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Featured Collection Introduction: North Carolina Ecological Flows

In 2010, the state legislature of North Carolina passed landmark legislation (NC Session Law 2010-143) defining ecological flow as “the streamflow necessary to protect ecological integrity.” Ecological integrity was defined as “the ability of an aquatic system to support and maintain a balanced, integrated, adaptive community of organisms having a species composition, diversity, and functional organization comparable to prevailing ecological conditions and, when subject to disruption, to recover and continue to provide the natural goods and services that normally accrue from the system.” The statute directed the state agency in charge of water quality (North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality; hereafter DEQ) to “characterize the ecology in the different river basins and identify the flow necessary to maintain ecological integrity.” DEQ was charged with developing basin-wide hydrologic models for each of the 17 major river basins in North Carolina to simulate flows for determining whether adequate water will be available in the future to meet all needs, including essential water uses and ecological flows (i.e., flows that maintain ecological integrity). The statute did not stipulate that ecological flows would be protected, but it did charge DEQ with knowing when and how ecological flows would be affected by state actions. The statute also directed the agency to “create an Ecological Flows Science Advisory Board (EFSAB) to assist with characterizing the natural ecology and identifying the flow requirements” of the river basins of North Carolina. The resulting 16-member EFSAB was given to understand, both by the statute and by the DEQ directives, that its findings would be used for water resources planning and not for regulatory purposes, and its members were to set aside agency and/or sector allegiances and deliver the highestquality scientific product possible. Early in the process, Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), a member of the EFSAB, contracted with RTI International (RTI) to assist with finding and developing the very best information possible on the ecological characteristics of North Carolina’s rivers and streams. A small, ad hoc advisory science team (hereinafter, the Team) was established with membership including scientists from EDF, RTI, DEQ, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), NC Wildlife Resources Commission (WRC), and The Nature Conservancy. The goal of the Team was to conduct research and produce scientific products to support the EFSAB effort to develop strategies for determining ecological flows. The Team collected and standardized preexisting data from various state databases, initially for its