Water bill may include regulation of private wells
Asheville Citizen-Times

By Josh Boatwright
February 26, 2008 12:15 am

Water users, including individual well owners, may have to register with the state and abide by stricter consumption rules if lawmakers pass a drought plan this year.
The plan legislators will consider in an upcoming bill includes creating regional water-use standards for cities, well owners and other users.
Users would have to report consumption, facing fines or other penalties for noncompliance.
“If we don’t know somebody’s using water, like if we don’t have a clue how much well water’s being drawn, it’s a little hard to actively manage your aquifer,” said Sen. Joe Sam Queen, D-Waynesville.
“I think in the short term, people are just going to have to register their water use, one way or the other,” said Queen, a member of the legislature’s Drought and Agriculture Committee.
Aides from the governor’s office met with committee members last week to talk about a comprehensive drought plan, but no specifics have been hammered out, Renee Hoffman, Easley’s press secretary, said Monday.
“The governor is working on a legislative package that will improve the state’s water infrastructure and promote water conservation and efficiency,” Hoffman said. “He will announce his plans as soon as they are ready, which may be in the next few weeks.”
Queen said the government is trying to take proactive steps to manage another year of potential drought.
Response this past year was too slow, and municipalities and counties across the state had no uniform plan for conserving water, he said.
The plan could be a good idea, depending on the cost for homeowners, Asheville resident and well user Nancy Emanuel said.
“If the registration process is simple, I think it’s a great idea. When you move into an area, you want to know how many people are using the aquifer,” she said. “Having wells registered could actually give buyers an idea of what they’re buying.”
Another piece of the potential drought bill would be a statewide water usage protocol plotting where communities should go to draw water and how they should manage its use.
Power plants along the Catawba River used too much water last year, and the region relied too heavily on Lake James, draining the basin to historic lows, said Queen, whose district includes McDowell County.
Queen last year worked on a bill requiring a certificate from the Environmental Management Commission for transferring more than 2 million gallons of water a day from one water basin to another after the state got into a legal battle with South Carolina over drawing from a shared water source.
Queen expects a drought bill to pass by the end of the short session, which runs from mid-May to early July. In the meantime, lawmakers will meet with members of the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources and others to make sure new water rules are ecologically sound and sustainable.
“We’ve got to make sure our policies are fair and proactive in the sense that we don’t put ourselves in disaster mode by not conserving water, using water wisely and planning for the obvious,” said Queen


Joe Sam states that the ACT got it all wrong and retracted their story..I guess the other media outlets did too. 

Keep Reading---

Lawmakers Eye Regulating Well Users

Posted: Today at 5:19 p.m.
Updated: Today at 6:47 p.m.

State lawmakers are considering a proposal that would require homeowners and businesses that use private wells to report on how much water they consume.

A special legislative committee is expected to present a list of ideas to Gov. Mike Easley, who could push for drought legislation on various fronts during the General Assembly's short session, which begins in May.

About 40 percent of North Carolina residents use private wells, and their water use is an unknown variable for state officials trying to develop accurate models to manage water resources during the ongoing drought.

State Rep. Bill Faison, D-Orange, said lawmakers are considering fining well owners if they don't report their water usage. But he said he recognizes that calculating that consumption might be hard for many people, noting he had three wells on his Orange County farm.

"Everyone wants to do their part for water conservation, but I don't have any idea what the water consumption rate is in our home," Faison said.

Grady Poole's family has dug wells for decades, and he said many of his customers put wells in specifically to keep the government out of their lives.

"They want to rely only on themselves and not have to depend on government to take care of them," Poole said. "If you have a private well, you should be able to use it at your discretion – when you want it, how you want it."

But Georgiann Fonte, who gets her water through Raleigh's municipal system and has had to curb her gardening because of tight water restrictions, said regulating well users is a matter of fairness.

"All of us have to conserve. If we don't, we may not have drinking water or bathing water," Fonte said. "I would think they'd want to conserve just for the fact they won't want their wells to run dry."

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