This Land, Your Land

A state House committee has put forth a compromise to rules for cleaning up pollution at Jordan Lake. The bill is to seek means to lower costs for cities and shopping centers to filter stormwater runoff.

Local governments and developers said rules adopted last year by the state Environmental Management Commission weighed too heavily on them, The News & Observer reported on May 4.

The bill will go to a vote in the House next week.

State Sen. Joe Sam Queen has introduced a bill to create a 17-member Mountain Resources Commission to advise local governments about development in 27 western North Carolina counties, according to the Asheville Citizen-Times. "One of the first threats the group could tackle, Queen said, is development encroaching on lands like Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the Appalachian Trail, the Blue Ridge Parkway and the region's state parks."

The News & Observer reports that everyone wants to clean up pollution at Jordan Lake but no one wants to pay the price. Existing rules put about a quarter of the $2 billion price tag on the City of Durham, though the 1,700-square-mile Jordan watershed includes all or parts of eight counties, from Guilford through Wake, and such cities and towns as Greensboro, Burlington, Graham, Carrboro, Chapel Hill, Apex and Cary.

The 46,768-acre Jordan Lake provides drinking water to Apex and Cary, and is home to the Jordan Lake State Recreation Area, which is nine sites with popular boat ramps and campgrounds, and the Corps of Engineers site at the dam, which includes a visitors center, an observation deck and bank fishing below the spillway. Much of the land surrounding the lake is state game lands, as well.