Posted by Staff | Aug 3, 2022 | Local Government

As water quality continues to be a top issue in Pittsboro, the town’s Public Information Officer Colby Sawyer spoke with 97.9 The Hill’s Andrew Stuckey on Tuesday, August 2. He discussed the town’s new Granulated Active Carbon filtration system at its treatment plant, which is set to go online Friday. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation. Listen to the full interview here.

Andrew Stuckey : I reached out to you because we received news earlier this week that the Town of Pittsboro is doing the final installation of the granular-activated carbon filter system. So can you tell us a little bit about what that means first?

Colby Sawyer: I sure can. We have been working on installing the final installation of this system for a few weeks… maybe a month or so now. We’re getting now into the final stages, which is where we are doing the final pipe connections, flushing the system, and taking a test to make sure that there is no type of bacteria or other microorganisms in the system. And then we will be online and processing water.

Stuckey : And what does that mean once the water is processed through this system? What’s the takeaway for folks drinking the water in Pittsboro?

Sawyer: As we draw water out of the Haw River into the water treatment plant, it will be filtered through the system. The system is filled with granular activated carbon. We’ve been calling this our fast-track GAC (granular activated carbon) program. Basically, this system operates just like a very large Brita filter. As the water flows through the filter, PFOS and PFOA substances are absorbed into the carbon. And the water that comes through is free of those substances to go into processing for eventual use by the utility.

Stuckey : And how long has this been in process? When was this first proposed and when did the physical process of getting the filtration system start?

Sawyer: This has been in process officially since April of last year. We had begun doing research early last year. However, it was in April of 2021 that our board voted to approve funding for the program and to start the program. Since April of 2021, we’ve been working on everything from studies and engineering to choosing a contractor, having the system delivered, and now installation.

Stuckey : So on Saturday morning, if I run water at my house in Pittsboro, is there gonna be a noticeable difference for me?

Sawyer: I’m not sure if you’ll have a noticeable difference in taste. However, any PFOS or PFOA substance that would have been in the water should not be there. Of course, it can take some time for water that is being processed from the plant to enter the system, because it goes into our towers and then the towers flow into our lines and then our lines into our houses. So, it can take a little bit of time for water to make it from the plant to your kitchen sink. But any new water entering the system will have been filtered.

Stuckey : We can’t really have these conversations without a little bit of the context of the issues around the water in the Haw River and how it has been polluted repeatedly, and several times from businesses in Greensboro. Is there anything you can tell me about the meeting that happened last week between Greensboro officials and Pittsboro officials?

Sawyer: We had a very productive meeting recently between our elected board and members of their city government, where they really had us sit down and discuss how we can work together as both jurisdictions. A large part of the exchange and takeaway was how our upstream communities, Greensboro in particular, can better inform us if there is a release of some substance. In the past, we have struggled a little bit with timely notifications that something has entered the river. We hope now that we have established such a good relationship that a two-way line of communication exists. We will know when we need to start taking action because something is in the river.

Stuckey : What exactly does that look like? Like if there were another spill, what is the action the town can take if something happens that makes this water temporarily unsafe?

Sawyer: It depends on what the substance is, of course. I’m not a water treatment engineer, so I’d hate to get too far into technicalities, but options can range anywhere from pulling as much clean water as we can to fill our system, to turning the intakes off so that whatever is in the river gets biased before we start drawing water again. That may mean that we have to put an additional type of chemical or something in the water as we’re processing it to make sure we’re within acceptable levels for where we can provide the water to the utility. There are a few different actions they can take, but it really looks like a phone call and an email directly from their decision makers to our decision makers to say, “X has happened, you need to be ready for it to occur within X number of days.”

The Haw River serves as Pittsboro’s main water source, but it’s created some challenges when unregulated contaminants wash downstream.

Stuckey : I don’t have anything else specifically that I wanted to ask about. Is there anything that you wanted to mention that we haven’t covered so far?

Sawyer: Yeah, just the one thing that really comes to mind is talking about the limitations of this system. Pittsboro is a small jurisdiction and we do not have the financial resources that many of the larger jurisdictions surrounding us do. So, one facet of this system is that although our plant is capable of pulling and treating 2 million gallons of water per day from the Haw River, and entering it into our system, the GAC system that we have now will be capable of processing 1 million gallons per day. Again, we termed this our fast-track GAC because we wanted to get something in place that was going to help us start processing. That’s okay for us because on average, we only draw around a million gallons a day anyway. We’re able to process that water that we’re pulling in. It would’ve just been too cost-prohibitive to install something that was capable of producing or processing 2 million gallons per day. And the other thing is that while we believe this will slightly cut back on the 1,4-Dioxane issue, this system will not remove the 1,4-Dioxane in its entirety. We are looking at other systems now, other procedures and processes that we can follow to work on reducing the one-four dioxin as well.

Stuckey : Colby Sawyer’s been joining us from the town of Pittsboro, talking about the ever-complicated water situation in Pittsboro. We were just touching on one aspect of this complicated topic for the town, and that is the pollutants in the Haw River and how to make sure the water is clean. I’d like to talk again at some point about the proposed merger with Sanford, and other wastewater issues as well. But I think that for now, we’ll just leave the conversation here. Thank you so much for joining us, Colby.

Sawyer: Andrew, thank you so much. And if I could, I would encourage anyone to visit our website, www.pittsboro.nc.gov. There you can sign up for news alerts. That is the fastest and best way to get information from the town, www.pittsboro.nc.gov, and go to our news alerts and sign up.

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