Charlotte Water Asks For 30M Gallons Of Water Daily From Catawba River To Help With Growth

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — You can practically feel Charlotte growing everywhere, but what about at your sink faucet? Charlotte Water says it needs more drinking water, as the City’s population gets bigger and bigger.

WCCB Charlotte’s Zane Cina visited the Catawba River to see where Charlotte hopes to find an answer to its water needs.

Catawba Riverkeeper Brandon Jones says several Counties and Cities along the North Carolina, South Carolina border pull their drinking water from the Catawba. That includes Charlotte Water which takes up to 33 million gallons a day to keep it’s customers hydrated. On top of that, Charlotte water also takes around 160 million gallons of water from Lake Norman and Mountain Island Lake.

Now Charlotte Water says it needs even more liquid from the Catawba to help deal with population growth.

“They would need another about 30 million gallons per day to serve the estimated population growth of that area,” Jones said

Jones says it sounds like a lot of water leaving the Catawba, but ultimately the impact will a drop in the bucket, unless the need for drinking water rises drastically.

“During a drought…every drop counts,” Jones said. “As all these other cities continue to grow like we expect, that 30 is going to become a lot more important in 20 or 30 years.”

Charlotte water currently returns some liquid to the Catawba through wastewater. It helps for now, but as more water is taken over time, conservation will become harder.

“We need to start thinking about it now, while the cost of water is still low and we need to be creating incentives… for people to want to conserve water,” Jones said.

It could take up to four years before Charlotte Water is approved an extra 30 million gallons from the Catawba. In the mean time studies are being completed to measure the impact to the river.

A public input meeting is being held in Rock Hill on Monday night from 6 P.M. to 8 P.M. at Dutchman Creek Middle School. At the meeting all guests will have a chance to give their opinion.