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DURHAM — County Commissioners on Monday joined Durham’s and Raleigh’s city councils in endorsing a proposed compromise on Falls Lake anti-pollution rules that calls for a do-over of some of the computer models state regulators are using.
But county administrators, like their city counterparts, cautioned before Monday’s 4-0 vote that supporters of the compromise from Durham might have to fight to keep the part of the deal most important to them.
Already, regulators from the N.C. Division of Water Quality have circulated a new draft of the rules that embraces some elements of the deal but is “very vague and passive” about the modeling do-over, Assistant County Manager for Special Projects Drew Cummings said.
He added that there have already been “conversations amongst the parties” to the compromise about pushing the case for the deal with the N.C. Environmental Management Commission, the group next in line to have a say about what the new regulations look like.
This “may be a battle we have to keep on fighting for a while,” Cummings said.
Commissioners agreed and made a point of instructing administrators to pass along the word that they see the compromise “as a package” that must include the modeling do-over.
The do-over is a key point for Durham officials who believe that without it, the city and county will pay heavily to limit deposits into the upper portion of Falls Lake of two key nutrients, nitrogen and phosphorus.
The upper lake — the part west of U.S. 50 — is the part closest to Durham. Its feeder streams pass a city sewage plant and also drain the city’s core.
Cummings and County Manager Mike Ruffin conceded that the compromise has come under fire from environmentalists, particularly groups based in Wake County.
But Ruffin said the agreement Durham administrators and elected officials struck with their Wake counterparts early last month appears to be holding.
Wake County Manager David Cooke, Raleigh City Manager Russell Allen and other key officials have all “agreed that we’d stand together,” Ruffin said.
Raleigh’s City Council endorsed the deal unanimously last month even after opponents sent members “pretty critical comments,” Cummings added.
Monday’s vote went into the books as a 4-0 because County Commissioner Becky Heron was absent from the meeting.
Later, officials from the City/County Planning Department briefed commissioners on an upcoming series of changes to Durham’s land-use laws partly inspired by pollution-control efforts targeting another big regional reservoir, Jordan Lake.
The changes would enlarge the buffer zones surrounding many year-round streams, intermittent streams and wetlands.
The push for expanded stream buffers is coming from local officials, but at least some of the proposed new protection for wetlands is in response to the anti-pollution rules package for Jordan Lake the General Assembly approved last year.
The stream-buffer change would require developers to leave at least 100 feet of land on either side of watercourses in the suburban and rural parts of the county.
Durham already requires buffers bigger than that close to Falls and Jordan lakes, but elsewhere only requires a 50-foot space on either side of streams.
The stream-buffer expansion won’t apply to center-city Durham, the parts close to downtown or prospective transit stations where officials want dense development.
To forestall opposition from developers, where officials propose doubling the buffers, they’ve written into the changes a promise that the expansion won’t force builders to give up any of the homes existing zoning would otherwise allow them to build.
They’ll be able to build the “same amount of units, just on a smaller area,” Senior Planner Aaron Cain said.
Officials have to send a draft of the rules to the state by March 10 for review. Regulators will have up to six months to go over them, Cain said. Once they’ve had their say, commissioners and the City Council will have two months to pass the changes.
