Excerpt from Watershed Protection: Report to the 1989 General Assembly of North Carolina, 1989 Session The issue of the appropriate relationship between State and local jurisdictions in protecting watersheds was also addressed. The Committee indicated that the administration and enforcement of the watershed protection program adopted by the Environmental Management Commission could be delegated to local jurisdictions, and voted to adopt a policy statement submitted by the League of Municipalities acknowledging the water supply watershed protection program to be a cooperative effort between State and local governments. The Committee also voted to adopt a proposal from the League of Municipalities that a watershed protection advisory council be established to assist with the development of criteria, standards, rules, regulations, and other appropriate matters for the protection of watersheds. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

The State of North Carolina's Water Supply Watershed Protection Act of 1989 required local governments to adopt land use measures in watersheds to protect the water supply emanating from the watersheds. Watershed protection ordinances often contain minimum lot size restrictions that constrain development density in the watershed. We examine vacant land prices in Buncombe County's Ivy River Watershed at the time such a regulation took effect: two-acre minimum lot sizes were mandated inside the watershed. Our results suggest that costs of watershed development restrictions are borne primarily by those vacant land owners in the watershed for whom the development restrictions make land subdivision infeasible.