Falls Lake -- Cleaning the Lake Means Cleaning the Rivers

August 20, 2010 | Greening Water Infrastructure, Clean Water, Small Streams & Wetlands, Stormwater & Sewage

Peter Raabe
North Carolina Conservation Director

As I first wrote about in June, the state of North Carolina has proposed draft rules to clean up Falls Lake in Wake and Durham County.  The clean up is required due to an elevated number of algal blooms that suck the oxygen out of the water creating toxic conditions for animals while violating the federal Clean Water Act. 

Cleaning up the lake is important- it’s a great recreational option for the communities around it and it serves as water supply for the City of Raleigh and some surrounding communities -- but the lake is only polluted due to what is running into from the streams that feed it.  The greatest source of pollution for the lake: stormwater runoff that is rich in nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorous).  The proposed rules focus on ways to control these pollutants from the various sources in the watershed -- waste water treatment (both large scale sewer systems and septic systems), agricultural practices, new development, and existing development.  The lake is REALLY polluted and will require a reduction of more than 40% of the nitrogen that is flowing into it and more that 75% of the phosphorous in order for it to comply with the minimal standards of the clean water act.

The problem with all this, it’s all about the lake and not about the polluted streams that are feeding the lake. Almost every stream feeding the lake is on the impaired waters list for the state. The debate about the rules to-date has been, "who really benefits from the lake?" as opposed to the benefits that those streams could provide to the communities that run through them.  These watersheds have been overdeveloped with minimal controls for polluted runoff.  These decisions were made in the past but need to be corrected now.

The proposed rules put in place a way for these communities to clean up their act.  There are great concerns over cost, but it has been shown that through low impact development new developments can minimize their harmful affects and those techniques often create costs savings in the construction of the development.  And where the watershed has already been built upon, the requirement to retrofit could be costly, though using incentives and funding sources like the Clean Water SRF from the federal government a community can reinvent itself with using green infrastructure -- like what Philadelphia is doing with its Greenworks program -- and save money at the same time.

The rules have generated hundreds of public comments and the state will now consider those and propose updated rules by the end of the year.

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