As Raleigh city leaders discuss how to meet increased water demands following a year-long drought, an NC State professor is offering a cheaper, more efficient solution.

Sankar Arumugam, professor and university faculty scholar in the Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering (CCEE), recently spoke to a journalist with The News & Observer about the water challenges the city is facing.

According to the article, North Carolina has faced a drought since August 2025. Now, Raleigh City Council members are discussing building a new water reservoir, which could cost more than $300 million.

But Arumugam has another solution: raise the operating water level at Falls Lake.

“In 2019, [the city] negotiated with the U.S. Army Corps. of Engineers — which manages the lake — to gain access to a higher proportion of Falls Lake’s water,” journalist Nolan Wilkinson wrote. “The city had to pay $24 million for the rights to the water, adding 22 million gallons of water per day into the city’s supply.”

Arumugam believes asking the Corps to raise the operating water level again could provide a cheaper, sustainable solution to the city’s water demands, with minimal increase in flood risk for downstream communities. Arumugam’s group has studied this extensively by researching major reservoirs in the Southeast, and they found that a modest increase in the water level does not create substantial flood risk.

This approach, coupled with other demand management strategies such as alternate-day watering, rebates for low-flush toilets and waste-water reuse for lawn irrigation, could provide a sustainable way to manage the city’s water supply needs.

“Any infrastructure solution for water management should be investigated considering both supply augmentation and demand reduction strategies to manage the city’s growing demand, and this requires a dialogue with all the stakeholders by considering all alternatives,” Arumugam said.

This post was originally published in NC State News.