Ray Sohl has been selected as the new Community Manager for Seven Lakes Landowners Association [SLLA], President Bob Darr announced during the Wednesday, August 29 Open Meeting.

Sohl will report for duty after he finishes up his last week as the Assistant Community Manager of the Governor’s Club, a prestigious gated community in Chapel Hill that boasts a 27-hole Jack Nicklaus Signature Course.

And while he is new to town, Sohl will share duties in the Seven Lakes office with several more familiar faces, including Assistant Community Manager Stephanie Cook, who previously worked with Talis and has been hired to continue in that role by CAS, along with longtime front office staff members Alice McPheeters and Brenda Massimo, who will continue to provide assistance on an as-needed basis. Bianca Pratt, another new hire, rounds out the CAS team.

During the meeting, the SLLA Board also reconfirmed the recently signed contract with Community Association Services [CAS], which is effective as of this weekend. A Pinehurst-based firm, CAS, Inc. manages more than 200 communities in North Carolina, including McLendon Hills and Seven Lakes West.

Stuck in an open position, an intake pipe valve near the top of Echo Dam must be replaced.

The good news is that the repair will only take one day to accomplish and is not anticipated to be a significant expense – as little as $5,000. The bad news is that water level in Lake Echo must be lowered approximately three feet before the work can begin.

The Seven Lakes Landowners Association [SLLA] initially suggested the repair was a "state-mandated" project, but Lakes & Dams Director Don Fentzlaff admitted that term was a slight stretch.

“This work is necessary to meet the design requirements for mandated siphon systems, as laid out by the NC Department of Environment and Natural Resources [NC-DENR]," Fentzlaff told The Times. “The valve was required when the dam was constructed, but it is malfunctioning and no longer in compliance with state standards or requirements.”

Repairing the valve is not an option -- it must be replaced, he explained.

Fentzlaff said the $5,000 estimate does not include an engineering fee to S&ME, who he has tasked with overseeing the installation process.

“We’ve tied the work into another job at Echo," Fentzlaff said. "Since they [S&ME] were going to be here anyway, we will have them oversee the project. It was the smart way to do it.”

A recent meeting with the NC Department of Environment and Natural Resources [NCDENR] has cast some doubt on the prospects for using a reservoir in Robbins as the cornerstone of a plan to bring more water to Southern Moore County.

Moore County Public Utilities Director Randy Gould presented a summary of the NCDENR session during the Tuesday, August 21 meeting of the Board of Commissioners. Gould projects that the County will need an addition 3.4 million gallons per day by 2042 to meet the growing demand for water.

As originally conceived, the Robbins Plan was to use water from Bear Creek to meet the County's ten year demand, and then to pipe water from an intake on Deep River to the Robbins reservoir in order to meet the thirty-year demand.

However this may no longer be as feasible. In the County’s meeting with NCDENR, they were told that only 50,000 gallons per day of water can be withdrawn from Bear Creek without major environmental studies.

An old permit that allowed the Town of Robbins to pump 1.5 million gallons per day has been decommissioned, explained Gould, and it is not likely to be re-granted.

As a result, the Robbins option would mean going to Deep River now, not in ten or fifteen years, and that project is expected to cost $30 million or more. In addition, the County will have to hire a consultant to shepherd an application through the complicated approval process of having the relevant area on Deep River reclassified for a drinking water intake -- a process that could take two or three years.

Commissioner Picerno, who attended the meetings with NCDENR said, “I have always tried to put Robbins at the top of our water solutions, because it is in Moore County. The information we got makes it much more difficult to justify number-wise.”

“I'm not saying it’s impossible,” said Picerno, “but it certainly puts it more in context for me as far as numbers and how you would pay for that expansion versus some of the other options we have on the table.”

[Read about the NCDENR meeting and other County water options in an earlier Times story.]

What began as a drive to protect the land around the Moore County Veterans Memorial in Carthage has become a sometimes acrimonious debate between Veterans and the Board of Commissioners that has dragged on now for four months.

In an attempt to settle the dispute, the Moore County Board of Commissioners approved, during their Tuesday, August 7 meeting, a list of members to serve on a new committee formed to determine how best to protect the Memorial.

But those appointments -- approved three-to-one, with Commissioner Tim Lea dissenting -- may have sparked much controversy than is quelled, because the veteran who has been most active in attempting to keep the Memorial issue before the public and the Commissioners, Westsider Chuck Spelman, was removed from the list of recommended appointees.

Spelman, a retired Army Major, is President of Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter 966; he has been a key player in the effort to have the land around the Veterans Memorial in Carthage protected, after learning that the Bojangles' restaurant chain had offered to purchase a portion of the property for a fast-food restaurant.

“What is at issue is ensuring the protection and preservation of the purpose and sanctity of the Moore County Veterans Memorial,” said Spelman earlier in the meeting.

The Commissioners, during their August 7 meeting, asked the original Veteran's Memorial Committee to prepare a list of recommended nominees for the new committee. Spelman's name was one of six on that list, presented in writing to the Commissioners.

Commissioner Lea’s motion to keep Spelman on the committee -- noting that he was specifically requested by the Veterans -- died due to the lack of a second from any of the other Commissioners.

Spelman told The Times, “I just want the truth to come out,” adding, “this was a volunteer committee. We all volunteered to be on this committee. All I ask for now is the truth.”

Issues ranging from the water supply to fire districts were on the agenda when the Moore County Board of Commissioners met with the Greater Seven Lakes Community Council [GSLCC] on Thursday, August 16.

Developing a strategy -- and an agreement -- that would allow Moore County Public Utilities [MCPU] to build a new water treatment plant and tap into the Town of Robbins' reservoir remains the front-burner option for bringing more water to Seven Lakes and the rest of Southern Moore County.

The key to that strategy will be placing a run-of-river intake in the Deep River, in order to pipe water from that source to the reservoir and treatment plant. A recent meeting with NC Department of Environment and Natural Resources officials revealed that Bear Creek -- once Robbins' source of water -- can't supply enough to serve as a primary source for the County.

Public Works Director Randy Gould explained that, if the County decides to build a water plant in Robbins, the Deep River will serve as its primary source of water, with the possibility of using Bear Creek water as a supplement.

“We have made some progress,” Gould said, of the county's effort to expand its water supply, “and have some options that are further down the road than they were last year.”

Much of the water the County produces currently comes from wells in the Pinehurst area, and MCPU is currently conducting a study that will provide some indication of the amount of water that is available in the aquifer that feeds those wells.

The study will also determine how much radium is in the aquifer, which will help in the selection of well sites. Several county wells have been contaminated by radium in the past.