Chatham Park, All Hands on Deck

Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 10:31:31 -0400
From: John Alderman
Subject: Chatham Park, All Hands on Deck

As a retired NC Wildlife Resources Commission biologist and current small business owner, I know that we can’t rely on state and federal agencies to protect our drinking water supplies.  For example, more than 96 million gallons of wastewater plant discharge water pour into Jordan Lake every day, with much of this amount flowing down the Haw River, Morgan Creek, and New Hope River.  Pittsboro gets its drinking water from the Haw River, and much of Chatham County gets its drinking water from Jordan Lake.  The Haw River and Jordan Lake now have some of the highest wastewater concentrations of any drinking water supplies in the country.

Given this as a background, we are now finding that fish throughout the country, and particularly in the Southeast (emphasis on certain rivers in NC and SC), are developing intersex characteristics.  I won’t go into detail, but it basically boils down to male fish having both male and female characteristics.  (Note:  We have known about the effects of estrogenic compounds since the 1990s when male alligators in Florida were showing up with reduced penis sizes.)  Although there are numerous potential causes for intersex fish, there appears to be a strong link with discharges from, you guessed it, wastewater treatment plants.  Scientists have now started an intensive program to study intersex fish populations across North Carolina.  In addition to reproductive system effects, they are also going to study other organ system effects.  Here’s the issue for us:  We don’t know the full effects of these more than 100 “estrogenic” compounds on humans, but we have our scientific suspicions.  All of this has occurred for decades
with full oversight and permitting by state and federal government agencies.

There is little that scares me these days, but this does, since my family drinks water from Jordan Lake, and I used to feed my  family fish from the Haw River and Jordan Lake.  So, new sources of wastewater from a new 55,000 person city of Chatham Park and stormwater laced with estrogenic herbicides and pesticides washed from adjacent Chatham Park lands into the Haw River and Jordan Lake are my business,  and this should be the business of any thinking person in Chatham County.

John Alderman

Pittsboro