What is the history of the WaDE program?
The 1990 U.S. Census showed that North Carolina had more than 49,000 households without septic or sewer systems. The combined efforts of then-Gov. Jim Hunt, the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources, members of the 1995-1996 Year of the Mountains coalition, as well as other key individuals succeeded in getting N.C. General Assembly to adopt House Bill 53 of 1995-1996. (This is now on record at the end of GS 143-211, Article 21 as an Editor’s Note referring to Session Law 1996, Second Extra Session, Chapter 18 Section 27.26.) The WaDE Program became active in 1997. Its mission: to focus on watersheds in western North Carolina. The program worked for the first several years by assisting other county-sponsored septic system surveys. With experience gained and policies established through a series of stakeholder meetings in 2001, the WaDE Program received project grants totaling $1.2 million from 2002 to 2006 and $1.5 million from 2006 to 2009 from the N.C. Clean Water Manag
