times more to use muddy river water for drinking purposes than it does to use the clean groundwater from the Floridan Aquifer.
“As long as (Savannah) can put that off, they’re going to be happy,” said Dean Moss, another S.C. negotiator, who heads the Beaufort-Jasper Water & Sewer Authority.
Bigger worries may lurk on the Savannah River, which forms the long S.C.-Georgia border. The 5.1 million people of metro Atlanta are expected to be joined by another 2.3 million over the next quarter-century. The city has long been expected to look to the Savannah as a water source.
Neither of the Carolinas has policies in place to cope with increased competition over water, said Bill Holman, a former N.C. environment secretary who’s now a visiting scholar at Duke University.
Holman is helping advise N.C. Rep. Lucy Allen, House environment chairwoman, on water-supply legislation aimed at the 2009 session. Allen, D-Louisburg, says a comprehensive plan could help defuse growing tension over water transfers, ailing aquifers and the effects of drought.
For now, with a few exceptions, no one in either state has to ask permission to draw water from the ground, rivers or lakes. With water historically plentiful and cheap, Holman says it’s been undervalued by consumers and policy makers.
S.C. legislators this year proposed permits for large water withdrawals from rivers and lakes, something Georgia already requires. Permits would give greater scrutiny to water requests, including the effects on upstream and downstream users.
N.C. lawmakers say they want to see what measures South Carolina adopts before possibly introducing similar legislation.
But history also shows that policy makers’ interest in water ebbs and flows.
After the historic 2002 drought, N.C. legislators created bi-state river commissions for the Catawba, Yadkin-Pee Dee and Roanoke rivers. But only the Catawba panel has met.
“That says it’s important but not urgent,” Holman said. “It says that it’s waiting for the next crisis.”
THE CHALLENGES OF WATER
Population, Water Demand Are Both Growing
North Carolina’s population grew 27 percent between 1990 and 2005, and South Carolina’s 18 percent. N.C. water demand is expected to rise 36 percent by 2030. Officials in South Carolina project a nearly 50 percent increase by 2045.
Bruce Henderson: 704-358-5051.
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