Mark Chilton's blog
I just drove across University Lake at Jones Ferry Road. I reckon we have all noticed the grass growing on the bare bottom of the Northe nd of the reservoir, but it looked jsut now like the grass was starting to turn brown . . . Anyway, so the OWASA Board of Directors will be meeting this Thursday at 7:30 PM to consider whether to declare a Stage Two water shortage.
Here's hoping OWASA will proceed to stage two. It looks like we have about 5 and a half months of water left if we keep consuming the way we have been.
Stage Two (2) Water Shortage
. . . Upon OWASA's declaration of a Stage Two Water Shortage, the following actions shall be taken with the goal of reducing overall water demand by fifteen (15) percent:
Water use by individually metered residential customer accounts and by individually metered single-family residential irrigation-only accounts shall be limited to no more than an average of 800 gallons per day during any monthly billing cycle beginning after the declaration of a Water Supply Shortage or Water Supply Emergency and ending while such restrictions are still in effect.
For my New Year's Resolution for 2007, I decided to take tangible steps to reduce my carbon footprint. I was already doing something by riding my bicycle more and driving less, but I wanted to go a step further. But, I didn't want to spend a lot of money doing it.
First I audited my family's energy purchases. We were buying gasoline, electricity, and natural gas. I determined that we were directly generating 81 pounds of CO2 a day! That's far below the national average in the United States, but it is still a big number.
Next, I looked at the cost of strategies for reducing my carbon footprint. Sadly, some strategies were quite expensive, but other strategies were very cost-effective. I was ready to have my New Year's resolution cost me at least a little money, but I wasn't ready for the realization that my resolution might cost less!
This week's Independent Weekly recognizes two Orange County residents (and a number of others in the Triangle) with their annual Ctizen Awards. The North Carolina Peace and Justice Coalition's Andrew Pearson ( www.ncpeacejustice.org ) and the People's Channel's Chad Johnston ( www.thepeopleschannel.org ) were both recognized. You can read about all five honorees at www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A40503
Congratulations to both Andrew and Chad (and the many people involved in their respective organizations) for this recognition!
Let's take a look at the non-partisan elections on the ballot this November.
Local Judicial Races
There are plenty of judicial races, but there's only one local competition: The much discussed Superior Court race in which we get to pick two from a list of four. The candidates are The Hon. Carl Fox (former DA), The Hon. Allen Baddour, Attorney Adam Stein and The Hon. Chuck Anderson (currently a District Court Judge). Plenty has been said about this race already on another thread so I will leave it at that.
District Court Judge Joe Buckner is running for re-election, but is unopposed on the ballot. He certainly deserves and will get another term.
The state-wide judicial races are also non-partisan, although, as it happens, all of the races have one Democrat and one Republican running. There will be no indication on the ballot as to which party the judicial candidates belong to.
North Carolina Supreme Court
The Leadership Advisory Committee on Carolina North had an interesting discussion about housing as a part of Carolina North this afternoon.
Here are some prepared comments that I presented as a way of launching the discussion:
The housing problem at Carolina North is, in short, that the new workers at Carolina North will either live at Carolina North or they will live elsewhere and need to commute to the campus. There is not a great deal of vacant housing currently available within the Chapel Hill Transit service area (although there is some), so new employees will either have to occupy housing that is to be built in the Chapel Hill Transit service area, or they will have to live outside that service area and commute. Let's take a look at the scale of the problem:
The Ayers/Saint/Gross Development Plan commissioned by the University proposed to build the following:
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