Whether you call it a river, a creek, or a stream, these three interchangeable words describe flowing water on the Earth’s surface. September 28 is World Rivers Day, and as a conservation organization, Triangle Land Conservancy (TLC) is passionate about protecting the rivers that make up our region’s drinking water supply.
TLC serves a six-county region: Orange, Durham, Chatham, Lee, Wake, and Johnston. In this area, conserved properties fall under either the Neuse or Cape Fear River watersheds, meaning that all flowing water in our region finds its way to one of these rivers and eventually the Atlantic Ocean.
All lakes in the Piedmont of North Carolina are man-made, formed by damming rivers. Before Piedmont rivers were dammed these waterways flowed freely to the lowlands of the state and into the Atlantic Ocean. Now our lakes provide drinking water, water storage, and recreation opportunities.
Today, the Jordan Lake reservoir serves as the drinking water supply for 10 counties and nearly 700,000 residents and the Falls Lake Reservoir supplies six counties and over 600,000 residents. As the Triangle region continues to grow so does the demand for clean reliable water.
“Clean water is essential for a healthy community,” shares TLC Director of Conservation, East, Leigh Ann Hammerbacher. “Every parcel of land we protect supports clean water, whether its groundwater use for a well or a drinking water supply reservoir like Falls and Jordan Lake.”
While development can boost our region’s vitality, it also poses challenges for water quality. New construction often replaces natural areas with hard, impervious surfaces such as roads and buildings. With an inability to infiltrate the soil, stormwater runoff increases, often carrying pollutants like oil, fertilizers, and pet waste into waterways.
“Forests are our best filters for water,” Leigh Ann explains. “With more growth and development, we are not only losing our tree canopy, but we’re also losing our prime soils and early successional habitats that also filter and clean water.”
To address increasing development impacts on drinking water in the Triangle region, TLC has developed conservation strategy plans with partners for both the Neuse and Cape Fear basins.
“These plans look at a variety of factors, including the stream length, land cover, infiltration rates, wetlands, slope of the land, soil type and prioritize those spots that contribute the most to improving water quality,” Leigh Ann shares. “With limited financial resources, TLC works to protect the highest quality land that will safeguard our rivers.”
These programs include the Watershed Protection Program (formally known as the Upper Neuse Clean Water Initiative) and the Jordan Lake One Water program. Through these partnerships, TLC has helped protected about 20,000 acres of land and 200 miles of rivers and creeks, helping safeguard clean water in both Falls and Jordan lakes.
“The rivers are the backbone of the Piedmont and our area, and we are all stewards of them,” Leigh Ann concludes. “TLC has a huge responsibility to not only take care of the rivers located in the Triangle, but to help make sure that the water we’re sending to our neighbors downstream is clean.”
