Benfield kicks off Soil & Water re-election campaign effort

August 15, 2010

HUDSON—The only elected supervisor currently serving on a short-handed Caldwell Soil & Water Conservation District board is starting his re-election campaign by pointing out a sure way to clean up an “impaired” Lake Rhodhiss, the county’s primary source of public drinking water.

Dennis A. Benfield of Hudson, the only candidate listed on the non-partisan ballot for one of two four-year terms on the Caldwell SWCD board of supervisors, pointed out that four municipally-owned wastewater treatment plants currently dump the majority of two major polluting nutrients into the lake.

First elected in 2006, Benfield has spent most of the last four years studying water quality issues as a member of several committees devoted to studying specific streams and their issues, including the Catawba River and Lower Creek.

“The Morganton, Valdese and Lenoir wastewater plants—using 35-year-old technology—are putting about two-thirds of the phosphorus and over half of the nitrogen into Lake Rhodhiss,” he pointed out. “These are two of the primary nutrients in fertilizers, but runoff from farmers, cattlemen and nurserymen combined amounts to a very small part of the total.”

“The biggest single thing we can do to improve Rhodhiss water quality is to improve the productivity of those four wastewater treatment plants. That’s a known fact.”

Lake Rhodhiss was declared “impaired” by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the 1972 Clean Water Act about five years ago. These issues are discussed in great detail on the website of the Western Piedmont Council of Governments—www.wpcog.org/rhodhiss/. Specifically, the site lists 22 recommendations for “restoration” of the lake.

“These local cities and towns may not feel any collective responsibility for cleaning up Caldwell County’s drinking water, but the facts are what they are—and they know it. It’s one thing to study the situation and discover the facts; it’s something else to put together a plan to improve the situation.”

Benfield added that all three municipalities also have employees serving on the Western Piedmont Water Resources Committee, the Lower Creek Advisory Team and the Lake Rhodhiss Study Committee.

“At various times in the last four years, municipal employees have been briefed on water-quality issues on these committees as I have. Still, there’s been no long-term cooperative plan among the towns to clean up the lake,” he said.

“I don’t want to point fingers; I want to see some cooperation by people, who know they have water-quality problems, move forward with some positive actions.”

Benfield, 61, won election to the Caldwell SWCD in 2006 after working with the coalition of Catawba River government officials who were fighting a petition by Concord and Kannapolis for an Inter-Basin Transfer (IBT) of 38 million gallons per day to relieve water quantity issues in Cabarrus County.

Eventually, the Catawba Coalition succeeded in getting the Cabarrus IBT amount reduced to 10 millions gallons per day, then down to three million gallons per day. Further, the coalition partners testified at a legislative study committee in Raleigh, and the General Assembly changed the IBT law to make IBTs much harder to get in the future.

“The IBT controversy showed that willing county and municipal governments—working together with focus and determination—can certainly achieve good things for our people. I believe it may take a similar effort between Caldwell and Burke counties, along with the municipalities, to clean up Lake Rhodhiss,” Benfield said.

The Caldwell SWCD board, after a death and a resignation in 2009, currently has four supervisors rather than the five provided by state law. Ordinarily, two supervisors are elected in even-numbered years, and one in odd years. All terms are four-year terms, and the intended makeup was always to be three elected and two appointed.

“I’m very proud of what our supervisors do to improve soil and water conservation in Caldwell County,” Benfield said. “We help our farmers and rural landowners put in Best Management Practices to enhance our stream quality and erosion control, and we use state and federal funds to help them pay for the BMPs.”

He said major efforts the last four years have focused on stream bank stabilization, fencing cattle out of streams, establishing conservation buffers, helping nurserymen build specialized agrichemical facilities and helping cattlemen put in feed-and-water/waste storage buildings.

Benfield is a semi-retired small business insurance agent and has been a part-time college instructor. He and his wife live on a tract along Big Gunpowder Creek in southern Caldwell County, where he grows blueberries, strawberries, apples and peaches and is starting a greenhouse operation.