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How Chapel Hill, Carrboro and the University got through the drought of 1968: University Lake’s fall to its lowest level, the emergency pipeline from Durham, the ban on lawn watering and car washing, Carrboro’s protest of a higher water rate and the rains that refilled the lake.
In briefIn the fall of 1968 drought dropped University Lake to its lowest level since it was built in 1930. Durham agreed to pipe water to Chapel Hill, and the University paid for nearly all of an emergency line, begun on October 1, that began delivering a million gallons a day on October 27. Chapel Hill's aldermen banned lawn sprinkling and car washing, the University suspended physical education classes, and Carrboro protested a 40 percent rise in its water rate. The ban was lifted in November, and winter rains refilled the lake. The University raised the lake's dam two feet in 1970 and drew Durham water through the pipeline again in the dry falls of 1970 and 1973. A drought in 1976 brought mandatory water restrictions and a second line from Durham. In 1977 the new Orange Water and Sewer Authority bought Durham water with federal drought aid until Durham's own lake ran low, then built a pipeline to buy treated water from Hillsborough, finished in April 1978. Drought returned in 1980, when OWASA drew on its quarry reservoir and bought Hillsborough water, and in 1983, when mandatory restrictions took effect on September 6, Orange County was declared a farm disaster area and the Chapel Hill council asked OWASA to halt new water connections. In 1984 the council tightened the conservation ordinance. In the 1986 drought, in the driest season since 1890, mandatory restrictions ran from July to September and again from October to December, OWASA bought water from Lake Holt in Butner, and the Chapel Hill council moved to hold back building permits in severe shortages. Durham sold OWASA water again in the dry summers of 1987 and 1988. In the dry fall of 1990 northern Orange County's water users were under the county's conservation rules until October rains brought University Lake back to normal.
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After a dry summer, University Lake fell below its 1954 drought low on September 20, 1968. At the University's request, Durham's Board of Aldermen voted on September 26 to approve in principle an emergency pipeline to bring about a million gallons a day from Durham's water lines, while voluntary cuts had already brought Chapel Hill's use down from 5.4 to 3.7 million gallons a day. On October 1, with the lake 82 inches below its spillway, the lowest since it was built in 1930, three crews began laying the line along the old Chapel Hill highway; the University, which owned the water works, paid for nearly all of it. On October 3 the Chapel Hill aldermen made it a misdemeanor, with a $50 fine, to use water for lawn sprinkling, car washing or water-cooled air conditioners in the town and a mile around it, and the University suspended physical education classes. To save water Lenoir Hall switched to paper plates and laid off ten busboys and dishwashers, five of whom were called back within a week. Carrboro's board protested the University water plant's 40 percent rise in the town's bulk rate. Rain from Hurricane Gladys in mid-October raised the lake from an all-time low of 99 inches below its spillway to 83 inches, and on October 27 Chapel Hill and Carrboro began drawing a million gallons a day of Durham water. On November 11, on Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson's advice that the Durham water had ended the crisis, the aldermen lifted the ban, and the University resumed physical education classes and intramurals. The next day the Carrboro commissioners authorized their attorney to take their protest of the rate increase to Sitterson and, if that failed, to the State Utilities Commission. December and January rains filled University Lake to capacity. A two-foot addition to the University Lake dam, finished in early September 1970, raised the reservoir's capacity from about 600 million to 750 million gallons. That month, with the lake 41 inches below normal after a month without rain, the University began buying two million gallons a day from Durham through the 1968 pipeline. In a dry October 1973, with University Lake five feet below normal, UNC utilities director Grey Culbreth asked Durham for water again, and it was flowing by October 29, while the Triangle J Council studied Cane Creek as a future source.
A drought from August 1976 to January 1977 forced Chapel Hill and the University to buy more water from Durham, ban unnecessary use and cut campus services. With University Lake falling in what Alderman Gerry Cohen called the worst drought in 80 years, mandatory restrictions took effect on August 18: the Chapel Hill and Carrboro aldermen banned nonessential water use in the towns and within a mile of them, including outdoor use, car washing, filling swimming pools and serving water in restaurants unless asked, with a $50 fine or 30 days in jail for violations. Durham sent about two million gallons a day through the older line from August 18, and a second connection, built for about $25,000, added 1.3 million gallons a day from September 6. That month Orange County was one of eight North Carolina counties qualified for federal emergency livestock feed aid. With Durham's Lake Michie falling about a foot a week, Durham shut the second line on October 4, its officials having calculated that Chapel Hill's supply would outlast Durham's. The next day Chancellor N. Ferebee Taylor released a University study finding 248 million gallons of usable water left in University Lake, 47.5 percent of the supply, enough for 59 days with no rain and no Durham water. On October 11 the Chapel Hill aldermen voted 6 to 2 to let swimming pools reopen if they took no town water, answering a petition of more than 3,000 students, and the University cleared Bowman Gray Pool in Woollen Gym to reopen with water trucked from Hillsborough. On October 28 Carrboro Mayor Ruth West lifted all of the town's restrictions on the aldermen's 5 to 1 recommendation, while University utilities director Grey Culbreth, Vice Chancellor Claiborne Jones and Chapel Hill Mayor James C. Wallace said the drought was not over. Chapel Hill's restrictions were lifted on December 12, ending what the Daily Tar Heel called the worst water shortage in Chapel Hill history. The University had bought about two million gallons a day from Durham until December 17, and by mid-January the lake was running over its dam.
By August 1977 University Lake was lower still. In early July, with the lake 40 inches below normal, the new Orange Water and Sewer Authority (OWASA) asked Durham to sell water to Chapel Hill and Carrboro, and the Durham City Council agreed 8 to 4. When the lake fell 72 inches below its crest on July 19, the two towns barred lawn watering and car washing, allowed garden watering only on Saturday evenings and made violations a misdemeanor. The University drilled emergency wells from August 2 to supply its pools, air conditioning and laundry with untreated water, and at OWASA's request Vice Chancellor John Temple named Russell Perry of Housing and Gene Swecker of the Physical Plant as water conservation officials, which the Daily Tar Heel called the first such appointments; they put flow restricters on dormitory showers and cut off hot water in classroom buildings. By late August the drought had cost county farmers almost $1.4 million in tobacco, and the corn crop was expected to fall about 40 percent.
By then Chapel Hill was buying about 3.7 million gallons a day through the two Durham pipelines. As Lake Michie fell, OWASA and Durham cut the supply to about 2.5 million gallons a day on September 6 and to roughly two million on September 27. On September 29 OWASA's board accepted a $1.8 million federal emergency drought award, a $550,000 grant and a $1,283,800 loan at 5 percent, to pay for the Durham water and a 10-mile pipeline to Hillsborough. At OWASA's request the Durham pipeline was shut off on October 10; the authority said Lake Michie had become dangerously low and turned to wells and the planned Hillsborough line. On October 13 it approved a surcharge of 25 cents per 1,000 gallons, to run four months from February 1978, to cover the $174,000 spent on Durham water, with members Shirley Marshall, Braxton Foushee and Ernie Patterson voting against it. After late-October rains raised University Lake above its conservation level, Mayor Wallace and Carrboro Mayor Pro Tem Foushee lifted the mandatory restrictions on October 28 at OWASA's request.
OWASA had also turned to Hillsborough. On July 25, 1977 the Hillsborough commissioners authorized Mayor Fred Cates to negotiate a sale of water; he said the town's treatment plant could spare two million gallons a day. The talks stalled when the commissioners refused to consider piping raw water from Lake Orange, the town's source, but on August 26 the two agreed to a contract for up to two million gallons a day of treated water. On October 13 OWASA approved the pipeline by 5 to 4, to be paid 30 percent by a federal grant and 70 percent by a 35-year federal loan, and it awarded a $1.16 million construction contract to the T. A. Loving Co. Work began at the Hillsborough end on November 28, and the line had to be finished by April 30 to keep the federal grant and loan. By February 22, 1978, 52,000 of its 55,000 feet had been laid, though the contractor had asked for more time. It was finished on April 30, 1978, but by late August no water had been pumped through it, because University Lake stood nearly full. OWASA assistant director W. H. Cleveland said the authority probably would not need Hillsborough water before the next summer and put the Cane Creek reservoir at least five years away.
Drought came back in the summer of 1980, and by September 5 Orange County was among 67 North Carolina counties declared disaster areas, making its farmers eligible for low-interest federal loans. University Lake fell to 39.5 inches below full on September 29, its lowest of the year, and with the lake four feet below normal OWASA began drawing on its quarry reservoir, the former American Stone Quarry off N.C. 54, on October 23. In November the lake fell 60 inches below normal and a water shortage alert was declared in Chapel Hill; the quarry supplied up to a third of the town's water, OWASA bought Hillsborough water at about $13,500 a month, and Mayor Joe Nassif, Carrboro Mayor Bob Drakeford and the county commissioners issued proclamations urging conservation. Rain let OWASA stop buying Hillsborough water on December 1, and Nassif called off the alert on December 23. After the driest first four months on its records, the lake stood 14 inches low in May 1981, with OWASA filtering a million gallons a day from Hillsborough, and June drew 50 million gallons from it before July rains refilled it. By July 30, 1981 OWASA had bought the quarry, held until then under a lease-purchase option, as reserve storage.
In 1983, after a July with 1.10 inches of rain, Drakeford put Carrboro's Stage One conservation measures into effect on August 22, and on September 6, with the lake 49 and a half inches below full, he and Nassif signed proclamations at OWASA's request imposing mandatory restrictions; county commissioners' chairman Richard Whitted was to sign one for southern Orange County. The rules banned washing cars, limited lawn and garden watering to Saturdays from 4 to 8 p.m. and let restaurants serve water only on request. In the same heat wave, with a record 50 days at 90 degrees or above, the Orange County schools sent students home early on five days in September. Carl Hodges of the Agricultural Extension Service said farmers would be lucky to make half their crops in money, and on September 23 the U.S. Department of Agriculture declared Orange County one of 55 North Carolina counties in a disaster area, opening low-interest loans to farmers who had lost 30 percent or more of their operations.
On September 26 the Chapel Hill Town Council voted unanimously to ask OWASA for a moratorium on new water connections until reservoir capacity was increased, with Jonathan Howes's amendment asking the town and OWASA to work together to balance demand with supply. At OWASA's hearing in Carrboro Town Hall on October 12 most speakers, among them the heads of the Carrboro Business Association, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce and the Home Builders Association, warned of harm to the local economy, and OWASA chairman David Moreau said Chapel Hill was buying 1.5 million gallons a day from Hillsborough. After October rains OWASA asked on October 25 that the mandatory measures end and stopped buying Hillsborough water, and on November 28, with Thanksgiving rains lifting the lake to half an inch above full, it asked the towns and county to lift the voluntary measures too. OWASA's Pat Davis said the three-month shortage might have been the area's fourth worst.
In August 1984, with students back and a dry spell setting in, OWASA again bought Hillsborough water; UNC reported its own use down four million gallons from mid-July to mid-August after installing water-saving shower heads and digging wells for laundry and irrigation. On October 22, 1984 the Chapel Hill Town Council approved OWASA's changes to the 1977 conservation ordinance, starting an alert when the lake fell 24 inches below full instead of 36, and OWASA director Everett Billingsley said daily use had risen to 6 million gallons and that a $600,000 temporary reservoir at Cane Creek would be ready in 1985.
With little summer rain in 1985, OWASA asked its customers by August 1 to follow its first, voluntary stage of conservation; rain from Hurricane Bob then raised University Lake about 9 inches from about 39 inches below normal. In November about 2.5 inches of rain in the 24 hours from November 19 put Morgan Creek out of its banks and lifted the lake from 39 inches below full at the start of the month to 7.25 inches above.
The 1986 drought was longer. Over the weekend of July 5 and 6 vandals let out 10 million of the 24 million gallons in the Stone Quarry Reservoir, which was refilled to within two feet of full with water released from Lake Orange. On July 9, with University Lake 44 inches below full in the driest season since 1890, OWASA made conservation mandatory, banning car washing, filling new pools and serving water in restaurants unless asked, and limiting lawn watering by hand to three hours on Saturday or Sunday mornings, with a $50 fine or 30 days and loss of service for violators. By July 10 Hillsborough's town board had tabled OWASA's request for up to 2 million gallons a day of treated water from Lake Orange, and at the town council's request the University formed a task force that asked students not to bring fish tanks or plants. The lake fell to 51 inches below full on August 11, and heavy rain on August 20 raised it eight inches in three hours, but OWASA kept its restrictions until September 3, when, with the lake about 28 inches below full after the August rains, water bought from Butner and conservation by residents and the University, voluntary measures replaced them.
On September 22 the Alliance of Neighborhoods petitioned the Town Council to issue no occupancy permits for new residential buildings during water shortages, its president saying new units had been allowed to open while residents were required to cut their water use. As the dry months went on, OWASA asked on October 16 for mandatory, stage-two restrictions again, banning watering lawns and gardens and washing cars, while it negotiated to bring water from Lake Holt in Butner through Durham's system. On November 10 the council asked OWASA for a report within 90 days on expanding the water supply and linking it with Carrboro, Hillsborough, Orange County and Durham, and decided that building permits should be held back when the lake fell 54 inches below normal, the stage-three level; the Alliance's president had urged withholding occupancy permits instead, and Jonathan Howes and Mayor James Wallace argued for acting at the building-permit stage. OWASA rescinded all water-use restrictions on December 22, and December rain, lower use and water from Lake Holt had the lake full again by early January.
After a hot, dry June and July in 1987, Durham began selling OWASA water from Lake Holt in Butner on August 18, and OWASA asked its customers in Chapel Hill and Carrboro to cut back voluntarily; University Lake held 53 percent of its usable capacity. A week of rain raised the lake about 17 inches, and by September 11 OWASA had lifted the voluntary measures, though it planned to keep buying Durham water until the lakes were back to normal. On September 25 Orange and eight other North Carolina counties qualified for federal drought aid; the county's Food and Agriculture Committee estimated losses of 60 percent of the corn, 80 percent of the soybeans, half the hay and a quarter of the tobacco.
Durham sold OWASA water again in the shortage of the summer of 1988, as Mayor Jonathan Howes later recalled. By September 9 executive director Everett Billingsley announced that OWASA had lifted the mandatory restrictions it had imposed less than three weeks before, after 1.25 inches of rain added about three weeks' supply to its reservoirs, but he still asked customers, UNC among them, to conserve voluntarily, and OWASA was still asking in late September.
By October 1990, with Lake Orange, Cane Creek and University Lake low after a dry season, users of northern Orange County's water were under the county's conservation ordinance, and County Engineer Paul Thames said a capacity-use agreement limited withdrawals by Hillsborough, the Orange-Alamance Water Corporation and Piedmont Minerals. October rains, 7.5 inches by October 25, brought University Lake back to normal and ended talk of conservation in Chapel Hill.
Events in this storyline, in date order. See these 79 dated events in the chronology →
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Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors. Site locations from the N.C. State Historic Preservation Office survey, Open Orange, Orange County GIS, OpenStreetMap and a few other published sources named on each site’s page; town and community pins show approximate locations.
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.
Millicent Meroney's 1986 Duke honors paper on the 1969 strikes by food service workers at the University of North Carolina, an episode in the town's race relations and its civil rights history. Eighty leaves of typescript with a bibliography, covering labor unions in food service, the strikes and lockouts themselves, and university employees at Chapel Hill.
Two 1980 photographs of Lenoir Dining Hall at the University of North Carolina: students gathered in the Pit and outside the building, and staff among empty tables inside. From the Chapel Hill Historical Society's Prints and Photographs Collection, CHHS.002.
Faculty member E. J. Woodhouse drinks from a coffee cup outside the University Dining Hall cafeteria at UNC-Chapel Hill, about 1940, beneath a sign saying state law bars the hall from serving the general public. Hugh Morton took the picture, and a tight crop appeared in the 1941 Yackety Yack.
Linen-finish postcard published by Gray and Thompson of Chapel Hill showing Woollen Gymnasium at the University of North Carolina, built in 1937 and 1938 and regarded then as a modern, high-quality basketball building. Black and white with a white border and divided back, issued after the gym opened. Ellen Payne Odom Genealogy Library Postcard Collection.
Robert A. Fetzer and Oliver K. Cornwell describe the new gymnasium at the University of North Carolina, Woollen Gym. The paper was detached from the proceedings of the forty-second annual meeting of the College Physical Education Association and printed at Ohio State University in 1938. It concerns college buildings in Chapel Hill.
The Charles T. Woollen Gymnasium at Chapel Hill, published by the Graycraft Card Company of Danville, Virginia, and undated. Chapel Hill and Orange County are the place terms attached.
Children in the pool at Woollen Gymnasium on the University of North Carolina campus, undated. One photograph in the Chapel Hill Life: General binder of the Chapel Hill Historical Society's Prints and Photographs Collection.
Ashley Davis, who entered UNC in 1968 and joined the Black Student Movement, recalls the 1969 strike by the university's cafeteria workers and the BSM's decision to stand with them when the workers asked. Recorded April 12, 1974, by Russell Rymer for the Southern Oral History Program, the hour-and-a-half interview touches on Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson, the Southern Student Organizing Committee and race relations among students on campus. Published online in 2007 by the UNC-Chapel Hill Library in Documenting the American South.
Lynn Roundtree covers the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill between 1957 and 1972 through its three chancellors, William Brantley Aycock, Paul F. Sharp and J. Carlyle Sitterson, set against the student movements of those years. Part of the Coates university leadership series, published by the author in 2024 and running to 926 pages. It is twentieth century campus history.
A four page article clipped from Life, volume 61, number 20, dated November 11, 1966, on a dispute over academic freedom at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The article concerns the instructor Michael Paull, Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson, Jesse Helms and Andrew Marvell's poem 'To His Coy Mistress'. Illustrated, with portraits.
Southern Oral History Program interview with J. Carlyle Sitterson (1911-1995), chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1966, recorded by Pamela Dean on November 4 and 6, 1987, and running an hour and a half. Sitterson recalls the university in the 1960s: student demands over visitation rules, dress codes and privacy, the student movement, and the integration of the faculty. Interview L-0030 in collection #4007, published online in 2007 in Documenting the American South's Oral Histories of the American South.
Jonathan Howes, a former mayor of Chapel Hill who served in Governor Hunt's cabinet and later worked in the UNC chancellor's office on urban planning, gave this illustrated talk on the past and future of the Chapel Hill campus. Cassette, 1998.
Raised in Orange County's Cane Creek community, Nancy Holt became one of its organizers when the Orange Water and Sewer Authority planned a reservoir there. Interviewed alongside Brian Holt by Frances E. Webb in October 1985, she describes farm life, the school and church that held the community together, how scattered neighbors cooperated, and the environmental and social costs residents expected from the reservoir. Runs about two and a half hours; electronic edition from the UNC library, 2007, through Documenting the American South.
Sam Crawford (born 1949) helped found Cane Creek Conservation Authority, the residents' group formed in 1975 to fight plans by OWASA, the Chapel Hill area's water utility, for a reservoir on Cane Creek in rural Orange County. In this October 1985 interview with Judith Wheeler, joined by Patty Crawford, he recounts how residents learned of the plan and organized, and the environmental and water-supply arguments on each side. A little over two hours; electronic edition from the UNC library, 2007, through Documenting the American South.
Elizabeth Brooks, a cafeteria worker at UNC and a leader of the 1969 food workers' strike, speaks in a Southern Oral History Program interview recorded October 2, 1974, by Beverly Jones. Born in Caswell County, Brooks had made her home in Hillsborough since 1949 and raised nine children before her first paid job, at the university. She describes the strike, the Black Student Movement's support for the workers, and the response of Governor Robert W. Scott. Published online in 2006 in Documenting the American South.
Dairy farmer Bobby Kirk, who led the conservation authority formed at Cane Creek, describes the fight against the Cane Creek Reservoir, proposed for southwestern Orange County. In this Southern Oral History Program interview, recorded October 28, 1985, by K. Campbell, Kirk explains why he and neighboring farmers opposed the project, how residents first organized against it, and his view that the reservoir was badly planned. Just over an hour long. Published online in 2005 by the UNC-Chapel Hill Library in Documenting the American South.
The case for the Cane Creek Reservoir, made by Daniel A. Okun, professor of environmental engineering at UNC, in a Southern Oral History Program interview recorded October 22, 1985, by Laura Drey. Okun sets out why a new reservoir was needed in Orange County and answers the Cane Creek farmers' objections on water quality and watershed management. It pairs with interviews of opponents Bobby Kirk and Edward S. Johnson. Published online in 2004 by the UNC-Chapel Hill Library in Documenting the American South.
Edward S. Johnson (1933-2022) recounts the organized effort to stop OWASA, the Orange County water utility, from damming Cane Creek for a reservoir, in a 40-minute Southern Oral History Program interview recorded October 28, 1985, by Patricia E. Sloan. Johnson describes how neighbors came together into a coherent opposition, the questions of eminent domain raised by the taking of farmland, and the environmental review of the project. Published online in 2004 by the UNC-Chapel Hill Library in Documenting the American South.
Joseph A. Herzenberg (1941-2007), later a Chapel Hill Town Council member, was interviewed by Mary Dexter in November 1985 about the Cane Creek reservoir fight. OWASA, the water and sewer utility serving Chapel Hill, proposed damming Cane Creek in rural Orange County, and residents there organized against it. Herzenberg supports the reservoir and discusses the local politics and water-supply questions behind the dispute. About an hour and a half; electronic edition from the UNC library, 2004, through Documenting the American South.
A pocket guide to University Lake issued by the Orange Water and Sewer Authority in Carrboro, eleven unnumbered pages with illustrations and a map, 18 centimeters. Dated 1997, though one page carries the notation 7/84. The guide describes the lake as a water source for Carrboro, Chapel Hill and Orange County.
Vanessa Speight's master's report in environmental engineering, submitted to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1994 and approved by Donald T. Lauria, Donald E. Francisco and Philip C. Singer. It applies 0,1 mixed integer programming to the operation of a multiple reservoir system, with the Orange Water and Sewer Authority's reservoirs in Orange County as the case, on water supply and theoretical models.
The Orange Water and Sewer Authority's formal comments on the state Division of Environmental Management's environmental impact statement for the Cane Creek reservoir, the water supply built in western Orange County. Transmitted under a letter dated June 1, 1982, the volume covers reservoirs, water supply and water quality management in the county, with maps. Published by OWASA in Carrboro, one volume in various pagings.
A draft environmental impact statement from 1982 on the Cane Creek Reservoir, the water-supply impoundment proposed for Cane Creek in southwestern Orange County near the Alamance line. Prepared by the Division of Environmental Management of the state Department of Natural Resources and Community Development, it runs 144 pages in various pagings with illustrations, maps, bibliographies and an index. Topics include reservoirs, water supply and environmental impact analysis for Orange County.
Report and recommendations of the Carrboro Water Quality Task Force, presented in November 1982. Topics include water quality, water quality management and water supply in Carrboro, so the document belongs with the town's planning record from the early 1980s. One volume of various pagings with maps, issued by the task force itself.
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