Messing With Mother Nature Again

I hope that most of the rain we got today made its way to our reservoirs, we need it. Jordan Lake is still down six feet, and Raleigh's water supply is measured in months.

So, what do you do when you hit the wall on water supply in Wake County? The county's answer is to build more reservoirs. Click here to view Wake County's proposal to build a new reservoir on the Little River. The new lake will provide 17 million gallons of water a day to northeastern Wake County.

The lake will flood 1,100 acres of what today is open green space. In addition, a critical watershed about twice that size must be established.

Are we doing the right thing for Wake County? On one hand, people like me whine about having infrastructure in place before development, and this represents a clear attempt to do that. That said, I struggle to believe we are doing right. Who is going to pay to build the lake and water treatment plant? Developers? Not! This is a trade-off decision... Does it make sense to give up 1,100 acres of undeveloped land so that growth can continue? If yes, do we flood another 1,100 acres when that water supply runs out? Where does it end?

Ernie McAlister always liked to talk about "Moving Cary forward." At a county-level, if we keep moving forward like this the final product will be a county in which almost every square inch of land has been made 'more productive.' Take a trip to North Jersey and you can see what 'productive' counties look like. No thanks.

We have two huge man-made reservoirs already, how about letting nature determine when enough is enough.