This month on “Wonderful Water,” join 97.9 The Hill’s Andrew Stuckey for a conversation with Will Lawson, OWASA’s director of wastewater management, and Sustainable Carolina analyst Melanie Elliott about drought, water reclamation, system resilience and more!
Following a severe drought in 2007-’08, UNC and OWASA worked together to solve issues with resiliency in OWASA’s reservoirs and water strategy, and implemented a system specialized for water reclamation serving Orange County. That system celebrates its seventeenth anniversary this year, and is once again showing its impact as 2026 drought conditions have affected our community.
“After a study and working with [OWASA], UNC was able to gather some grants,” said Will Lawson. “… We decided this was the best thing for our area, with our system here, our watersheds. The Cane Creek Reservoir and University Lake refill very slow, unlike some of our neighbors. With that in mind, it was a no-brainer that we needed to do this.”
In the conversations and planning sessions following the severe drought in the 00’s, a partnership between UNC and OWASA produced tangible results in the form of a $14 million dollar water reclamation system. UNC paid the entire cost to build the system, excluding a $1.6 million grant from the NC Clean Water Management Trust Fund to pay for engineering design and permitting costs, and a $625,500 grant from the US Environmental Protection Agency to help pay for construction of the system. Capital improvements of the reclaimed water system were dedicated to OWASA for operation and maintenance, and the University’s investment continues to pay dividends as the system infrastructure greatly benefits campus, hospitals and more.
“We use water in a lot of different ways on campus,” said Melanie Elliott. “The first thing you might think about is our student residents who are living on campus, right? Showering, doing laundry, those sorts of activities. Obviously, we drink water and consume water in our dining halls. Our athletic fields and recreational fields need to be irrigated. We’ve got lots of scientific labs on campus that are really water intensive buildings. But one of our biggest water demands is actually for chilled water. We cool our buildings on campus with chilled water, and that water runs through a loop — but, because of evaporation, we still have to replace a lot of the water to keep the system running properly. So with that in mind, we decided to replace that evaporated water with the reclaimed water … [the reclaimed water system] can support about 30% of our water demand. So we see that at the end of the year that we’ve saved 30% of the potable water.”
97.9 The Hill’s Andrew Stuckey, OWASA’s Will Lawson and Melanie Elliott of Sustainable Carolina
You can listen to the full conversation below, and visit the Wonderful Water page here for more interviews and stories about the work OWASA does in our community.
Chapel Hill and Carrboro residents use roughly 7 million gallons of water a day, and “Wonderful Water” is a monthly conversation sponsored by the Orange Water and Sewer Authority highlighting its work to keep our community growing and water flowing.
Presented by the Orange Water and Sewer Authority
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