City of Greensboro water fraud: The Randleman Dam Scam: Stakeholders below the Randleman Dam file suit against PTRWA

Click on map to view full size

Posted Friday April 17, 2009 by Mike J Baron

I realize that “interbasin transfer” is probably Greek to the average person. So I am providing my readers the above illustration to make them interbasin transfer experts in less than 3 minutes! Now do you see what the Deep River interbasin transfer commotion is all about?

Two days ago the Greensboro News & Record reported that owners of several small hydroelectric plants below the Randleman Dam are suing the Piedmont Triad Regional Water Authority (PTRWA)(See Owners of dams sue water authority). Like so many upset citizens living below the dam these mini-power-station operators are claiming their earning potential will be hurt by the water that PTRWA and Greensboro will soon be removing from the Deep River.

And today the Rhinoceros Times published "Hagan Suing Water Authority" --a story about the lawsuit and implications that are bound to enrich the continuing saga of the Ramblin' Dam--a tune just waiting to be written and sung by Arlo Guthrie of Alice's Restaurant fame.

Obviously if PTRWA has to defend itself in court it is going to raise the price of Randleman water. And one more time...the higher the price of water, the less of it is used. High prices are eliminating lawn watering and without it, Greensboro has no water shortage.

This interbasin transfer lawsuit could also delay the 2011 grand opening of Randleman Lake---just about ten years late! Worse than that, another delay could cancel the 2011 US Figure Skating Championships scheduled for the Greensboro Coliseum (CLICK on skaters). Now that you are a certified interbasin transfer expert too you see what big bad Greensboro is about to do to the folks downstream of the Randleman Dam. Do they have a right to be angry? YOU BET! You would be miffed too if every molecule of water stolen by Greensboro will never pass your way again?

And how angry should the stakeholders be when they discover that Greensboro snookered everybody into a completely unnecessary transfer of water?

Greensboro obviously fooled the Environmental Management Commission (EMC) into granting an interbasin transfer certificate. If you want to review Greensboro's permit, click here. It seems like all the water experts involved in this case believe everything they read. I wonder if after reading my stories would the EMC have still granted Greensboro a permit.

Here’s what the stakeholders and their attorneys and the EMC and the citizens of Greensboro still do not know—that Greensboro lied all the way to the Randleman Dam to grab an unnecessary chunk of the Deep River to help Greensboro grow (Click on CHART).

The scammers grossly inflated Greensboro's future water needs and now 13 years of water use history is the proof. Should Greensboro's citizens be upset?

Last week we saw how the Greensboro News & Record's two water experts from Duke and UNC failed to detect the tricks Greensboro employed including falsifying reports, manipulating its own water works to fail and concealing a 14-year decline in water use to dupe its citizens, NCDENR and the Environmental Management Commission into approving the Randleman Dam. Were these water experts recruited to report that Greensboro water is doing everything right? Are the dam scammers getting nervous?

A few weeks ago I reported how the Carolina Journal and a few other NC water experts got it all wrong about Greensboro water demand! In error both the newspaper and the experts assumed that Greensboro water use is increasing and that's why the Randleman Dam was built. What part of DECLINE do they not understand?

What good are government overseers like NC DENR and the EMC if they simply believe everything Greensboro tells them? They either need to dredge for facts or stay in their ivory towers and manage their ivory.

There is a cover-up under way. The dam scammers are doing their very best to keep a tight lid on the damaging information that points to a scam. The news media is acting like an accomplice.

This issue is a powder keg. Just wait until citizens learn that less water is used in Greensboro today than in 1995 when the scam for the dam was forming. 14 years of population growth and yet less water is needed today. Read my other stories and discover why.

My bosses had me pitching their dam project on radio and television claiming "WE HAVE TO HAVE THE RANDLEMAN DAM BY THE YEAR 2000!" Just two years after I was hired I knew it was all a scam. I was just a family man needing a job and I stepped into a crossfire of BIG MONEY and BIG PRIDE and people who believe the ends justify the means. Don't you locals know by now that anything Greensboro wants, Greensboro gets?

From that point forward I refused to lie for them. Suddenly after years of outstanding evaluations I was being accused of "not being a team player." Then I was warned. Then I was fired and I was never replaced. A few years later the rest of the Water Conservation program was eliminated--all because water use was declining and the US EPA was granting 1st place awards to Greensboro for reducing its water demand.

That was bad news for the dam scam. Water sales were declining so the annual report of water use had to be obscured since the mid-ninties. That's why Greensboro displays this confusing chart on its water webpage. You cannot understand it, and that's why its there.

Greensboro's chart shows lake performance, and my chart shows customer consumption. Why won't Greensboro show a history of customer consumption of water?

Greensboro never needed the Randleman Dam. It was a brilliant scam and it almost worked--except that these reports have become public with the help of the Internet and in spite of the news media blackout on the subject. As long as it is just me reporting, the dam scammers go scot free. But if one brave news reporter opens this can of worms, heads could roll. Lying. Corruption. False documentation. Hiring me under false pretenses. Misusing public funds.