Storyline · 1968–1990
Chapel Hill asked the county in 1968 to limit building on the University Lake watershed, and in 1973 county officials heard warnings that dense building there would pollute it. In 1981 the county commissioners restricted subdivisions in the University Lake and Upper Eno watersheds. Carrboro amended its land use ordinance to protect University Lake in 1983, and in 1984 the county took comment on protected areas around University Lake and the proposed Cane Creek watershed. From 1986 the Amberly subdivision tested the watershed rules: Carrboro annexed and zoned it in 1987 over a residents' suit, OWASA halted new water and sewer lines into the watershed, and in 1989 the state refused a permit for the subdivision's private sewage plant. In 1990 the county eased its interim lot rule for the University Lake watershed, and about 300 people came to a hearing on permanent limits that landowners opposed.
On May 13, 1968, the night they adopted the open housing ordinance and after a week of dispute over the Ridgewood trailer park, the Chapel Hill aldermen asked the county commissioners to create a residential district on the University Lake watershed allowing no more than one dwelling an acre unless it was served by a public sewer, and to extend county zoning to the part of Bingham Township inside the watershed. By 1971 Carrboro's planning and zoning district ran west along Jones Ferry Road to where the road crosses an arm of the lake. When planning boards and elected officials from across the county met at the Carrboro Town Hall on September 20, 1973, they heard warnings that dense building on the watershed would pollute it from septic tanks, calls for compatible zoning among jurisdictions, and a water study naming Cane Creek, piped along N.C. 54, as the best supplement to University Lake.
In August 1981 the Orange County commissioners restricted new subdivisions in the University Lake watershed, which covers parts of Chapel Hill and Bingham townships. On November 17 they voted 3-2 to prohibit subdividing land in the Upper Eno watershed until they acted on the recommendations of a county water resources task force. That watershed takes in over half of Cheeks Township and about a third of Cedar Grove Township, including land around the Ben Johnston Reservoir, Hillsborough's main water supply.
In Carrboro, where the aldermen were weighing a proposal to rezone part of the University Lake watershed for industry, Town Manager Richard Hunter had appointed a Carrboro Water Quality Task Force by February 1983 to study how the change would affect the air and water supply of Carrboro and Chapel Hill. Everett Billingsley of OWASA called its report progressive and noted that only about 9 percent of the 30-square-mile watershed lay in Carrboro's planning jurisdiction, 8 percent in Chatham County and the rest under Orange County. On September 13, after a hearing attended by about 80 people, the aldermen voted unanimously to amend the town's Land Use Ordinance to protect the lake, the main water source for Chapel Hill and Carrboro, about 70 percent of whose shoreline lay in Carrboro's jurisdiction. The amendments, the result of the task force's two-and-a-half-year study under Alderman Steve Rose, graduated residential density, rezoned the watershed district, kept natural buffers, limited paved surfaces, defined hazardous substances and required sediment and erosion control.
At a hearing in Hillsborough on November 5, 1984 the county commissioners took comment on designating over 6,500 acres in the University Lake and proposed Cane Creek watersheds as water quality critical areas, with development standards to protect existing and planned water supplies. Billingsley, OWASA's executive director, said the authority backed the designation but found the boundaries too small and the standards too weak, and opposed any industrial development in the watersheds.
On October 7, 1986 officials of Carrboro, Chapel Hill, Orange County and OWASA met at the Hotel Europa to discuss development in the University Lake watershed, where the Carrboro aldermen and the developers of the Amberly subdivision wanted water and sewer lines extended; county and Chapel Hill officials wanted a water-quality study first. On November 11 the aldermen voted 5 to 2 to cut the permitted density on land within 300 feet of the watershed to one unit per two acres and to let water and sewer lines replace septic tanks there; residents and Chapel Hill officials said Carrboro should have waited for an OWASA watershed study and a joint policy. On January 27, 1987 the aldermen unanimously endorsed the Joint Planning Watershed Committee's call for Carrboro, Chapel Hill and Orange County to plan for the watershed together, with no annexation of watershed land until OWASA finished its study. By the summer of 1987 OWASA, answering the Amberly developer's request for service, had imposed a moratorium on extending water and sewer lines into the watershed until the study was done; Mayor James Porto Jr. later objected that OWASA already ran lines into the watershed as far as Carrboro Community Park.
On July 28 the aldermen voted to annex and zone 144 acres for Amberly, about 150 single-family houses, and granted it a conditional-use permit, with alderman Judith Wegner voting against; Porto said it was the first development Carrboro had approved on its part of the watershed. On August 27 nine residents and neighboring property owners sued the town, arguing that the annexation, zoning and permits had been done in the wrong order, amounted to illegal contract zoning and endangered the county's main water supply. On September 24 the OWASA board moved to hire Camp, Dresser and McKee, whose proposal put the cost at $80,000 to $100,000, to study how development affected water quality in the watershed. In early October the county commissioners authorized legal action against a privately run dump on Jo Mac Road, west of Carrboro, that had operated for about five years without a special-use permit, fearing harm to University Lake, the water supply for about 55,000 people, and on October 13 the Carrboro aldermen endorsed Chapel Hill's decision to require a public hearing before any development permit in the University Lake and Cane Creek watersheds. On October 22 the OWASA board voted unanimously to deny the developer's requests for an on-site sewer system and for fire hydrants, upholding its moratorium. On November 3 Eleanor Kinnaird, who opposed Amberly, unseated Porto, who supported it, 793 votes to 646, in a race the Daily Tar Heel said turned on the subdivision.
In the spring of 1988 Carrboro banned communal septic tanks, the system first proposed for Amberly. In December a draft of the consultants' study recommended that Carrboro bar development in the watershed denser than one unit per two acres and ban package wastewater treatment plants there; it became the basis of Carrboro's and OWASA's objections to Amberly, planned at one unit per 1.3 acres. On January 3, 1989 the aldermen endorsed Mayor Kinnaird's letter telling the state Division of Environmental Management that the new wastewater system proposed for Amberly would need the board's approval of a site plan change under the town's 1987 permit. At a state hearing at Carrboro Elementary School on February 2, most speakers urged the division to deny or defer a permit for the plant; Billingsley called the application incomplete and the plant badly placed and designed, and Kinnaird and county commissioners chairman Moses Carey asked for deferral. In the week of April 17 the division refused the permit. The developer then asked OWASA and the aldermen for service, calling a refusal a breach of his rights, as OWASA's moratorium expired on April 23 and its board proposed to extend it another year.
At an Orange County meeting at Phillips Junior High on January 30, 1990, landowners in the University Lake watershed objected to proposals allowing one building per five acres and 4 percent impervious surface and asked how they would be paid for lost development. OWASA's consultants, Camp, Dresser and McKee, reported the lake's nutrient enrichment about 80 percent worse than nearby sources, and Judith Wegner presented a joint committee's 13 recommendations. On February 5 the county commissioners amended their interim rule for the watershed so that people who owned land there on October 1 could split off up to five two-acre lots, with the rest held to a five-acre minimum; the interim rule ran to April 2. About 300 people filled Carrboro Elementary School for the joint hearing on February 28 on the consultants' proposed limits, five-acre lots or two-acre lots with ponds to catch runoff. UNC engineering professor Daniel Okun defended protecting the drinking water source of about 55,000 people, while county commission candidate Richard Hammer argued that treatment might do instead.
Every statement above comes from these dated entries in the chronology. Each links to its source.
People with a page of their own whom the dated events above name, those named most often first.
No indexed work is about this storyline itself yet. These are about the sites and people its dated events name, those named most often first, so they may discuss the storyline only in part. Follow a link to find a copy or view the material.
Papers of Ellie Kinnaird, born 1931, a North Carolina state senator, spanning 1987 to 2016 and running to roughly 6,400 items across 20.5 linear feet in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, collection 5356. The papers focus on capital punishment in North Carolina and the campaigns against it, health insurance legislation, voting technology, and the work of women legislators in the General Assembly.
Eleanor Kinnaird beside an election campaign poster in an undated candid photograph. Kinnaird served as mayor of Carrboro and in the North Carolina Senate. From the Chapel Hill Historical Society's Prints and Photographs Collection (CHHS.002).
Elisha Mitchell, the University of North Carolina professor for whom Mount Mitchell is named, as botanist and as observer of early Chapel Hill, in a study by Rogers McVaugh, Michael R. McVaugh and Mary Ayers. It covers Mitchell's botanical knowledge, the plants of Chapel Hill and the town's historical geography. Published by the Botanical Garden Foundation in Chapel Hill in 1996, 122 pages with illustrations and maps.
Architectural and historical inventory of Carrboro by Claudia Roberts Brown, published in 1983 by the Carrboro Appearance Commission and the town. The 48-page survey, with illustrations and maps, documents the town's historic buildings and their conservation.
Collected first-hand and second-hand stories from the Eno River valley as told from the standpoint of African Americans and Native people who have lived along the river in Orange and Durham counties, from prehistory to the present day. Issued by the Eno River Association in Durham as volume 10, number 2 of the Eno Journal, 2021, 106 pages with illustrations.
Emily Eidenier Pearce's history of Rogers Road, the historically African American neighborhood on the edge of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, and of what happened to it after Orange County opened its landfill next door in 1972. Drawing on interviews with residents, the book records the neighborhood's origins, family life, churches and customs, and then the environmental and social burdens of decades beside the landfill. Privately issued in 2009, 298 pages with illustrations, maps and portraits.
David Cook collects the grim side of the Eno River's past in Orange and Durham counties: ghost stories, crimes, train wrecks and accidents, including the hanging of rebels near the river in 1771, a sawmill accident said to have started a run of hauntings, and a dance one Valentine's Day that ended badly. Published by The History Press in 2025, 141 pages with illustrations.
Stewart E. Dunaway's history of the two mills George Johnston built on New Hope Creek in Orange County, the first in 1793 and the second in 1820, the earlier of which he sold to the Englishman William Robson. Self-published in 2010, 256 pages with illustrations, maps and facsimiles. Topics include gristmills in Orange County and the Blackwood, Johnston, Robinson and Robson families, so the volume serves both mill history and genealogy.
Address by Bishop Joseph Blount Cheshire at St. Matthew's Church in Hillsborough on 24 August 1924, marking the parish's hundredth anniversary. Printed in Durham in 1925 at the vestry's order, with a foreword by the rector. Cheshire discusses George Micklejohn, William Mercer Green and Moses Ashley Curtis.
Stewart E. Dunaway's 2010 study of Patterson Mill, a gristmill site on New Hope Creek where Orange County meets Chatham County. The book pairs a short genealogy of the Patterson family with a close survey of what remains of the mill on land now inside Duke Forest, supported by maps, facsimile documents and illustrations across 176 pages. Self-published in a second issue dated October 10, 2010.
Departmental history of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill covering its first fifty years, published by the department in 2000. The history covers medical schools, medical education and the teaching of obstetrics in North Carolina. First edition, xvii and 366 pages with illustrations and portraits.
Albert N. Link's early history of Research Triangle Park, published in 1995 by the Research Triangle Foundation of North Carolina. Topics include research parks, research institutes and industrial research in the state, with the park's own history at the center. 149 pages with illustrations and maps.
Michael McIntyre's 23-minute documentary video on the Eno River and Eno River State Park, produced in Durham in 1993 with support from the Duke University Institute of the Arts. It covers the river's past, its geology and the effort to preserve it, including the Indigenous peoples of the Eno River region. The container credits it with the 1993 Hal Kammerer Film and Video Award at Duke. VHS videocassette, color with sound.
Mary Claire Engstrom's history of the Quaker settlers of the Eno River valley from about 1750 to 1847, in the country that is now Orange and Durham counties. Published by the Association for the Preservation of the Eno River Valley in Durham in 1989, 73 pages with illustrations, maps and portraits.
Each dated event above names its source, the place to start. For finding more on an event across newspapers, records and histories, see the research guide Follow an event across several accounts. Ask at the North Carolina Room of the Orange County Public Library for help with local sources.
Friends of the Orange County Public Library. “Protecting the water-supply watersheds, 1968–1990.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/watershed-protection-storyline-1968/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
