Living with coyotes

Speaking of coyotes and John Dancy-Jones, the latter turned me on to an amazing blog about the former: The Daily Coyote is a documentary project by a woman who lives with an orphaned coyote named Charlie (and a tomcat whom the coyote adores) in a one-room cabin in Wyoming.

Documenting natural Raleigh

I recently found out about a terrific blog about our city. Called Raleigh Nature, it's set to become a book called The Natural History of Raleigh: Nature Lore & Wildlife Inside or Near the Beltline. The author is John Dancy-Jones, whose fine papermaking work at The Paper Plant was recently profiled by the News & Observer. Born in 1953, John grew up in Raleigh's then-new Gatewood subdivision (next door to where I live now in Lockwood), and developed an abiding love of parks, the paths that would later become greenways, and even the so-called "waste places" where nature peeks out from the city's hard edges.

John already has another book under his belt; in 2001, he published Snapper: My life with snapping turtles. A chapbook essay about captive snapping turtles, it was written, illustrated using linoleum-block prints, and physically produced on a letterpress at the Paper Plant. Fred Chappell, North Carolina's poet laureate, praised Snapper as a "lovely" papermaking project and a "highly personal but still widely educational" work. It's not surprising that John's book projects would be educational: His work teaching papermaking to children led to a part-time job teaching students with learning problems and a master's in education from N.C. State. John now teaches science full time.

Here's how he describes his fascination with our city's natural side -- a fascination that's beautifully communicated in the stories and images on his blog:

Raleigh has one of the nation’s best and most prominent greenway systems. In, addition we retain some of the best aspects of Southern towns -- ready access to rural settings, and a real connection to the land, as partly evidenced by the growing popularity of the sustainable, heritage agriculture movement. We love our nature, whether it's jogging the greenways or hunting doves, and the wildlife and natural areas are treasures important to people of all political persuasions. This blog explores those interests through the eyes of an amateur but well-informed naturalist, concentrating on resources inside or within a mile of the beltline.

It's definitely worth a bookmark for anyone who loves our Capital City.

(Photo of and by John Dancy-Jones from Raleigh Nature.)

Coyotes in Raleigh?

Last week while walking my dogs along a Raleigh greenway at night, I think I saw a coyote. We were on the trail east of Raleigh Boulevard when my dogs began pulling on their leashes as if trying to get to something ahead of us. Exasperated, I scolded them -- when all of the sudden an animal burst out of the brush just a few feet away from us and tore down the trail. We've seen foxes along the greenway before, but this was bigger than a fox -- as tall as my Australian shepherd but leaner. It was difficult to see clearly in the dark, but its coat appeared to be tan and gray, and it ran from us with bushy tail tucked between its legs. Then last night while walking our dogs along that same stretch of trail, my husband saw what he guesses was probably the same animal, which burst from the bushes near the same spot along the creek and crossed the trail into the woods. When I mentioned our sightings to a friend today, he said he also saw what he thought was a coyote in his neighborhood near Oakwood Cemetery. Since coyotes are known to thrive in suburban and even urban settings and have made appearances in Greensboro, Washington's Rock Creek Park and even New York City, it isn't surprising that they'd be with us here in Raleigh -- especially since I saw one several years ago in Umstead Park at the city's northwestern edge. I know some people fear coyotes (the animals can present a threat to unattended small pets, though they rarely attack humans), but they play a beneficial role in the ecosystem by keeping mice and squirrel populations in check. Some tips for avoiding conflicts with coyotes include not approaching them, not feeding them, not leaving food or garbage outside, and not allowing pets to roam free, especially at night.

(Photo from South Carolina Department of Natural Resources Web site)

Community forum to address Wake County's water woes

WakeUP, an organization of Wake County citizens concerned about growth and development issues, will be holding a public forum this Saturday, Feb. 23 on regional water supply challenges. The event will take place from 9:30 a.m. to noon at N.C. State's McKimmon Center at the intersection of Western Boulevard and Gorman Street in Raleigh. Scheduled speakers include Tommy Esqueada, director of Wake County Environmental Services; Rob Jackson, director of the Duke University Center on Global Climate Change; Chris Goudreau of the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission; David Moreau, chair of the UNC Water Resources Research Institute and the Environmental Management Commission; Bill Holman, a senior fellow at Duke University; and Mary Brice, co-chair of the Raleigh Water Conservation Task Force. For more details, including an agenda, click here.

Raleigh water conservation specialist offers drought insights

This evening I attended the monthly meeting of my local Citizens Advisory Council (I live in the East Raleigh CAC) where the featured speaker was Ed Buchan, water conservation specialist with Raleigh's Public Utilities Department. Buchan gave an informative overview of the city's drinking water system and how it's been impacted by the ongoing drought, which he described as being "of biblical proportions."

I'm not going to recount the entire presentation here, but I'll highlight some particularly interesting points that came up:

* Raleigh has a built-in conflict of interest when it comes to promoting water conservation. The maintenance and expansion of the city's water system is paid for through an enterprise fund that's separate from the regular budget -- and financed by selling water. That means if the city is successful in encouraging residents to conserve, it stands to face a revenue shortfall. "It's a challenge for a system like ours to go into conservation mode," Buchan said.

* Buchan said Raleigh's current mandatory conservation ordinance "doesn't have a lot of teeth" when it comes to large water users -- that is, industrial customers like Pepsico and Ajinomoto. The only way they could cut water use significantly would be to cut production, which would "go over like a lead balloon," he said. Meanwhile, Raleigh has shut down car washes that failed to recycle water -- about half of all car washes in the city -- but that has "hardly affected peak demand," Buchan reported.

* Unlike Charlotte, Raleigh still has not moved to a tiered-rate billing system, in which customers who use more water pay more. One reason, said Buchan, is that financiers like the certainty of a flat rate and get nervous when cities impose tiered structures, which could affect the city's bond rating.

* Another reason Raleigh hasn't moved to a tiered-rate structure is because its billing system simply can't handle it. When asked who the Charlotte-based contractor was who handled billing for the city (as you may have noticed, we mail our water payments to the "City of Raleigh" in "Charlotte, N.C"), Buchan couldn't say. I don't know, either. If someone out there does, please send an e-mail to sue at raleigheconews.com dot com, or leave a comment here. Thanks.

* Buchan takes a dim view of programs providing low-cost or free gadgets to encourage water conservation. Incentives, he said, have "never worked," though he considers rebates a better alternative. However, the city recently acquired 5,000 faucet aerators and 5,000 low-flow shower heads, and it's now figuring out how to distribute them. This will probably be done through the Community Services department. Buchan noted that the city of Boston sent staff door to door to change out wasteful shower heads, but he said Raleigh lacked the capacity to do that.

* One of the city's biggest water customers is Pepsico, which bottles Falls Lake water that it purchases at the same rate as residential customers and sells at a dramatic markup: While a gallon of Falls Lake water costs $.0022, Pepsi sells its Aquafina product at more than $4 per gallon -- one of the reasons Durham City Councilman Eugene Brown has called for a boycott of Pepsi products. But at the same time, the city can't release information to the public about Pepsico's water usage without opening itself to litigation. For more details, read this Independent Weekly article by N.C. State professor Cat Warren:

Raleigh, meanwhile, refuses to reveal exactly what amount Pepsi or their other largest users are pulling out of the municipal system—citing an exemption in the public records law. "The records you requested are enterprise billing records and not available to the public," wrote Raleigh City Attorney Thomas McCormick.

This is what it means to be in the water business: the conflict of interest between the notion of water as a public trust, and water as an enterprise, income for the city's wallet. Notes North Carolina Press Association General Counsel Amanda Martin: "We are in the middle of an extreme drought, and we are not even entitled to know which users are consuming inordinate amounts of water. It's a travesty, if you ask me, but unfortunately it is the law."

The scheduled guest for Raleigh East's March CAC meeting is Mayor Charles Meeker. I expect we'll have an interesting discussion.

As drought intensifies, Raleigh gets ready for tougher restrictions -- but no development freeze

This Friday, Feb. 15, Raleigh will move to mandatory Stage 2 water conservation measures. The move comes as Falls Lake, the city's main water source, has fallen to 30 percent of its capacity, with only about 107 days of water left if no significant rains come.

According to the city's official announcement about the Stage 2 rules, they ban the use of public water for irrigation and prohibit home car washes. They also prevent builders from using fresh public water to conduct the tests of new water connections that must occur before newly built homes and businesses can be legally occupied.

However, the rules do allow testing of connections using city water that's then captured, hauled to the treatment plant on Falls of the Neuse Road, and placed back into the raw water supply. So new development will still be able to continue under the Stage 2 restrictions.

Which raises some questions: If Raleigh doesn't have enough water to sustain its current population in the face of continued dry weather, how can it allow new development to continue? Even if the builders aren't testing connections with potable water, won't the new arrivals inhabiting those homes further drain Falls Lake?

Raleigh to hold hearing on biodefense facility planned just upstream of water supply

An important message from Upper Neuse Riverkeeper Dean Naujoks of the Neuse River Foundation. To read the Independent Weekly's in-depth story about the controversy surrounding this proposed facility, click here. Raleigh City Council meets at the Avery C. Upchurch Government Complex at 222 W. Hargett St.

Attention Wake County residents!

On Tuesday February 5, at 7pm the Raleigh City Council will hold a public hearing on the National Bio- and Agro- Defense Facility. Please
attend this important public hearing and express opposition to this proposed biodisease lab.

Would New York City leaders ever support a bio defense facility located just upstream from their drinking water supply? Absolutely Not! It is almost inconceivable that a facility conducting research on the world's deadliest diseases would be located on Knap of Reeds Creek, just upstream from Falls Lake -- a drinking water supply for 400,000 Wake County Citizens. The proposed National Bio and Agro Defense Facility would also be located 1 Mile of Holt Lake (Butner's drinking water supply), 2 Miles of Lake Michie (Durham's Drinking water supply) and 5 miles of Lake Rogers (Creedmoor's drinking water supply) and Little River Reservoir (Durham's drinking water). These are all important drinking water reservoirs located in the upper Neuse Basin. Why would anyone consider locating a potential terrorist target adjacent to 5 major drinking water supplies for more than 600,000 people?

The Department of Homeland Security, which is in charge of the project, announced July 11 that the Umstead Farm in Butner had made the short US of list to consider for possible sites. For decades, the new lab's predecessor, Plum Island Animal Disease Research Center, a 50-year-old, lab located off the tip of Long Island, N.Y., has been chronically plagued by grave security breaches and safety violations that point to managerial incompetence by Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. For the proposed lab to handle the viruses it plans to conduct research on, Congress would have to rewrite the law to allow it on the mainland United States. Congress wisely passed a law in the 1950s, which prohibited the pathogens from leaving Plum Island, where it has remained for 50 years.

This would be a $450 million, state-of-the-art Biosafety Level-4 laboratory (the size of 36 Wal-Mart Stores) located at the headwaters of Knap of Reeds Creek, just above Falls Lake. The NBAF facility would use nearly 100,000 gallons of water per day from already stressed water supplies. It would release 80,000 gallons of treated wastewater through Granville County's problematic sewage treatment plant and discharge the effluent into Falls Lake. The lab must pretreat its water before sending it to Granville County, but we have seen many failing pretreatment systems try to take advantage of municipal waste water systems. Probably most concerning is the possible risk of air born pathogens, which Raleigh has raised concerns about, but Home Land Security is not responding to their concerns. Possible droplets of water called aerosols could potentially release bacteria or viruses into these water supplies, all located very close to this proposed facility.

Citizens in Granville County have overwhelmingly opposed this facility. Granville County Commissioners, the town of Creedmoor and Stem have all with drawn support their support for this project. Raleigh City leaders need to express their opposition to this facility before it goes any further in the approval process. Their decision could have a profound impact on Wake County's drinking water supply for the next 50 years. If Granville County does not want this project, why would Wake County leaders?

For more info, go to www.nobio.org.

UPDATE: On Feb. 19, Raleigh City Council decided to withhold its approval of the lab until the federal government provides more information. Click here for the list of questions the city is asking the feds to answer, which includes explaining plans for keeping runoff from the facility out of Falls Lake.