When talking about North Carolina’s water crisis, population growth is rarely discussed. Discussions only center around the need for more conservation, water rationing, and higher water rates along with vague references that “growth is inevitable.”

At the first Earth Day Celebration in 1970, scientists and environmentalists stated that “Every environmental problem is a population problem.” Environmental advocate Jacques Cousteau once said, “Population growth is the primary source of environmental damage.”

And through the years North Carolina’s population has exploded. In 2005 the Triangle Businesses Journal ran the headline, N.C. population growth fifth fastest in U.S. In 2006 the media reported that N.C. had become the 10th most populated state in the nation. And water supplies have been steadily dropping and in 2007 North Carolina was listed as the state worse hit by droughts and water shortages.

So what’s fueling North Carolina’s population growth? According to the N.C. Rural Economic Development Center 70% of the population growth from 1990 to 2000 was due to people re-locating here from other places. And, no, this doesn’t just mean immigrants, it means wealthy retirees looking for warm weather and golf courses and people from other states coming here for those highly government subsidized biotech jobs. (For more information see www.robincutson.com).

But North Carolina’s exploding population is causing long lasting damage to our ecosystem. When large portions of our lakes and streams dry up it means large numbers of fish, frogs, mussels, salamanders (and more) die off; along with the birds and other animals that depend on them for food. Many of us don’t think of this as long as the water still flows from our taps. And when groundwater tables drop, it doesn’t just mean shrubs and trees begin to die because their roots can no longer access the water increasing the risk of wildfires; it means the production of berries, nuts and acorns also declines and this means less food for the wildlife critical to a healthy ecosystem. Many of us also don’t think of this as long as water still flows from our taps.

And the common sense reality is that unless population growth is reined in (which means development is reined in), our water conservation efforts aren’t ensuring there’s more water in lakes and streams to help save our ecosystem and our wildlife or even to ensure we all have enough water in the future to meet our needs; it just means the water saved through conservation will be used to service new people living in new condos and housing developments. And this means our conservation efforts are just ensuring that wealthy developers can keep on developing and making huge profits.

And there are other consequences to increased population and dwindling water supplies. Power companies stated that last summer they came perilously close to having to shut down their nuclear reactors due to water shortages. So if we end up with power and water outages or even just astronomically high water and power bills then many of our existing businesses are going to begin looking for greener “wetter” pastures. And eventually people will also begin leaving. And what we will be left with is overdeveloped blight.

So what can citizens do? To curb population growth we need to curb development. This means citizens need to act locally and demand that Chapel Hill and Carrboro leaders stop handing out special use permits allowing developers to develop higher density housing in areas currently zoned for low density development. They don’t have to grant these special use permits; it’s up to their discretion. And we should also push them to downzone areas currently zoned high density to low density. This is entirely legal as long as certain conditions are met and could be done tomorrow. And then we can begin to encourage other water strapped areas in North Carolina to follow suit. But we can’t do any of this if we continue to treat population growth as a taboo subject.