{"id":773,"date":"2010-03-31T00:01:20","date_gmt":"2010-03-31T04:01:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/?p=773"},"modified":"2010-03-31T13:15:07","modified_gmt":"2010-03-31T17:15:07","slug":"a-classic-water-war-over-public-industrial-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/?p=773","title":{"rendered":"A Classic Water War Over Public & Industrial Rights"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Taft Wireback, GREENSBORO NEWS-RECORD, March 1, 2010<\/em><\/p>\n

\"ncA lawsuit between seven hydroelectric plants and the Piedmont Triad Regional Water Authority could help clarify North Carolina law for generations to come.<\/p>\n

Experts say North Carolina is open to such conflicts because its water laws are relatively unrefined, with gaps between rules governing private use of streams for profit and those controlling public reservoirs, known as impoundments in legal jargon.<\/p>\n

\u201cCompared to a lot of states, we haven\u2019t had that much conflict between competing water uses over the years,\u201d said Bill Holman, former secretary of the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources. \u201cI don\u2019t think our impoundment law has been challenged before.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis case could either settle it or raise other significant issues about the rights to store water (in a reservoir) and the rights of downstream users of that water,\u201d said Holman, now the director of state policy at Duke University\u2019s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.<\/p>\n

The small \u201chydro\u201d plants on the Deep River claim the authority\u2019s Randleman Regional Reservoir diverts water they otherwise could use to produce and sell electricity.<\/p>\n

The water authority\u2019s most recent audit warned that the case could trigger losses of $1.5 million to $5 million, a cost many area residents would bear in taxes or water rates.<\/p>\n

The case had been scheduled for review in Guilford Superior Court last week, but was postponed.<\/p>\n

The outcome of the Deep River lawsuit and a few similar water wars elsewhere in the state could determine how difficult and costly it is for growing urban areas to build new reservoirs, Holman said.<\/p>\n

Dated laws<\/strong><\/p>\n

North Carolina water law is rooted, critics say, in a bygone era when industry harnessed streams as small as the Deep to power riverside textile mills.<\/p>\n

Tar Heel courts stress the rights of private landowners at water\u2019s edge. Some other states, particularly in the eastern half of the nation, put more emphasis on water as a public resource, critics say.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re still stuck in the 18th century,\u201d said Catawba Riverkeeper David Merryman, whose watchdog group monitors that river system. \u201cIf you have access to (a river), you have the right to stick a straw in and start sucking.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Deep River lawsuit shares some features with a more widely publicized controversy \u2014 industrial giant Alcoa\u2019s ownership of a 38-mile stretch of the Yadkin River for hydropower production, said Yadkin Riverkeeper Dean Naujoks.<\/p>\n

State government wants to take control of four hydroelectric dams from Alcoa, arguing to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that the river is a public resource that should no longer be in private hands. [Read rest of story]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The way this classic legal battle turns out — between seven hydroelectric plants and a regional water authority — over who owns the water in North Carolina’s Deep River, will affect the state’s water laws for generations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":""},"categories":[17,353],"tags":[352,349,164,344,351,348,347,345,166,269,350,346],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=773"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":776,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773\/revisions\/776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}