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Charlotte Water’s plan to bring more water from the Catawba River basin to the Rocky River basin has been put on hold until 2028. The state budget, signed on July 7, created a temporary moratorium that starts a study at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to look into how North Carolina should manage its water supply in multiple basins, including the Catawba, Cape Fear and Neuse river basins,l without damage to the water supply. The study plans to also evaluate whether North Carolina water infrastructure is sufficient for continuing to provide clean water through treatment plants and water intake systems, as well as looking into alternatives such as conservation or water reuse. It comes after Charlotte Water asked the NC Environmental Management Commission in February 2024 to increase the amount of water it can transfer from one river system to the other. Meanwhile, Charlotte’s population is growing rapidly, with the city adding more residents over any other in the past year.
An interbasin transfer is when water is taken from one river system and put in another instead of returning to where it came from. Moving too much water from a basin can negatively affect downstream environments, which is why large transfers need state review before approval.
Charlotte Water is currently only allowed to transfer up to 33 million gallons of water daily. While the utility filed a notice of intent in 2024 to increase that limit, it did not formally request a specific increase.
In a statement provided to The Charlotte Observer, Charlotte Water said it’s open to collaborating with key players across the state, but expressed concern over possible negative impacts of the provisions.
“We are concerned that provisions in the budget will negatively impact Charlotte Water’s ability to provide the services our region and state rely on,” said Jennifer Frost, a representative from Charlotte Water. “As a routine and highly regulated part of regional infrastructure, any updates to our interbasin transfers involve rigorous, science-backed studies to ensure our shared water resources remain fully protected.”
Brandon Jones, the Catawba Riverkeeper says the extension will give officials more time to evaluate water plans.
“This is a finite resource. It’s really important to understand as a community what these trade-offs are, and then decide as a community how we want to allocate this limited resource,” Jones said.
Jones said an increase in transfers between river systems would normally not affect the downstream communities, but potentially could in a drought. Currently, North Carolina is experiencing a drought that’s especially intense in the Piedmont region, which has led to Charlotte Water placing restrictions on water usage.
“We are decreasing our resiliency in the face of drought. And that’s not true just for moving water out of the basin. That’s also true for using water, and so as the population grows in these areas, as we, you know, potentially use more water for electricity or more water for other types of industry.” Jones hopes the study finds improvements to the current system Charlotte Water works under, and that the state avoids overinvesting into industries that take up a lot of water such as data centers.
“We can look at droughts or we can look at what’s happening out west to know that that is not a sustainable practice. We cannot continue just to keep giving out more and more water to whoever just grows first fastest,” Jones said. “And so we need to do long-term water planning, and we need to have a system in place so that if you need to pull out more water, you can try and mitigate that.”
