River residents offer up a flood of questions
Meeting in Boone draws free flow of concerns, questions on impact of
proposed pump station

By Jerry Sena

The Town of Boone hosted a hearing Tuesday night and invited public input on its proposal to construct a 4-million-gallon-per-day raw-water intake station just downstream of Todd. What it got was a torrent of questions from concerned citizens who wanted to know why they hadn’t been involved in the process until so late in the game.

Officials from the United States Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development Agency and two representatives of WK Dickson, a civil engineering firm hired by the town of Boone to carry the project forward, assured the 30 or so citizens who attended the meeting that the process was far from over.

“This is the beginning of the process, not the end,” Ward Marotti, a biologist with WK Dickson, told the anxious and often suspicious crowd.

What lay ahead, according to Rural Development Agency officials Thomas Honeycutt and Ned Gillespie, is a crowded environmental review process involving state and federal agencies from the U.S. Department of the Interior to the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

Honeycutt described Rural Development as a credit agency that provides low interest loans to small towns such as Boone for infrastructure projects. WK Dickson has projected the cost of the new intake station and an upgrade of Boone’s current water treatment plant at $19.28 million.

“When we receive an application such as the one we have from the Town of Boone, we are required by the National Environmental Policy Act and our own agency rules and regulations to go through an environmental review of that project,” Honeycutt said. “We do that before we make any final decisions on the project. We do that before we obligate any funds to the project. So, at this point tonight where we are in this project, I just want to make it clear that the agency has made no final decisions on providing the financial assistance. We have not obligated any funds to the project at this time.”

Asked by an audience member how often Rural Development denies such funds to proposed projects based on environmental impact, Honeycutt admitted he was not aware of any instances at all. Marotti quickly added, however, that he had never been involved in a project that was not altered in some way to mitigate environmental issues.

Honeycutt assured that the comments and questions presented at Tuesday night’s meeting would be considered along with all the information his agency received throughout the process.

“The purpose of the meeting tonight is, first, to tell you a little bit about the project, and then to give you the chance to offer any comments you might have, concerns you might have, that we, Rural Development, might need to consider and look at as we go through the environmental review process.”

The public comment portion of what Honeycutt called the Environmental Scoping Period, extends through June 6. Honeycutt said written comments can be submitted through that date by writing to Boone Town Manager Greg Young, P.O. Drawer 192, Boone, NC, 28607; or through USDA Rural Development’s Jefferson Area Office by writing Area Director Terry Edsel or Loan Specialist Sandy Lawrence at 134 Government Circle, Suite 201, Jefferson, NC, 28640.

Most in the audience were residents of Todd, Fleetwood and other communities along the South Fork of the New River where the proposed pumping station would be sited. Boone officials have contracted to purchase a 10-acre tract near the intersection of Brownwood and Railroad Grade roads, near the community of Brownwood.

Young said the contract with the land owners locked in the purchase price at $85,000 an acre but would require the town to exercise its option to buy no later than Dec. 31.

The Ashe-Watauga county line approaches the proposed site from the southeast before bisecting the river along a two-mile stretch toward Todd.

The proposed pumping station would sit on the 10-acre parcel on the Watauga side of the river.

Ronnie Cooper said the 10 acres was once part of his family’s farm, the A.S. Cooper farm, which he said is currently listed with the National Register of Historical Places. He wondered whether the proposed 63,000-foot long pipeline intended to carry the water to Boone’s Deck Hill Road water processing plant might need to cross his land to reach the established right-of-way along Brownwood Road. His concern was that imminent domain – the common law precedent that allows public agencies to seize private land for the public good – might take the decision out of his hands.

“I want to know if they’ll be able to just take the land and put their pipe in there,” Cooper said. He wasn’t opposed to allowing the pipeline to cross his land but neither was he sure if the pumping station might compromise his farm’s place on the Historic Register.

“There’s just some things I want to know first,” he said.

George Santucci, executive director of the National Committee for the New River, said he took some solace in the knowledge that much of the water Boone will take out of the river eventually makes its way back in by way of its water treatment plant 12 miles upstream.

“But there are tons of communities downstream that are relying on that river, Todd and lots of businesses and industries are based around the river. Folks need that river to keep flowing,” he said.

Santucci encouraged the officials to use less technical terms when explaining their plan to the public. He also suggested they provide current flow rates that take the current drought into consideration.

“We’ve been told we’ve been experiencing 110-year significant low flows statewide, certainly [we’ve been experiencing them] here.”

He praised the Town of Boone for its stewardship of the river within its own borders and encouraged officials to follow suit at the proposed intake site.

“Recently on the Greenway they’ve installed some new ball fields out there and they’ve done a great job of restoring the riparian buffer zone and I’d encourage them to do the same thing at this site,” he said. If they’re going to own a significant chunk of the river then we ask that they maintain a really well vegetated 50-foot riparian buffer and demonstrate good stewardship. If you’re going to take water from it, at least give back to it in that way and show that you can be a model citizen of the river.”

Beth Morrison identified herself as a resident of Fleetwood. She wondered at the absence of Ashe County officials from the planning process.

“Did you all consult with the Ashe County governments to see how their ordinances would be affected by this water intake plant? Because it’s not just those of us in the immediate area, but it’s also a good deal of Ashe County,” she said.

“I’d like assurance that Ashe County’s included in this. Because, when we told people in Ashe County government about it, they had never heard of it. They were surprised – and not pleasantly,” Morrison said.
Emily Enzmann of Todd echoed a common theme for the evening.

“We make our living off of this river,” she said. “People come to Todd to see the oldest river in the United States. They come to Todd to go fishing, to go kayaking, to utilize the flow in this river for something other than the city of Boone. So, we’re very concerned about the impact that this project is going to have on our community.”

Kelly McCoy owns River Girl Fishing Co., a fishing outfitting company in Todd. She noted that the historic low flows in the river and the loss of vegetative cover had combined to warm the waters and diminish the fish population.

“We don’t have a huge trout population in the South Fork because of how low it is now,” she said. “If you talk to the old timers who used to fish in it 40 and 50 years ago it was abundant with trout, because it had the coverage of the trees and there was just more flow to keep it cooler.”

Barbara Benson said she spoke Tuesday night for her neighbors as well as herself. She wondered why no mention was made of Ashe County during a PowerPoint presentation from the WK Dickson engineers.

“I find that interesting since downstream in Ashe County is where the environmental impact is going to be,” she said.

Honeycutt told her the environmental study would include a look at the intake station’s impact on Ashe County and upstream communities as well.

Exactly how long the environmental study period of the process might take is hard to know, Honeycutt said before offering a guess of anywhere from 90 days to a year and a half.

Once a report is completed, Gillespie said, a notice of availability will be published after which the report is made available to the public. From there another 30-day public comment period is established before the report goes through final revisions.

Eventually, Gillespie, who is the Rural Development’s state environmental coordinator, will make a recommendation to the director to approve and sign the report.