2005 Rural Partners Forum
Remarks by Bill Holman
Thanks for the opportunity to be with you. I think most of you know for many years I was an environmental advocate, then Governor Hunt brought me into his administration so then I was the environmental bureaucrat. Most of those issues I worked on were the regulatory issues. The administration changed, I landed at the Clean Water Management Trust Fund in January of 2001. I was still trying to pull some of the arrows out of my back when I was asked to speak at a conference over at N.C. State with something called the Stream Restoration Institute. I thought, well, it'll be a couple hundred folks there, more academics, and we'll be talking about hydrology, fluid dynamics, and all this stuff. They'll want some perspective of the political world. So I go to this conference, and this is kind of my ah hah moment, that this restoration economy is really a big deal. There were 500 people there. Indirectly, some of them were working with me - on Clean Water Management Trust Fund projects. Some of them were working on Department of Transportation mitigation and restoration projects, some were working for private developers, some were working for local governments, doing stormwater and stream restoration. There was an industry, a whole industry there just taking off. And one of the reasons it is taking off is some wise decisions our legislature made back in 1996, when the Clean Water Management Trust Fund was established, what is now called the Ecosystem Enhancement Program was established, our buffer regulatory programs were established and fought over. The tools were put in place to begin an active effort across our state in not only protecting special places, but beginning to restore wetlands and streams and landscapes. What I found interesting in this group, is "integration." When I was speaking to that group, yes, there were engineers, but there were also biologists. That's what my background is. There were landscape architects, contractors. There were the guys that operate the back hoes, the bull dozers and have spent most of their careers, of course, straightening out those streams, and filling in those wetlands and flood plains and now they're being paid to go the other way. So, you had some reformed pioneers and some people still doing both kinds of work. There were lawyers, MBAs; there was a whole industry being created of folks trying to understand and restore our environment.
My particular program - I think there was a real genius in its establishment by the legislature, in the way we work - is the Clean Water Management Trust Fund, a financing tool that is really driven by local communities. It's driven by a town, a county, a nonprofit, looking at their assets, deciding what their priorities are and then applying and competing for funds. There are some great examples of that. I'll talk about a few of those kinds of projects just to give you an idea. The town of Washington, for example, has done a major renovation of its downtown waterfront. They are trying to get some economic activity in their downtown. They have a wonderful resource in the Pamlico River. They also have a wonderful resource in their historic buildings. They started out thinking how to attract investment and how to make sure there's public access to the river. This is a good example of integration, I think, because they have their economic goals but they also realize that the whole downtown was basically draining their storm water. All the pollution was basically being put into pipes and going straight into the river. It had been that way for probably a couple hundred years. So they integrated an economic strategy, but also a desire to take that storm water that's polluting the river, one of their great assets, and treat that storm water before it's put into the river. They came to us and competed for months, got a grant and now downtown Washington's storm water is treated with some constructive wetlands, and those wetlands are more and more attractive. This is a good example of what a community can do when they have a vision of what they want their town to be and they're integrating their local economic and environmental goals.
Another example and I know this is one we stumbled into: A few years ago, Bessemer City, Gaston County, approached us. They were in trouble with the Division of Water Quality, they had a failing wastewater treatment plant, they had a lot of leaking sewer lines, and they decided that they needed to get out of the wastewater treatment business, that Gastonia had the capacity, they ought to just hook up to Gastonia. So we offered them to hook up to Gastonia, eliminated their wastewater discharge. We also helped them repair some of their leaking sewer lines. Then we shook hands, said goodbye and this year, Dole Foods, lands in Bessemer City. [Missing text] ... but also they are better prepared for economic development.
At the Clean Water Management Trust Fund, we do work in both preservation and restoration of business. The preservation of business - we've probably got another 10 or 15 years left, but its going to run its course pretty soon. The high quality natural areas that are good for our state parks and our game lands and our state forests - we are in a competition with developers for some of those tracks. We're going to get some of them, the developers will get most of them, but that's going to be over in the near term. From there, I think the Clean Water Management Trust Fund will be moving more fully into a restoration mode, and I'll give you a few examples. Some of us are veterans of Hurricane Floyd, and there are some good examples of communities that suffered tremendously and are trying to rebuild better. We've worked specifically with Kinston and Goldsboro. They've taken some of their buyout lands the state and FEMA helped them purchase. We are trying to help them restore them into urban forests, urban greenways, and are also trying to get some better storm water treatment in those areas. So they are trying to take again something that has been a liability - neighborhoods that flood - and turn them into a community asset. Great work!
The mayor of Canton is here. We also do work in watershed protection. Several years ago, Mayor Smathers and his colleagues in the town of Canton were looking at their assets. One of their assets was this wonderful watershed, a pristine watershed they had outgrown and no longer needed. They could have sold that property to a developer, but they donated half the value, and we provided them some money. In turn, they reinvested the money we gave them into their parks and recreation and other improvements in the town. They revitalized their community, and we gained protection of a pristine watershed. These watershed protection examples are beginning to grow all over the state. Mayor Meaker here in Raleigh just announced the Falls Lake initiative. Generally, Raleigh and Wake County aren't considered rural areas, but Falls Lake is urban and rural because people in Raleigh depend on water from Falls Lake as do the citizens of places like Butner and Durham. Falls Lake is not just Falls Lake. There are a series of water supplies in that watershed. People in these cities are basically willing to make payments to folks in the rural areas to keep the buffers clean, to protect and restore the wetlands, in exchange for better quality drinking water. Folks in the rural areas hopefully gain some capital they are able to reinvest in their farming operation or sending their kids to college or whatever they decide. A huge restoration operation for our state is in our Albemarle/Pamlico estuary, the second largest in America, and the largest lagoon estuary in America because the outer banks form a little lagoon area. It is, of course, surrounded by small towns. Other places, like Florida, are spending big bucks to restore their estuaries. Florida currently has a $10.5 billion initiative to restore the everglades. Louisiana has quoted $20 billion to restore their wetlands and now, after Katrina, I am sure that number has increased. Chesapeake Bay is investing billions. The potential for us, for a mere billion or so, to restore that estuary to health, to restore that fishery, to restore those ecosystems and help aid the redevelopment in all those communities around the sound, is huge. This could be a world-class fishery. Frankly, most fish species found in the northern Atlantic Ocean grow in our sounds.
Allow me to wrap up by saying, we spent about 400 years ditching and draining and filling a lot of our natural resources. We ran out some of our wildlife. It will take us at least a few hundred years to put it back, but there are huge opportunities for our state to restore water quality, to restore wildlife, restore fisheries and ecosystems. I am excited to work with folks like you to get it done. Thank you.
