The Log | School News
More than 400 Turn Out for Town Hall Meeting on Drought
A capacity crowd of more than 400 people turned out in January for “Will the Water Run Out?” a public town hall meeting on water conservation and the drought hosted by the Nicholas School.
[for more]The meeting focused on current and future water concerns facing the Duke and Durham, N.C., communities as a result of persistent drought conditions that began last summer. Numerous local leaders, including Durham Mayor Bill Bell and Durham County Commission Chair Ellen Reckhow, were among the crowd that packed into the Doris Duke Center at the Sarah P. Duke Gardens. Taking advantage of an uncharacteristically balmy January night, many in the crowd overflowed onto the patio and lawn behind the center and watched the meeting on large-screen monitors.
Nicholas School Dean William L. Chameides moderated the meeting. He noted that although Durham has weathered worse droughts in the past, including those in the 1920s and the historic 1932–34 Dust Bowl, there is a key difference today.
“The Triangle is now home to millions, not thousands,” Chameides said. “The demand for water has grown along with our population.”
A panel of local experts from Duke, the City of Durham and government agencies joined Chameides at the meeting. They made brief presentations and then fielded nearly an hour and a half of questions from the crowd.
Among them were Jerad Bales of the U.S. Geological Survey Water Science Center in Raleigh; Robert Jackson, Nicholas Professor of Global Environmental Change and professor of biology at Duke; Kemel Dawkins, vice president for campus services at Duke; Bill Holman, director of state policy at Duke’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions; Sydney Miller of the Triangle J Council of Governments; and Ted Voorhees, Durham deputy manager.
Avner Vengosh, associate professor of earth and ocean sciences at the Nicholas School, helped organize the town hall meeting and was one of three hydrologists on hand to assist panelists in answering questions from the audience.
Joining him as experts-on-call were Melinda Chapman of the U.S. Geological Survey Water Sciences Center, and Rick Bolich of the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
Many in the crowd voiced their concern that voluntary conservation is not enough and that more needs to be done to prevent the water supplies from running out. Numerous questions focused on the possibility of imposing tiered water rates to penalize heavy water users, or on the impact more than a decade of steady development in the Triangle was having on water quality and availability.
Duke and Durham officials promised to continue working together to find solutions and keep the public informed. We face some “great challenges” in both the short and long term, Chameides said. He pledged that the
Nicholas School will continue to work with partners on and off campus to “find a sustainable path.”
photo captions: Top Left: Dean William L. Chameides; Bottom Right: More than 400 attended the Water Town Hall
Town Hall photos by Megan Morr