Rock Hill adpots plan for managing Catawba River basin

Tonight, Rock Hill city council will consider adopting part of a master plan to keep the Catawba-Wateree River basin sustainable trough the latter half of the 21st century.

Over the last year, city leaders and those from 18 other entities across North and South Carolina have determined that if left unchecked, the basin would not support the needs of the communities its serves past the year 2050.

“It’s not like the spigot would go dry, but what it means is that for another developer to submit a permit to develop or a new business to come to the region, we wouldn’t be able to say there’s enough water around to support their growth,” said Jennifer Frost, a spokeswoman for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Utilities Department.

The $850,000 plan, funded in part by the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources, the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources and Duke Energy, determined that the region’s population would consume 419 million gallons of water per day by 2065, compared to the current average daily draw of 185 millions of gallons per day.

This study considered the recreational, drinking water, industrial water, and other water needs of the surrounding communities as well as the environmental protection of these waters – both from a conservation and preservation methodology. Measures and models have been defined based on studies that will allow our communities to extend the safe yield of the water supply for the next 50 to 100 years provided every community adheres to the plan.

The plan includes guidelines for responding to droughts, implementing conservation programs, dealing with growth and run-off issues, environmental weather changes, and other comprehensive issues:

• High-end water use efficiency and demand management by residential and wholesale water utility customers.
• Lower raw water intakes in the upper Basin (Hickory, Long View, and Valdese), Lake Norman (McGuire Nuclear Station), and Lake Wylie (Clariant Corporation, confidential industry, and Belmont).
• Recognition of the new critical intake elevation on Mountain Island Lake due to Riverbend Steam Station retirement.
• Raise the summer target operating levels by six inches in Lake James, Lake Norman, and Lake Wylie.
• Semimonthly (or more frequent) LIP stage lookup.

The plan will be updated on a regular basis and will be a living document so that new droughts of record and other new information will be reflected in future editions.