Regional planning

By Published by The Editorial Board

Published: June 17, 2008

What happens if any thirsty city or county can run a pipeline into any river or lake and take as much water as its pumps can push?

That’s the nightmare scenario for the people who worry about water supplies and long-term planning. If any community can take as much water as it wants, every community can take as much as they want.

Once that starts to happen, water shortages, constant bickering and endless litigation will follow. Today, most people can’t imagine fights over freshwater supplies, but history tells us that when resources become scarce, people will fight over them.

It doesn’t have to come to that, at least not on the water issue.

Brig. Gen. Joseph Schroedel recently said Virginia should join with North and South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi to make water supply plans on a regional basis, Media General News Service recently reported.

Schroedel is the South Atlantic Division Commander for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and he gave his remarks during a meeting in Washington where Georgia and Florida were fighting over dam releases. Georgia wants the dam in question to hold more water for its residents to drink, while Florida wants more of the water released to benefit the fish, shrimp and oysters in Apalachicola Bay — and the Floridians who earn a living harvesting those waters.

Georgia and Florida probably wouldn’t be fighting over the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint river system if not for the drought that has affected most of the Southeast — including the Dan River Region.

We’ve got our own water worries. After years of fighting, Virginia Beach won the right to take 60 million gallons of water per day from Lake Gaston. In 2002, the North Carolina cities of Raleigh, Durham and Cary and Granville County asked the Corps of Engineers for permission to take 50 mgd from Kerr Lake.

Regional water planning makes a lot more sense than reacting to news like Raleigh’s interest in Kerr Lake water with dread — or a long legal fight. Already, Virginia is requiring all of its cities, counties and towns to develop long-term water supply plans. That’s a good first step — but that’s all it is.

The drought’s most important lesson is that the best time to think about long-term water supplies is before they become scarce. Brig. Gen. Schroedel is right — the southeastern states need to think regionally about water while they still have time.