Western Wake Partners -- what is the choice really?

It's pretty apparent that the fix is in and our GOP board majority will be voting to give the Western Wake Partners the green light to run a sewer discharge pipe from its proposed New Hill regional sewage treatment plant to the Cape Fear River through southeastern Chatham County.

The signs that tell us this are the FAQ on the county's website and the hard work being done online by Tom Glendenning, Donna Kelly,  and other Bock campaign team members on the Chatham Chatlist and Gene's Chatham Online BBS to lay the groundwork with an online campaign designed to make people think that the WWP pipe would be good for Chatham, plus if we don't do it the state will make us do it anyway.

This blog post focuses on the latter argument. The argument being sold by Bock's online campaign team is that if the commissioners say Yes, we get the pipeline with the concessions from WWP/Cary as outlined in the county's FAQ. But if they say no, the state will make us do it anyway, and we won't get any concessions.

Concessions? What Concessions?

The problem with that argument is that WWP/Cary has in fact put no real concessions on the table.  The key "concession" being offered is a possible, maybe, if they feel like letting us, opportunity to tap into the discharge pipe.  People who are pushing this pipe often claim that it would help infrastructure and economic development, but they gloss over the fact that it's a discharge pipe for treated wastewater, not raw sewage.

That means that Chatham is not being offered any sewer treatment capability.  In order to tap in to the treated water discharge pipe, Chatham would have to treat the water first.  That would require it to build its own wastewater plant and sewer infrastructure, and then we could put the output of that infrastructure into this pipe.  That is unaffordable and won't happen, so this "concession" means nothing.

Another featured concession is Cary's promise to come up with a "rescue plan" for Chathamites near its annexation area with failing well and septic systems.  But this isn't a concession, it's business as usual for Cary, which routinely provides this "rescue plan" in Wake County already.  The rescue plan is this: if you have a failing system, Cary will hook you up to their system, but you have to pay the full tap-on fees and agree to be annexed into the town.  (I used to live in Cary and attended many town council meetings in which this plan was implemented for Wake County homeowners)

The other concessions mentioned in the FAQ are too minor to bother with, or are things WWP would likely have to do anyway.

If you don't want to, we'll make you do it

I also don't accept the argument that if the state passes a legislative bill forcing  Chatham to take the pipe, Chatham will get no concessions.  Legislation is a messy process of negotiation and also CYA, with lots of interests represented, including Chatham County and other rural areas that are wary of urban power in the state legislature.  In other words, Paul Stam, who has been represented as the person who will put this bill through,  is 1 vote out of 120 votes in the state house.  Add in the entire Wake County delegation (some of whom don't represent areas served by WWP) and it's up to  9 out of 120 in the state house and 4 out of 50 in the state senate.

There is a good chance that if our Republican legislature, which campaigned on favoring property rights and curbing municipal power in annexation matters, is going to go against its stated agenda to screw Chatham County and its southeastern property owners, they would put concessions to Chatham in the bill to give themselves political cover for their betrayal of principles.  They may also have to do this to get the support of other rural legislators who aren't inclined to help an urban county railroad a rural one, because Wake County does not have a majority in the legislature and will need help to pass such a bill.  And in that case the concessions would be written into state law, instead of just being an informal agreement may or may not be honored.

What they want you to think the choice is

So Bock's online campaigners are trying to portray this as a choice between these two alternatives:

1. Vote yes to WWP and get concessions from WWP
2. Vote no to WWP and be forced by the state to take the pipe with no concessions from WWP

With the assumption that under alternative 1, the county at least gets something.  The problem with this is that it's a false alternative predicated on the idea that WWP is actually offering meaningful concessions, which it is not, and that state legislation would have no concessions to Chatham, which is not a sure thing.   This set of fake alternatives is being sold to us to give political cover to developer-friendly Chatham County commissioners who plan to green light this project.

What the choice really is

The real alternatives are:

1. Vote yes to WWP and get no meaningful concessions from WWP
2. Vote no to WWP and be forced by the state to take the pipe, with concessions that could range from none, to almost none (which is what is being offered now),  to more than is being offered now 

You may ask, what's the real difference between 1 and 2 above if either one may yield no concessions, especially if the state law doesn't give any concessions to Chatham?

My answer to that is with alternative 2 Chatham County commissioners listen to and stand up for Chatham Citizens.  With alternative 1 they listen to and stand up for Western Wake Partners and by extension the Cary and Apex developers who will benefit from the expanded sewer capacity that WWP brings.