Would you pay more for clean water?

Water experts wonder if residents would be willing to pay more for clean water.

Several conservation groups are banding together with the goal of improving water quality by setting aside land close to rivers and streams. They say there has been success elsewhere. They want the same for the Catawba River basin.

“We think there’s opportunity within this basin,” said Susie Hamrick Jones with Foothills Conservancy, also a member of the Catawba-Wateree River Basin Advisory Commission.

Bill Holman, North Carolina director with The Conservation Fund, told the advisory commission at a recent meeting his group, in partnership with others, raised $170,000 in corporate and private grants in a year to purchase and preserve property near waterways to keep out harmful industrial, agricultural or other materials.

Holman said engineered approaches to water issues like creating reservoirs or deepening water intakes are important, as well as green methods such as land easements.

“You’ve got to do both if you’re going to sustain your water resources,” Holman said. “It’s part of the business case to be made.”

In Raleigh, N.C., residents pay one cent per every 100 gallons of water used to maintain a conservation fund for protecting almost 7,000 acres at about $70 million in property value, Holman said. A similar cent charge among the 75 water entities in the Catawba basin could mean $2.6 million annually just on the North Carolina side of the river.

“We’re water rich,” Holman said, “but we have to make sure we invest.”

Experts say every 10 percent of forest near public waterways equals a 20-percent reduction in water treatment costs. Holman referenced a 1998 study where Catawba basin residents were willing to pay up to $139 per year for watershed protection. Options for municipalities within the basin include line-item appropriations, surcharges, sales tax and voluntary check boxes on water bills.

“Within the Catawba basin it’s so critical to both states,” Jones said, asking the commission made up of water users and state legislators to continue discussions on the plan. “The river runs the economy of both states.”

As of 2011, almost 70 programs nationwide brought in public money for land conservation. An in-state effort in the 2.8 million-acre Savannah River basin in South Carolina began in 2009. Eric Krueger with the Savannah River Clean Water Fund said public programs have varying results. A voluntary check box generates far less than a surcharge.

“The output really has to match the need,” Krueger said. “How they’ve actually been doing it varies in different places. A lot of that is local politics.”

The Savannah nonprofit group set out to protect 8,000 acres per year. When they began, property surrounding their river was 78 percent forested.

“Getting that urgency message out there was a challenge for us,” Krueger said.

The amount of conserved land near waterways doubled the past 10 years, thanks to nonprofits. Krueger says a similar approach could help in the Catawba basin, and the sooner the better.

“By the time it becomes a concern,” he said, “there will not be enough land to make a difference.”

Conservationists want to approach public water providers to see if partnerships can be formed in the Catawba basin. A steady stream of funding, they say, will help attract matching grants to further their goals. They hope to work on both sides of the state line of the Catawba basin.

“For this effort to work,” Holman said, “it has to be collaborative.”

This story was originally published August 3, 2015 at 4:19 PM with the headline "Would you pay more for clean water?."