MINUTES
STATE
OF NORTH CAROLINA BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
COUNTY OF HENDERSON SEPTEMBER 30, 2008
The Henderson County
Board of Commissioners met for a special called meeting at 7:00 p.m. in the Womack Building
in Columbus. This was a joint meeting with the Polk County
Commissioners to discuss water issues.
We all met in the Womack Building
and enjoyed a Barbeque dinner (hosted by Polk County)
at 6:00 and toured their newly renovated courthouse before the beginning of the
meeting at 7:00 p.m.
Those present from Henderson County were: Chairman Bill Moyer, Vice-Chairman Charlie Messer, Commissioner Larry
Young, Commissioner Chuck McGrady,
Commissioner Mark Williams, County
Manager Steve Wyatt, Assistant
County Manager Selena Coffey, County Attorney Russell Burrell, and Clerk to the
Board Elizabeth W. Corn. Public Information Officer Pam Brice, Planning
Director Anthony Starr and County Engineer Marcus Jones were also present from Henderson County.
We all traveled to Polk
County via a Henderson
County 15 passenger van. Times-News Reporter James Shea traveled with us.
Present from Polk County
were their five Commissioners, County Manager, Clerk Anne Britton and their County Attorney.
CALL TO ORDER/WELCOME
Polk County Chairman Tommy Melton called the meeting to order for Polk County
at approximately 7:00 p.m.
Henderson County Chairman Bill Moyer called the meeting to order for Henderson County.
INVOCATION
Commissioner Owens gave the invocation.
PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE
Commissioner Watson led the pledge to the American Flag.
OPENING REMARKS BY BOTH
CHAIRMEN
Chairman Tommy Melton welcomed those from Henderson
County to Polk County
and extended thanks and southern hospitality to them.
Chairman Bill Moyer stated he was glad to have the full Board from Henderson County present as well as some key
staff. He introduced those in attendance (see above). He thanked Polk County
for the invitation and for the nice dinner. He congratulated Polk County
on the job they had done with renovating their courthouse.
Chairman Moyer stated that about 20% of the land in Henderson County
would be affected if this watershed goes to Class III, approx. 50,000 acres. He
understands that this is an important issue for Polk County. Henderson
County is concerned about where the
water source will be for the southern end of Henderson County
if this goes through. We have water issues for the southern end of our county.
Chairman Melton explained that this is a special meeting and there will
be no citizen comments. He introduced David Odom of Odom Engineering Associates
to make his presentation.
PRESENTATION BY DAVID
ODOM, ODOM ASSOCIATES
David Odom explained that he had done an engineering study and that there
is enough water in Lake Adger to meet Polk County’s
demands for water. Mr. Odom started
working with Polk
County in this effort
about 7 -8 years ago, just prior to the earlier drought. As they developed a
Master Plan for Polk County with funds received from the Rural Center,
the 2002 drought started hitting severely. That’s when they began looking at
long-term options and demands and how to meet those needs. There are a lot of
individual wells that are going dry, primarily in the southeast part of the
county but also throughout the county. The town’s water sources are good now
but there is concern that down the road through newer regulations or growth
that something may have to be developed to meet the long-term needs of Polk County.
As part of the long-term plan, there has always been a goal or need to develop
a water source. Initially they started looking at an intake on the Green River itself.
The Green River is a very reliable water source with a drainage area at
the inlet to Lake
Adger of 140 square
miles. A lot of this acreage is in Henderson
County but there is a lot
of area that drains to that area so it is a very reliable water source. About 2 years ago they started looking
seriously at the Green River and moving
forward with a permitting process. As
they got into the process and started meeting with the regulatory agencies they
got a lot of feedback that they ought to consider looking at Lake Adger itself
as the intake for a couple of reasons: 1. If you say fill to the river has
increased because you have the reservoir which holds water that you’re able to
draw against in times of drought and 2. From a regulatory standpoint it’s a lot
easier to get permits because you’re impacting less area and they view it as an
already impacted portion of that stream which it is, so they then began moving
in that direction.
Mr. Odom stated there has been some work done by other engineering firms.
He has also completed the preliminary safe field analysis on Lake Adger
and it certainly has enough water to meet Polk County’s
long-term demands. They had done an analysis about a year ago to look at the 50
year demand for Polk
County, including all the
towns (right now they all have their individual water sources). That demand in 50 years was projected to be
8,000,000 gallons per day. That presumes that all the communities come on
board, everybody in Polk
County has water and is
utilizing water from that main water supply. The lake has the capacity and the
safe field to meet that demand. It is a strong watershed.
Mr. Odom stated that there are three droughts of record, three tough
droughts that this area has experienced: one was in 1954 and the other two have
been very recent, one in 2002 and one in 2008. Based on the work that they have
done, the drought of 2008 was the worst drought that that watershed had seen
and still during that timeframe they could meet the demands of the community.
As they began the permitting process their original goal and original efforts
through the division of water quality was to permit the lake and the watershed
as a class IV watershed, that was the initial request submitted. As the process
moved forward they began getting feedback from Elizabeth Couches at the
Division of Water Quality that the appropriate watershed classification for Lake Adger
is a class III watershed. The reason is because of the existing discharges that
discharge into the Green River and the
existing density that’s in that watershed area. Those aren’t things that we can
necessarily have an impact on. Those are guidelines that are in State Statutes
that say if you meet this criteria then this is the appropriate watershed that
you need to pursue if you’re gonna develop an intake inside that
watershed. That is where we stand right
now, is trying to pursue a class III watershed. There are two governing bodies
that are inside that watershed that are not Polk
County: Henderson
County and the Town of Saluda. They have
received support from the Town of Saluda
in pursuing this watershed. Saluda recognizes that ultimately, at some point,
they will likely be utilizing water out of Lake Adger
also. Polk County has developed a plan and a
timeframe on when they would like to move forward with construction of a
plant. They have been meeting with the
State Financing people, the Local Government Commission, and they have
indicated that one of the things they want to see is an operating customer base
before the plant is constructed. They are currently pursuing that. One of the
things that has happened, is that the Broad River Water Authority is going to
be selling water to Inman/Campobello and that transmission line goes through Polk County.
Polk County will own that transmission line
and that will give them the ability to take water off that line and use it to
help develop an initial customer base but it will never meet the long-term
demands of the County. There’s not sufficient capacity there. There really
isn’t sufficient capacity from the Broad River Water Authority to meet the
long-term demand, not even half of the long-term demand. The only real viable
opportunity for Polk County is the Green River.
They think that once that watershed is developed and once the transmission line
is put in place that connects Broad River Water Authority to the City of Saluda. That’s the key
link that will develop a connection all the way from Asheville
to Charlotte.
That’s the missing link. The inter-connects allow folks in times of drought to
transfer water from one entity to another during those times. The watershed to Lake Adger
is very strong, very reliable and large and because of that is a very reliable
water source. An existing reservoir is tremendously valuable and beneficial to
a water provider. Mr. Odom stated that the Cleveland County Sanitary District
in Cleveland County is in the process (and has been
in the process for about 10 years) of trying to permit a reservoir. It would be
a large reservoir similar to the size of Lake
Lure, a little larger than Lake Adger.
Cleveland County probably has $10,000,000 in that
effort so far and that’s just going through the permitting process and they
still don’t have an answer. If they do get a positive answer then it’s a
$50,000,000 construction project so it’s a huge amount of money to build what
already exists for us. Lake Adger
is an opportunity for Polk
County, it’s towns and
the adjoining communities to be able to benefit and have that reliable source
of water for drought conditions. He expressed that it’s in everyone’s best
interest to be able to get that reliable reservoir as a means of water service
within a relatively short period of time.
Chairman Moyer raised some questions and reviewed some figures as
follows:
The amount of demand is
8,000,000 gallons per day within 50 years
The source – availability of supply from Lake Adger
is 10,500,000 gallons per day which
assumes that under the
worst drought scenario which was 2008, that the release requirement
would be 10% of the average annual flow. Lake Adger
is unique in that the way the water generally gets out of the lake is through
penstocks going to the hydroelectric plant. That’s the only way for water to
get out of Lake Adger, other than flowing over the top of the dam so if the
water level were to go below that then there would be no release so they’re not
sure how that would play out.
If they pull out 8,000,000 gallons per day it would
lower the lake level 5 feet under the drought of record in 2008 at the release
requirement Mr. Odom mentioned. That would be the lowest elevation. It is
modeled every day throughout the timeframe. During the most recent drought the
lake level did go down about 3 feet. Mr. Odom’s assumption was that there was
more water being utilized through the hydroelectric facility than that minimum
release.
Chairman Moyer questioned if Henderson County were
to put an intake farther up the Green River and take 1,000,000 gallons of water
a day out, would that be a safe amount? Mr. Odom answered that Henderson County
could take out 1,000,000 gallons a day and it wouldn’t affect Polk County’s
ability to withdraw 8,000,000 gallons a day. (This was a hypothetical number)
The pen stock elevation is at 10 feet below normal
water level.
Under the contract between Polk
County and the hydroelectric plant,
the 8,000,000 gallons a day for Polk
County takes precedence
over the hydroelectric plant’s right to generate electricity.
DISCUSSION AND COMMENTS
A question was raised about zoning and Chairman Bill Moyer answered that Henderson County would be concerned about losing
the flexibility to use our land use planning. It may be more restrictive but it
may not, either way we would lose the flexibility to do the planning in the
southern end of the county.
Chairman Moyer also stated that if we had a class IV classification it would
only affect Polk County,
not Henderson County
but that issue has been taken to the State and the State basically said it
would be a class III and that Polk and Henderson should work it out and then Polk County
could go back to the State.
Chairman Tommy Melton stated that Polk
County’s goal is to work with Henderson County and make this work.
Chairman Moyer – “When you move to the availability of water in the
southern end of the county, two of the ideas we’ve talked about was that if
Polk County built a treatment plant they would reserve for us basically a
guaranteed amount of water or make available to us an available amount of
treated water so that we would not have to go through a water treatment plant
and the figure we kicked around initially was about 500,000 gallons per day and
I don’t know if David wants to comment … I know, that was only hypothetical and
you were going to take a look at that as to what might be reasonable and the
other thing we asked you to look into is that if somewhere down the road, we
don’t foresee it for maybe 20 years or so but if we would need to go Lake
Summit to get a withdrawal permit so that we would pull out water that you
would not oppose us taking that action with the State. I think these are the
other two things we asked you to take a look at from our standpoint.”
The Polk County Manager answered that he thought 500,000 gallons could be
available if the water line from Tryon to Saluda
is built and the towns are in the process of doing that. “As far as you drawing
water out in the future, Dave you correct me if I’m wrong, we’ll have to
request our permit initially for the size of our treatment plant. We’re not
going to the State and requesting an 8,000,000 gallon a day permit. If we did
that we would have to build a treatment plant and show that we could use 8,000,000
gallons of water right now … I don’t think we’ll get to that point 20 years
from now… I don’t see Polk County having any negative impact on Henderson County
drawing water out of Lake
Summit in the next 20
years or 30 years for that matter. I don’t see us having any impact on that at
all.”
There was discussion that getting the 500,000 gallons to Henderson County might be a problem, the logistics
of it.
Duke Power is analyzing the entire Broad River Watershed because of its
impacts on their ability to build the nuclear facility and what’s going to
happen with their cooling water. They also would have the largest withdrawal
permit out of the entire watershed because of that cooling process. Broad
allocation process is somewhat underway but it’s not being done by the State at
this point in time. At some point in time that will obviously occur. (per David
Odom)
Mr. Odom said that Polk
County would propose to
build a 2,000,000 gallon plant because it’s an economical number to use. If
it’s much smaller you begin to lose some economies of scale and if it’s much
larger you can’t justify it. They also are trying to plan for “what if” one of
the towns needs to come on faster than when they think they might, they would
need that capacity available. They don’t
anticipate their demand being at 2,000,000 gallons per day for several years
(20 years or so).
Commissioner McGrady explained that the Green River
community is in his district, he is a major landowner there and he will recuse
himself when the Board takes their action on this issue because of the
potential financial impact on him. He
stated that one of the unintended benefit of this might be, if in fact Polk County
ends up supplying water to the Saluda area, that in fact that it gives more
capacity to the north end of Henderson
County. Saluda at this point is getting it’s water
from the City of Hendersonville.
Saluda also gets rid of the inter-basin transfer, we’re transferring a lot of
water out of the French Broad River basin into the Broad River basin
and it’s probably the biggest transfer out. To the extent that this were to
happen, Polk County
begins to supply water to Saluda, we would
actually free up a little bit of capacity in another part of our county. That
doesn’t do any good to the Green River portion or south end of the county but
most of our growth and most of the water use we presently have is in the other
river basin. Commissioner McGrady stated that the classification that the State
is suggesting here, as he understands it, would not have massive land use
effects in Henderson County at this time based on our present zoning. The
topography of the land would suggest that this area would not be where we get
our growth in our county near-term. His big concern is making sure if Henderson County,
in the future, needs water here that whatever has occurred on Lake Adger
doesn’t in some way prevent that. He imagines that there will be another
impoundment built on the Henderson County side, other than Lake Summit.
Much discussion followed regarding drought conditions and how the drought
impacts our community and our businesses, land use and agriculture uses.
Commissioner Young asked to be on record that we would be able to expand
or to use Lake Summit
as a water reservoir for us as we may have to use water out of Lake Summit
for the southern end of the county. He
also questioned how this watershed classification would affect land values.
Commissioner McGrady stated that watershed classification doesn’t impact
agriculture as best evidenced by Mills
River. He raised the
question “How can we assure water usage in the Green River basin
… in the future if that’s where we see our growth?”
Chairman Moyer stated that one thing Henderson County
has done is to tentatively approve having a Water Supply Distribution Advisory
Committee. All the municipalities have agreed to participate. This group will
study our watersheds starting in the southern end of the county so that we will
be in a better position to make these decisions going forward. At our next
Board meeting we will likely set the composition for that Committee.
Henderson County has a comprehensive land use plan. Anthony Starr stated that we do not
have specific growth projections. Historically this area of the county has been
a low growth area, partly due to the proximity to key services and topography.
We already have lower density than the WS III classification requirements. Currently
we have 80% impervious surface limit.
Under the WS III classification it would be a 24% limitation; however,
you could do up to 10% of the drainage basin in our jurisdiction (which would
be about 5,000 acres), that could be designated for up to 70% impervious
surface. Chairman Moyer stated that in
the Mills River watershed we’ve used a lot of that
allocation already.
OPTIONS: One of the next steps would be to look at the safe yield below Lake Summit,
reserving Lake Summit
for Henderson County
for water OR guarantee Henderson
County so many gallons
per day.
Chairman Moyer explained that the Henderson County
folks had decided to have this discussion and get everything out on the table
and then go back and have a workshop of Henderson County Commissioners and
staff, receive public input, and try to form a position and get back to the
Polk County Commissioners.
Polk County Chairman Melton said that Polk
County wants to reach across county
lines and tell Henderson County that they will do whatever they can within
reason of sanity to protect Henderson County and give Henderson County
the consideration of water. They wish to work with Henderson
County and be good neighbors and be
able to improve the situation, not only in Polk
County but also in Henderson County.
They wish to maintain a spirit of cooperation. He hopes this will be a win/win
for Polk County
and Henderson County.
Polk County had a motion to adjourn and voted to do so.
ADJOURN
Commissioner McGrady made the motion to adjourn the (Henderson County)
meeting at 8:05 p.m. All voted in favor
and the motion carried.
Attest:
Elizabeth W. Corn, Clerk to the Board
William L. Moyer, Chairman