5 big challenges for water in western NC

The good news is that all of these challenges represent exciting opportunities to create a lot of green jobs!

Asheville, like the rest of the world, is facing uncertainty for the future of water.  In the face of worldwide warming trends predicted for the next century and beyond, we can expect to see our rainfall here in western NC  shift back toward the record drought conditions of 2007-2008 seems reasonable.

Here are just 5 of the challenges we face here in western NC.

1. Ground water tables, the water that is stored in the earth that feeds plants and streams, are drying up from both long term rainfall deficits and wasteful, out-dated water use and management practices.
2. The City of Asheville struggles to provide affordable water to citizens and deal with the effects of contamination of our watersheds from storm water contamination.
3. Across the region, severe flooding causes devastating loss to families and communities as well as dangerous pollution to the rivers that support life and local economies.
4. Property owners and business owners face rising costs to meet their water needs.
5. People in Asheville’s neighborhoods and suburbs, particularly the most high risk, are disconnected from each other and the land and water that sustain them, their communities and their livelihoods

Issues that have developed over decades have created a need for whole systems solutions at the grassroots level in WNC and in the US as a whole.

The LinkingWaters project is a grassroots solution that can be implemented at the neighborhood landscape level by homeowners, houses of worship and business property owners, in many case using tools no more complex than a shovel.

We believe solutions for our urban watersheds are possible at the local neighborhood level.  Indeed, we believe solutions may be impossible otherwise.

Repeat: The good news is that all of these challenges represent exciting opportunities to create a lot of green jobs!

The one BIG (I mean jaw-dropping) number that really woke me up!

1 MILLION GALLONS PER ACRE

That’s how much water fell in western NC during the worst “drought” year on record.

Yes, you read that right —

In 2007 – 2008, the year with the lowest rainfall amounts in recorded history in western NC, we received 1 million gallons of rain PER ACRE!!

So why did we even notice a so called “drought”?

Why are our ground water levels so low?  Why are our springs, wells and creeks drying up?

One big reason is that we DRAIN our rainwater away so aggressively.   We treat rain like a nuisance instead of like a gift and a treasure and a resource.

When we design land and city infra-structure to drain rainwater away as fast as possible (which is how we managed rainwater in most cities in the US) that rainwater becomes “stormwater”.

Stormwater carries pollution very swiftly from streets, parking lots, roof tops, fertilized lawns and the like into our urban streams. Large amounts of stormwater creates dangerous flash floods and severe pollution to the Swannanoa and French Broad River and the all the rivers they flow into all the way to the ocean.  Remember: we all live downstream.

The LinkingWaters project is designed to demonstrate ways that regular residents in Asheville’s neighborhoods can reclaim that rain water and help create good, green  jobs, encourage urban agriculture and protect our streams and rivers from damaging floods and pollution.