The Cape Fear Public Utility Authority is busy for all the right reasons. The Wilmington, North Carolina, agency has a diverse customer base depending on its services, from the university to the deepwater port, to vacation cabins along the Atlantic Coast and businesses and homes across New Hanover County.

“We cannot let the system fail,” says Carel (pronounced Carl) Vandermeyden, the authority’s deputy executive director for treatment and engineering. “A community cannot be successful without reliable water and sewer services. Providing those services is our job.”

The authority was formed in 2008 through the merger of the city of Wilmington and New Hanover County systems. Vandermeyden says one of the “drivers” behind creation of the unified system was periodic failure of the then-existing sewer system. “In the five years before the authority was formed, there were 156 sewer overflows that spilled 11 million gallons of untreated wastewater.”

In the 15 years since, the authority has made dramatic progress in reducing overflows. In the last five years, it has experienced fewer than half the number of spills of the five-year period before the consolidation — and has reduced the volume of spills by 94%. “We see how we have improved the system and that we did it in a cost-effective way,” Vandermeyden says. “We’re still doing it cost-effectively though the systems are much larger now.”

One indicator of its success is the gold award the authority won in 2022 from the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies for “exceptional utility performance.” Vandermeyden says the association cited the authority’s general good management. “We’ve made a lot of progress — and the award reflects that — but there also was a heavy focus on infrastructure sustainability, reliability and resilience. We focus a lot on the proactive replacement of aging infrastructure.”

The focus is justified. Parts of the combined system are old — it contains 170 miles of water main and 110 miles of sewer lines that are at least 70 years old. Some clay or cast iron pipe underneath the older parts of Wilmington has been there for more than a hundred years. 

The authority is systematically addressing the issue by identifying infrastructure nearing the end of its useful life — which is about 70 years for water and gravity sewer lines and 40 for pump stations, for example — and targeting that stock for replacement or rehabilitation. A “find it, fix it” process relies on work orders that show which sections of the system routinely require the most labor hours to maintain.  

Whenever feasible, sewer pipe is lined rather than dug up and replaced to minimize disruptions above ground. While some pipe bursting has been tried, lining is the more usual response to a leaking segment of pipe. 

Whenever possible, the authority coordinates this repair work with the city and county. “If they have a street to repave, we partner with them to replace our aging assets underneath the street first and then they can come back and pave it. The last thing we want to do is have to dig up a newly paved street,” Vandermeyden says.

PAYING FOR GROWTH

The authority’s latest 10-year capital improvement plan reflects all of the foregoing projects. The price tag of the plan totals almost $650 million: 77% of that total to rehab or replace infrastructure, 22% to expand the footprint of the system, and 1% for system enhancement.

“We always look for enhancements that lower the operating costs, build in efficiencies and reduce energy use. But the vast majority of dollars in the plan will be spent to rehabilitate or replace aging infrastructure,” Vandermeyden says.

One project alone accounts for $250 million of the 10-year expenditure: replacing and upgrading the system’s south-side wastewater treatment plant. The existing facility was built in the 1970s and has a treatment capacity of 12 mgd. That will be increased to 16 mgd and its function will be enhanced through the latest technology filtration and treatment components.

“We don’t have the luxury of shutting down the old plant and building a new one. We’ll build the new one while the old one is in operation, then phase it into the system and transfer flow from the old to the new.” The biggest part of the new facility will be built on land purchased adjacent to the existing plant.

A major impetus for expansion and modernization of the south-side plant is increasing development farther north. The largest tracts of land for future development are all at the northern end of the county, which eventually will challenge the capacity of the north-side plant. “We have the ability to shift some sewer flow to the south-side plant and will do so after its expansion in 2030,” Vandermeyden says.

Other current big-ticket capital expenditures for the Cape Fear authority include nearly $10 million to replace 7,000 feet of 6-inch water mains, 9,000 feet of 6- and 8-inch sewer mains, and cleaning and lining 4,000 feet of gravity sewer in a section of downtown Wilmington. That work will precede city stormwater curb and street paving projects. 

Even pricier is the $48 million construction of a 24-inch sewer force main and pump station to meet the demands of all that north-side development. A booster pump station on River Road and 16-inch water main running from it will cost more than $11 million with work beginning in 2025. Work also is wrapping up on a new Motts Creek pump station with a capacity of 4.2 mgd, more than double the capacity of the old pump station.  

“We have 158 sewer pump stations and we track them in terms of age and maintenance history,” Vandermeyden notes. “The stations have a life of about 40 years and we try to replace or rehab two aging stations every year.”

On the water treatment side of the ledger, the authority’s primary plant dates to 1943 but has been continually upgraded through the years. It can produce 35 mgd of treated water now and is expandable to 44 mgd. “It is one of the most advanced water treatment plants in the country,” Vandermeyden says.

The plant’s most recent enhancement was the installation of $43 million in granular activated carbon filters, an add-on to rid the system’s water of a combination of synthetic chemicals called PFAS. 

When the authority discovered that a chemical manufacturer had for years been dumping PFAS into the Cape Fear River upstream from the authority’s raw water intake — the source point for 80% of the authority’s water — a lawsuit followed, as did the upgrade of the plant. The good news: authority water engineers have consistently found that the new filters are effectively removing PFAS, often to levels at or near nondetection.

Improvements are funded in part by state loans and grants but the authority mostly relies on rates and fees to cover capital expenses and operating costs in the absence of city and county taxpayer support. Consequently, rates are going up. “We do a lot of outreach through various channels to explain what we are trying to accomplish, why we are doing it and what the benefits are to customers,” Vandermeyden says.  

Developers pitch in, too. The cost of lines extended to subdivisions are covered by the developer. Water and sewer infrastructure within a development is built at the expense of the developer and then conveyed to the authority. 

“We have a policy where growth pays for growth,” Vandermeyden says. And while development does put pressure on the authority to deliver more services, “It also increases our customer base and allows us to spread our fixed costs.”

BUILDING RESILIENCE

Cape Fear Public Utility authority has a responsive track record. The reaction to the PFAS situation shows that. So does the commitment to ridding its system of the “bad actors,” as Vandermeyden calls them — the undependable components in the infrastructure that are constantly poised to cause problems. 

A 100% leak-free system is a pipe dream, Vandermeyden understands, but an annual audit of breaks per 100 miles of water mains shows a 50% reduction in leaks and breaks over the last six years. 

The authority also anticipates threats to its system, such as hurricanes. Planning to keep the water flowing during storms has paid off. The authority “invested heavily” in standby generators for its 158 pump stations and plants. It stockpiles a 10-day supply of fuel on site in storage tanks to power the generators during a storm and operates its own fuel truck to replenish the tanks rather than depend on commercial fuel delivery.

“We’re proud of our resilience,” says Vandermeyden. “After Hurricane Florence in 2018, we were the only utility in the area that did not lose service.” He credits good management, good staff and repair crews that are always on call.

“We spend a lot of time thinking about how to keep our system reliable and resilient so that people can wake up and the water always comes out of the faucet and the toilet flushes and they don’t even have to think about it. There are a lot of things that go on behind the scenes to make that happen.”