Home >

Groundbreaking Ceremony Held for GUC’s Aquifer Storage and Recovery Wellhead Facilities Project

To meet Pitt County’s increasing water needs, Greenville Utilities is nearing completion on its industry-leading Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR) project. ASR is the storing of treated drinking water in underground sand deposits during periods of low customer usage and recovering, or using, the water during periods of high customer usage and emergencies. ASR will allow GUC to store in excess of 300 million gallons of drinking water for a fraction of the cost of storing water in above-ground tanks. When completed, the ASR project will be one of the first of its kind in North Carolina.

To date, two 500-feet wells have been constructed at a site off Old Pactolus Road. The next step will be to construct wellhead facilities that are necessary to provide the infrastructure that will allow GUC to inject and withdraw treated water from the ASR well. A groundbreaking ceremony for the wellhead facilities construction was held on December 2, 2008. Speakers at the groundbreaking included Dr. Richard Spruill, Associate Professor of Geology, ECU, and Principal, Groundwater Management Associates, Inc.; Millie Lilley, District Director for Congressman Walter B. Jones and Betty Jo Shepheard, Eastern Region Field Representative for Senator Richard Burr.

Construction is expected to be completed in 2009 and the ASR facilities are expected to be operational in 2010.