The Haw River Assembly hosted a public information session alongside TriRiver Water representatives at Woods Charter School in northeastern Chatham County on Wednesday, April 23 to assuage citizens’ concerns about an upcoming utility merger.
Following the delivery of letters by TriRiver Water to Chatham County utility customers, confusion spread by what the change would mean for people’s water quality, rates and more. Over the course of two hours, the group of panelists fielded questions from the few dozen attendees of the event and detailed some of the top priorities of water-related groups in the region.
Here are some details on the TriRiver Water merger and takeaways from Wednesday’s session:
Riverkeeper of the Haw River and Executive Director of the Haw River Assembly Emily Sutton stands to speak for the gathered crowd on Wednesday, April 23, 2025. Hannah Nelson of the Southern Environmental Law Center (left), Victor Czar with the City of Sanford, and Cory Saulsbury with TriRiver Water sit at the front to also take questions. (Photo by Brighton McConnell/Chapel Hill Media Group.)
This change is just for Chatham County water customers
If the name TriRiver Water already looks and sounds familiar to Town of Pittsboro water customers, it should. Pittsboro formally switched its water and wastewater operations and infrastructure over to the City of Sanford in July 2024 after years of discussion and planning. The ease of that switch made the appeal for Chatham County even stronger, considering Sanford’s commitment to retaining employees and recognizing their seniority status. While the name may throw people off, TriRiver Water is branded to help customers understand the connection between themselves and the other areas being served by the City of Sanford’s water treatment operations. It is a play on the Haw River — the water source for Pittsboro — and Deep River’s combination to create the Cape Fear River near Sanford, where the city gets its water from.
Chatham County’s government considered the benefits of adding their roughly 11,000 utility customers to the company last fall after Siler City approved an interlocal agreement to join TriRiver Water in October. The move aims to benefit in the long term from Sanford’s infrastructure capacity and while offering short-term stability as the county continues to grow — which is a critical factor to why the local governments are making the change. Additionally, since Chatham County purchases its raw water from Cary, Siler City and Sanford’s local governments, being brought into the TriRiver Water umbrella will ultimately help streamline the distribution process once more waterline connections are constructed.
Chair of the Chatham County Board of Commissioners Karen Howard spoke with 97.9 The Hill ahead of Wednesday’s public information meeting, and she reiterated how the plan of maintaining the county’s water treatment plant on the east side of Jordan Lake was a selling point to the elected officials.
“They are not bringing in another water source, they are not changing something else, it is the management of the system that already exists,” said Howard. “That means they’ve taken on our employees and our staff, so you won’t see different people. You will see different vehicles, you’ll see a different uniform on [the people] driving those vans… but the water source that you have been receiving your water from in Chatham County will remain the same.”
Once the merger is active on July 1, customers for Chatham County’s water will receive a new account number and will likely need to update their payment methods to pay water bills starting on July 8. More information can be found on TriRiver Water’s website.
Siler City will soon be joining the utility company too — but Sanford Assistant City Manager Victor Czar said Wednesday the town government is behind on its audits and their water customers will merge with TriRiver Water later in 2025.
A concept map of TriRiver Water’s potential utility system in the future, displaying the various connections between Chatham County communities it will service. Blue dotted lines represent potential water lines, while the red dotted lines represent potential wastewater connections. Presented to the county commissioners in September 2024, officials said the map does not reflect any confirmed pipeline paths from Siler City or Pittsboro. (Photo via TriRiver Water and Chatham County.)
Rates will likely stay the same at first — but will change across decades
After TriRiver Water’s letter was sent out to Chatham County customers the week of April 14, some fear and misinformation began to spread about how the change would affect monthly rates. Because the initial phase of the merger will see the City of Sanford — who will set the rates going forward — absorb Chatham County’s operations, infrastructure and water source, customers should see little to no immediate rate changes.
Part of the reasoning for TriRiver’s mergers with Pittsboro, Siler City and Chatham County is to dampen the impact of significant infrastructure costs necessary to serve the region’s growth. Instead of solely Pittsboro ratepayers and the town paying for hundreds of millions of dollars worth of improvements, having more customers will spread out the financial burden.
Czar added, though, that localized projects will eventually mean higher rates — but the long-term goal of the mergers is to achieve rate parity for all water and wastewater customers in the region.
“I can tell you, right now, the City of Sanford’s rates are the lowest of everybody’s that we’re talking about [in this agreement],” said the assistant city manager. “And our goal is not to raise [Sanford’s] rates to the other people’s rates, we’re trying to keep our rates as low as possible as well.
“What’s going to happen is,” Czar continued, “over time, there’s some capital projects that need to take place to literally tie these systems together. In the merger agreement, there are cost centers set up — so there are some things that are easily identifiable as a Pittsboro cost. The Pittsboro ratepayers are going to be expected to pay for that [project]. There are some things that are clearly identifiable as Sanford’s responsibility, and the Sanford ratepayers are going to pay for it. But at some point, once some of these larger interconnections are made, that [responsibility] starts to get really fuzzy. An improvement we make [in Sanford] benefits the whole system, which benefits Chatham County as well as Pittsboro. And [an update made] in Pittsboro benefits Pittsboro as well as the whole system… that’s when you can reach rate parity. That’s the goal.”
Yes, the county government and TriRiver’s water is safe to drink
For many attendants of Wednesday’s information session, their chief concerns were whether the quality of their water would be threatened by the change in utility company. Because TriRiver Water will be pulling from the same water sources and using the same infrastructure as before, the answer is no: customers’ water quality, and the various threats to it, will remain the same. While Pittsboro and Chatham County residents experienced a variety of scares from elevated per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and 1,4-dioxane levels from untreated and unreported releases upstream in prior years, subsequent work by groups like the Haw River Assembly and Southern Environmental Law Center helped add more constraints and communication around those dangers. Now, cities like Greensboro and Burlington are required to alert downstream local governments if a higher-concentration slug of chemicals is detected, and TriRiver Water can act accordingly.
The water treatment protocols for Pittsboro customers is a good example. Before merging with TriRiver, the town government invested in a granulated activated carbon filter system (GAC system) to try and eliminate PFAS threats within its water levels. In all three years it has been online, according to Water Plant Superintendent Cory Saulsbury, the system regularly reduces PFAS compound concentrations by 90-95% and down to a non-detectable level. Even after Saulsbury and his staff transitioned to being TriRiver employees, the GAC system remained is place and few other steps in the water treatment have been changed by Sanford.
Pittsboro’s granulated activated carbon system (GAC system) is most visible with two silver towers on the edge of the water treatment plant. Town officials say the system eliminates on average 90 percent of PFAS compounds.
Even though major chemical releases are required to be communicated by local governments upstream on the Haw River, Pittsboro and Chatham County each test weekly for 1,4-dioxane levels. That chemical has fewer proven options to filter it out from drinking water when it is discovered; historically, Pittsboro’s water treatment plant will flush its system and limit its draws from the Haw River, while the town government offers free treated water to customers until the chemical slug has passed. Recently, Pittsboro’s water treatment plant finished a pilot project using photocatalysis to break down PFAS and 1,4-dioxane
Pittsboro Commissioner John Bonitz, who was the only elected official in attendance for the session, addressed the crowd and said he believes Pittsboro’s efforts have helped the community use some of the highest-quality water in the state. Between the town’s focus and the Haw River Assembly’s advocacy, that ought not change anytime soon. Sanford, though, faces more of a threat from the City of Asheboro and its industrial customers, as 1,4-dioxane is regularly released into the Deep River. The Haw River Assembly, the Cape Fear Watch organization and Southern Environmental Law Center filed an intent to sue Asheboro and its industrial wastewater customers in March for the unlawful discharge levels. Although the Deep River does not serve any Chatham County customers, its water may eventually among that used to serve the community once connections are built out from Sanford’s water treatment plant decades from now.
More about Chatham County’s drinking water quality and former water system can be found on its website, while additional information on TriRiver Water can be found here.
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Chatham County Utility Customers Will Switch to TriRiver Water in July. What Does That Mean? Chapelboro.com.
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