Charlotte growth pushes limits: region must make sure its utilities, roads and other infrastructure are prepared for an influx of people and companies.

• Position: REGIONAL ROUNDTABLE: SPONSORED SECTION

Unless infrastructure needs, including water, education, electricity and transportation, are addressed soon, the Charlotte region could have trouble sustaining its rapid growth. That was the consensus of a group of leaders assembled by BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA for a round-table discussion of the region's economy, sponsored and hosted by Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte. Participating were Ronnie Bryant, president and CEO of the Charlotte Regional Partnership, an economic-development nonprofit; Tony Zeiss, president of Central Piedmont Community College; Bryant Kinney, vice president for regulatory and governmental affairs of Charlotte-based Duke Energy; Clyde Higgs, vice president for business development of the North Carolina Research Campus in Kannapolis; and David Jones, a partner at Kennedy Covington Lobdell & Hickman in Charlotte and chairman of the Charlotte Housing Authority. The round table was moderated by Arthur O. Murray, BNC managing editor for special projects.

Can Charlotte maintain the growth it has experienced in the past couple of decades?

Zeiss: Growth is happening. But it carries challenges. And I see three for our region, including a tax rate that we're going to have to be careful about because we still want to attract new companies and jobs. The second one is public education and public schools. And the third one is infrastructure. We're in desperate trouble with the roads. And right behind roads are water and sewer.

Kinney: Talking about the economy without talking about infrastructure is like talking about a car without wheels. Infrastructure improvements are absolutely critical, whether it's public education, highways or our business of energy. North Carolina expects by 2030 to see 4 million new residents. A lot of that growth will come here in the Charlotte region. We have to have the infrastructure to manage it. We're not going to close the borders.

Jones: There are other aspects of the infrastructure issue that we have to keep in mind. Charlotte is operating under some severe air-quality issues. We need to look very hard at how we get people into different types of mass transit. Last fall, there was a serious movement to defund mass transit. Thankfully, the voters were more astute than some of the people who were leading the charge.

Kinney: At Duke, we are seeing 40,000 to 60,000 customers added annually. Just over the next five years, we expect to spend about $7 billion on capital infrastructure, whether that's power plants, power lines or other backbone systems that keep the lights on. Over the next 20 years, we expect to need close to 11,000 more megawatts of electricity. That's about four plants the size of McGuire Nuclear Station.

Higgs: There are some real-life ramifications of our water situation in trying to recruit farming and biotechnology companies. We were on the list of a company that was looking at our region as a new location, and because of our water issue we just kind of got pushed down the list. It's a real concern.

Zeiss: Back to K through 12. This is the one, the public schools, that worries me the most. At this college, 77% of recent high-school graduates have to be remediated in mathematics and 72% must be remediated in English. That does not bode very well for an economy. You can't sustain a great economy, even if you have the infrastructure and reasonable tax rates, unless...