Salisbury-Rowan Utilities (SRU), the water and wastewater provider for the City of Salisbury and other Rowan County municipalities, has been honored for exceeding federal and state drinking water standards last year. SRU was one of only 55 out of 6,000 North Carolina water systems to achieve the recognition for 2019.
The award is part of the Area Wide Optimization Program (AWOP) which was developed to help water systems meet successively more stringent regulations and achieve higher levels of water quality. AWOP is a joint program between the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and states. North Carolina has participated in AWOP since 2000. Although all drinking water systems in North Carolina are required to meet stringent federal and state drinking water standards, SRU exceeded those performance goals.
“SRU’s top priority has always been to provide safe, high-quality water to our customers throughout Rowan County,” said SRU Director Jim Behmer. “We have a great water resources team and I am proud of all of them for achieving this recognition from the NC Division of Water Resources. I’m especially proud of this honor because it was achieved while construction activities were ongoing at our plant.”
According to the award news release from the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), “Awards are given each year to water systems that demonstrate outstanding turbidity removal, a key test of drinking water quality. Turbidity is a measure of the cloudiness or haziness of water caused by individual particles that can interfere with disinfection and provide a medium for microbial growth. Microbes are microscopic particles that occur naturally but can include harmful bacteria and viruses.”
SRU currently serves more than 52,000 customers in Salisbury, Granite Quarry, Rockwell, Spencer, China Grove and other unincorporated areas in Rowan County. SRU also provides limited water and wastewater services to East Spencer, Faith and Landis.
For more information, visit the NC DEQ: Area Wide Optimization Program at https://deq.nc.gov/about/divisions/water-resources/drinking-water/area-wide-optimization-program.