The Greensboro Water Resources Department performs more than 1,100 water quality tests every day.
That statistic is from the Greensboro Water Resources Department 2021-2022 Annual Report, which includes a bunch of other information about the water department and can be found here: Water-Resources-Annual-Report-2021-22 .
According to the annual report, the water department maintains over 3,000 miles of water and sewer lines, deals with 158 water main breaks in a year, and tries to keep over 109,000 customers satisfied.
The city uses an average of 34.4 million gallons of water a day and treats an average of 32 million gallons of wastewater a day.
The Water Resources Department is not funded by taxes, but by water and sewer fees, and the report gives a breakdown of how your water and sewer fee is spent.
The average bill for a Greensboro water and sewer customer is $51.40 and this is how that $51.40 is spent.
- $2.19 for buying water from other utilities
- $4.38 for fuel chemicals, electricity and natural gas
- $10.79 for maintenance and operations of the water treatment and wastewater treatment plants and rehabbing water and sewer lines
- $12.11 for employee salaries and benefits
- $21.93 for capital improvements both cash and debt payments
Rehabbing water and sewer lines causes a lot of inconvenience with streets closed and, at times, temporary water hookups. But as the report explains, some of the water and sewer lines being replaced are 70 to 100 years old, which is one reason the department has to handle 158 water main breaks a year.
According to the report, the water department is developing a new program to prioritize infrastructure repair, which should minimize the disruptions to water and sewer customers.
Greensboro can’t grow if it doesn’t have the water and sewer capacity to handle that growth, and some good news in the report is that what most people call the sewage treatment plan, and is officially the T.Z. Osborne Water Reclamation Facility, has been expanded from a capacity of 40 million gallons per day to 56 million gallons a day.
I am glad we have more sewer capacity as it will certainly be used up with the city council we have in place.
This article is called journalism 101. “Just the facts, ma’m”.