Posted on 04/20/2009 5:05:47 PM PDT by Libloather
Hagan Suing Water Authority
by John Hammer
Editor
April 16, 2009
Your water rates may go up, and your newly elected Democratic US senator may be somewhat responsible; not in her official capacity, but personally. Sen. Kay Hagan's husband, Chip Hagan, and others have filed suit against the Piedmont Triad Regional Water Authority (PTRWA), which is the owner-operator of the Randleman Dam.
The PTRWA board was told Tuesday that this year it was going to have to increase its budget for legal expenses by a considerable margin to pay for the cost of being sued by Hagan and other downstream hydroelectric plant owners.
The PTRWA is made up of Greensboro, High Point, Randleman, Jamestown, Archdale and Randolph County. The water from the Randleman Reservoir will be shared by all the governmental units involved, and so are the expenses. If the cost of the water authority operation increases significantly, the citizens of the cities and counties involved are going to pay. It might not be much, but sometimes suits drag on for years. The city is still involved in a lawsuit over the Osborne Wastewater Treatment plant, where the legal fees are in the millions.
PTRWA Executive Director John Kime said it could be an expensive lawsuit. Darrell Frye, who represents Randolph County on the board, asked how they could be sued if the folks suing hadn't shown any damages.
Kime explained that they were being sued because these downstream owners of hydroelectric projects claimed that they had been harmed because the Randleman Dam restricted the water flow on the Deep River. But Kime said that they released about 18 million of gallons of water a day, which is three times the minimum stream flow used in these calculations. He also said they had requested the information from the plaintiffs that proved they had been damaged by the Randleman Dam, but so far had not received anything substantial. The PTRWA is asking the courts to force the plaintiffs to provide proof of damage so they will have something to dispute.
Kime also said some of the hydroelectric plants suing are not currently operating, but evidently are claiming that if they were operating they would be damaged.
The legal machinations have been going on since May 2008, and there is another court date set for May 18 in Guilford County Superior Court.
Hagan is one of the owners of Hydrodyne Industries LLC, which is down in the Sanford area. The other plaintiffs are L&S Water Power Inc., Brooks Energy LLC, Deep River Hydro, William Dean Brooks and Howard Bruce Cox.
Kime said one of the frustrating aspects of the suit is that the PTRWA started applying for licenses in 1988 and has had suits about the dam project go up to the North Carolina Court of Appeals, but in the end the state granted the PTRWA the permit to build the dam and an interbasin transfer certificate allowing it to transfer water from the Deep River to the Haw River. Kime said there have been only two or three other interbasin transfer certificates issued by the state, so while it may not sound like much, it is a huge hurdle they had to get over.
Kime, who is an engineer, not an attorney, said it seemed to him like the time to sue was over and if these folks could sue the water authority for exercising their state-approved permit, then pretty much anyone downstream all the way down to Wilmington could sue.
One interesting note is that although the PTRWA is being sued in part for taking water out of the Deep River basin, it hasn't taken any yet because the water plant has not been built and no water has been transferred to the Haw River basin yet.
Frye asked the question at the meeting about how they could be sued when the plaintiffs hadn't shown damages. Kime said he had seen figures based on some calculation about how much money would be lost over a 40-year period.
Hagan is a party to the lawsuit, and his law firm, Hagan Davis Mangum Barrett Langley & Hale, is handling the legal work for the suit.
So far one thing has been true about the PTRWA, when it looks like clear sailing ahead, a new storm always pops up on the horizon.
The good news about Randleman Lake is that the PTRWA expects to get permission to open the lake to fishing at some point this summer. Frye asked several times if it would be open by Memorial Day and was given two or three different reasons why it would not be. The recreational use of the lake is going to be severely restricted, even when it is open, but it isn't open to any recreational uses now and, according to the current predictions, won't be before June.
Yup. This is all about stealing more taxpayer money to line their own pockets.
This is proof that the people of NC aren’t what they used to be!
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