Politics

City water system not like Asheville situation, McGrady says

Katie Hicks, Kim Colson, state Rep. Chuck McGrady and city Utilities Director Lee Smith participated in a panel on public water systems Thursday in Fletcher.

By Bill Moss, Published: October 23, 2015

FLETCHER — Although Hendersonville still owns its water system, the prospect that the city utility could be forced into a regional authority surfaced when the state Legislature acted to take Asheville’s water system without compensation.

The question about Hendersonville's future set off one of the few contentious moments in a forum Thursday night at Fletcher Town Hall that posed the question “Who Owns WNC's Water?" The answer: That depends.

State Rep. Chuck McGrady defended the action of the General Assembly to force Asheville’s water system into a new regional authority that he said would be governed by local officials and would be more responsive to the needs of the region. Hendersonville, he added, need not fear the same fate as long as it does not use water as "a weapon" against neighbors.
“There’s a difference between Asheville and Hendersonville,” said McGrady, a third-term Republican from Hendersonville. “Asheville has nearly a hundred years of using its water as a weapon. The city of Hendersonville has not. You can make an argument for bringing the city of Hendersonville’s water and sewer into it but frankly the issue is more on the sewer side. It doesn’t make economic sense because of the cost and embedded capital in the sewer side.”
The Legislature under both Democrats and Republicans has a history of reacting when a city “took money out of the system and used it for city purposes or used the system against its neighbors,” McGrady said.
Sponsored by Carolina Public Press, a public interest online news service that covers the N.C. mountains, the forum also included Kim Colson, director of the N.C. Division of Water Infrastructure; Katie Hicks, assistant director of Clean Water for North Carolina, which advocates for clean affordable water; and Lee Smith, the utilities director for the city of Hendersonville.
“Speaking as a member of a public utility, certainly I’m concerned,” Smith said when asked his reaction to the Asheville water situation. “We feel like what we’re doing is what’s best for our customers in repairing and replacing our infrastructure and putting new infrastructure in place. To have that taken away, I guess you hesitate before you spend the capital, not knowing what might happen.”
Hicks, too, said public utilities across the state have reason to be troubled by the Asheville precedent.
“The issue I see as a sticking point with the transfer is this was a process that was gone through. This was not a decision that our community made coming together,” she said. “It was something that was legislated in Raleigh” without input from Asheville residents. “Our concern really with this is, will it set a precedent now across the state. For other towns across the state this may make it feel like they’re walking on quicksand" when they invest in a system "that is then taken away and transferred to another system by the General Assembly. Then they no longer have that asset and there’s no compensation." She added that, “By moving the system from an elected body to an appointed body there is a level of separation from the public.”
McGrady objected when Carolina Public Press reporter Jon Elliston asked a follow-up about water systems “being directed out of Raleigh.”
“They’re not being directed out of Raleigh,” McGrady said. “The Metropolitan Sewer and Water District will be directed by local officials. We’ve got a great model, in the Metropolitan Sewer District. But for what Raleigh did, what would the French Broad River be?”
Charged with protecting the French Broad, the MSD has been a success, McGrady said.
“The Municipal Sewer District is largely responsible for cleaning up the French Broad River,” he said. “It has worked. It has done exactly what the General Assembly wanted done.”