For the last two years, the Catawba Riverkeeper Foundation rallyed the Catawba River Basin to unite and strongly oppose the Concord-Kannapolis interbasin transfer. Record setting attendance at public meetings where more than 1300 citizens, elected officials, local goverments, economic development interests and environmentalists voiced clear opposition to the plan successfully reduced the amount of the transfer to less than half the amount originally requested-10 million gallons.

However, the decision by the NC Environmental Management Commission (EMC) to approve the permenent diversion of water from the Catawba River robs the river and its communities of millions of gallons of water that would otherwise protect the environmental health and ecological diversity of the Catawba River Basin. The  EMC decison was based on faulty environmental studies and errors in the procedure. Therefore, the Catawba Riverkeeper Foundation felt it had no choice but to appeal the decision to grant the partial transfer. The Southern Environmental Law Center is representing us in this case.  

A consortium of local governments in the Catawba River Basin also filed a contested case hearing. We are in the process of consolidating our cases so that together, environmentals and local governments can fight to stop millions of gallons of water from being permently drained out of our beloved neighborhood river. To view the petition for the contested case hearing please click Concord Kannapolis IBT Appeal.

Interbasin transfers are bad public policy.

Source River Impacts:

•         Reduced water flows - fresh water and estuarine ecology and biodiversity depend on flows

•         Downstream communities and aquatic life have less water for daily life

•         Loss of assimilative capacity-water pollution more concentrated

•         Upstream reservoirs drawn down to provide the additional water to meet the new demands of the interbasin transfer

Receiving River Impacts:

•         Increases point source pollution-more wastewater discharged

•         Promotes sprawl in an area that would not otherwise have the water resources to facilitate high growth

•         Increases runoff pollution from resultant sprawl-adds more fecal coliform bacteria, nitrogen, phosphorus and heavy metals to the river

Community Impacts:

•         Pits communities against each other because water resources are permently taken from one community and given to another community

•         Results in water wars

•         Years of litigation

Bottom Line: IBT’s steal the health and life from one river while increasing the pollution in another river.  IBT’s lead to the decline of both rivers with costly impacts to aquatic life and the communities that depend on these rivers for drinking water, power production, recreation, tourism and environmental health.