Date: Tue, 14 May 2013 13:02:51 -0400
From: Tom Glendinning
Subject: Re: Why do we need DENR?
Mr. Kirkman’s comments on DENR and Jordan water quality are off base.
Cary and Apex receive 32 mgd (million gallons per day) of the total 63 mgd managed by the Division of Water Resources. Orange and Wake Counties, Chatham County, Durham, Holly Springs, OWASA and Morrisvile receive the rest. Chatham has an allotment of 10% of the total. So Cary does not get “all the water.”
Further, the WWP outfall from the combination plant in Wake County serves all the towns in western Wake and southwest Raleigh. Its effluent will be cleaner than the raw water coming out of the river basin and lake, with some nutrients to dilute to normal levels. The new plant will be a tertiary treatment facility which cleans the water beyond normal WWTP processes to drinking quality standard.
Since the outfall is below the Buckhorn Dam at the south border, no “pollution” will go into the lake. Runoff from within our broders will pollute the lake more than the WWP outfall would if it were running into the lake. Our properties, highways, lawns, schools, towns and residential developments cause more nutrients and chemicals in surface runoff. So do dead animals and bugs. Air is made of 78% nitrogen and it makes its way into the water supply. The next time your dog takes a pee or a dump, ask yourself where it goes.
And the joint Chatham/Cary land use area will benefit Chatham with taxes from the developed properties and infrastructure. Development is coming anyway. Why not have it done responsibly rather than piece-meal and individually.
Government is not all bad, you must know. It provides basic services not available to citizens on their own. You want its regulation in your statement. The problem comes when it over-regulates and costs citizens and their employers more money than the regulation is worth.
One further comment: EPA does not grant the power of regulation to DENR. The combination of the Constitution, laws and regulations authorized by Congress allow for the states to regulate within their borders. Those laws also regulate the EPA.
Another one I can not pass up. The county has regulations on nuclear materials, lighting, radio towers, and water quality. It does not have the staff, staff expertise or testing facilities to monitor or enforce its own regulations. Those regulations refer to state laws and regs, which often in technical aspects, refer to federal laws and regs. I ask the simple question: If our staff can not monitor or test the water, radio waves, light frequency and level or nuclear emmissions with technical and scientific competence, how come we are employing them in the first place? Why do we have such regulations for our performance standard?
These rules are best left at the state and federal level for want of resources and expertise. And zero tolerance is neither a workable parameter nor a reasonable expectation. It’s unhuman and inhumane. We can argue decimal points all day long, but my momma always said, “Zero is as zero does – nothing.”
Tom Glendinning
BTW: The old coal power plant, CPL/Progress/Duke, in Moncure is shutting down. That should make you happy. When the power shortage causes brown outs this summer, think of that. If you want less pollution, use less.
“It takes an intelligent fool to make things bigger and more complex……….. It takes a touch of genius to move in the opposite direction”
You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.–Wayne Gretzky