The businesses who make Raleigh and North Carolina a more beautiful place to live are taking an unfair brunt of the latest Raleigh water restrictions. What the general public and municipalities don’t realize is that green industry businesses have been practitioners of water conservation for years, not just in times of drought.

We understand that drinking water is more critical to human survival than green lawns and healthy shrubs. We should, however, like some consideration for a dribble or a drop during the upcoming growing season so we don’t lose our businesses, homes and equipment.

Shrubs, trees and grasses absorb carbon dioxide and produce oyygen for us to breathe. Landscapes are critical to water storage and management.

In addition, they filter polluted runoff and stabilize soil to prevent sedimentation in lakes and waterways. They also help commercial developers and real estate agents lease and sell homes. Our environment benefits significantly from the green industry, in ways we routinely take for granted.

We’d like to make several valid points that policy makers and the media seem to ignore, or simply refuse to acknowledge.

The green industry in North Carolina generates $8.6 billion annually for the state’s economy. It is the fastest growing segment of agriculture and agriculture happens to be North Carolina’s number one industry.

More than 151,000 people are employed in North Carolina’s green industry. These are real jobs, worked by real people who pay taxes, have real families to feed and real bills to pay.

We want to be a part of the soloution by increasing water conservation efforts through the use of drought-tolerant plants and warm-season grasses; by creating an irrigation certification program so systems are designed for maximum efficiency using technology like advanced rain sensors and state-of-the-art controllers; and by working with landscape designers and architects to create landscapes with minimum water requirements. We are also working to establish a statewide water conservation education campaign for consumers.

Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue recently eased water restrictions in his drought stricken state to strike a balance between management of water resources and support of Georgia’s industries who depend on water use.

Why can’t North Carolina officials use the same kind of common sense?

North Carolina’s green industry wants a fair and equitable treatment with other industries and a fighting chance to at least try to stay in business until conditions improve. How about allowing watering one day a week during the growing season, which translates to four days a month and 24 days a year (April-September)? Is that too much to ask for an industry that does so much for the environment and the state? That’s the kind of balance Perdue has found in Georgia.