What would a massive water outage mean for our region?  

Thanks to an Economic Impact Study that CFPUA released last year, we actually know the answer: between $70.4 and $93.2 million lost per day in total economic output across New Hanover County. Per household, that’s between $650 and $860 lost for each day without CFPUA water service.  

And that’s just the dollars lost by local families, businesses, and industries – not the incalculable toll a widespread outage could take on public health and quality of life.  

Ensuring the resilience of the infrastructure that brings drinking water to homes and businesses in our community is top-of-mind for CFPUA’s Board, just as it is for leaders of our peer utilities in Brunswick and Pender counties. I am proud to share that your regional utilities are in the final phase of a project that will significantly reduce the potential for a widespread outage: a new transmission main carrying raw water from the Cape Fear River to our treatment plants.  

Most of our region’s raw water is provided by the Lower Cape Fear Water and Sewer Authority (LCFWASA), which owns a 48-inch-diameter transmission main that runs 24 miles from its pump station in Bladen County to treatment plants in New Hanover County, serving Brunswick and Pender counties along the way. Since this main was constructed in the 1980s, it has had three significant failures: one in the late 1990s, one in 2016, and one in 2021. 

Luckily, none of these failures resulted in a total water outage, though they did reduce supplies for local utilities and require costly repairs.  

In the water industry, one of the best defenses against failure is redundancy – having a back-up source for service in the event of damage to a water line. To that end, our region’s utilities have been hard at work on a multi-phase project to parallel the existing raw water main with a larger secondary line:  

• Phase 1 (Completed in 2022): 14 miles from LCFWASA’s pump station to Brunswick County’s Northwest Water Treatment Plant  

• Phase 2 (Currently under construction): 7 miles from the Northwest Plant to Pender County’s Plant 

• Phase 3: 3 miles from the Pender County Plant to CFPUA’s meter vault on U.S. 421 

Construction on this final phase is expected to begin early next year and wrap by the end of 2026.  

Throughout the project, LCFWASA, Brunswick County, Pender County, and CFPUA have partnered to equitably divide costs based on the benefits to each partner. Constructing this final 3-mile section will cost just under $18.3 million, with CFPUA contributing $11.7 million (supported by a low-interest loan from the North Carolina State Revolving Fund), and LCFWASA funding $6.6 million. 

This and other portions of the project also received funding from North Carolina’s 2023 Appropriations Act, which allocated $30 million to LCFWASA. We are grateful to our region’s delegation to the N.C. General Assembly for helping us complete this critical infrastructure.  

Over the past year, we have seen very real threats to water infrastructure throughout the Southeast.  

In September, Tropical Storm Helene damaged or destroyed systems throughout Western N.C. and in neighboring states, with Asheville customers under a boil water advisory for seven weeks. In January, City of Richmond, Virginia, customers were without water after a winter storm knocked out power at their treatment plant. And just last month, the Town of Mebane implemented water rationing after Tropical Storm Chantal flooded the Graham-Mebane Water Treatment Plant. 

While no project can completely threat-proof a system, this parallel raw water line will give our tri-county utilities a critical layer of protection. Customers can be confident that our local water systems will soon be stronger than ever.