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About

Charlotte Water is the largest public water and wastewater utility in the Carolinas and has been serving the greater Charlotte-Mecklenburg county since 1889.

Charlotte Water’s staff of 912 employees work around the clock to bring clean and reliable drinking water to 989,410 people every day.

To contact us, please visit our website.

This blog will serve as a source to keep up-to-date with all the great things Charlotte Water does! Be sure to check in and read about any fun activities, projects, and work that Charlotte Water is doing to provide clean and reliable drinking water. Be sure to follow us on Twitter (X), Facebook, and YouTube to stay informed on everything Charlotte Water!

Keep reading to see the process that Charlotte Water takes to create clean and reliable drinking water every day of the week.

The journey from groundwater to drinking water is not quick or easy. Your drinking water will travel many miles before coming out of the tap. It will be drawn from Lake Norman and Mountain Island Lake by one of our pumps stations, then flowing to one of our water treatment plants. After an intensive treatment process that cleans the water, the water travels to a water tower, and then eventually to your home! Thousands of miles each drop will travel before it comes out of your tap.

More of a visual learner? We totally get it. That’s why we made this cool graphic to help.

Diagram titled with white caps font top left, Water Treatment, depicts how water from nature is treated an moved via a 7 step journey for drinking in the home. On this diagram all water pipes are blue, bodies of water are light blue, all buildings and structures are grey and everything in between is light grassy green. All descriptive fonts are white and listed in a blue field on lower half of page. From the left is a blue area representing a lake with a pipeline connecting the natural body of water to stop 1 - Pump Station, We have pumps and filter stations located at Mountain Island Lake and Lake Norman. Water from Mountain Island goes to Franklin Water Treatment Plant and Vest Water Treatment Plant. Water diverted from Lake Norman flows to The Lee S. Duke Water Treatment Plant. From there the water moves to stop 2 - Raw Water Reservoir, Sediment falls out of suspension in the reservoir; a group of large covered round tanks is stop 3 - Coagulation, During coagulation, liquid aluminum sulfite or alum is added to untreated raw water. When mixed with the water this causes the tiny particles of dirt in the water to stick together or coagulate. At this same location, the water has an additional stop, stop 3a - Flocculation, Paddles in large tanks stir the alum and water mixture, causing them to stick together and form large, heavier particles called floc. Next is stop 4 - Sedimentation, the water and the floc particles move into sedimentation basins where the heavy floc particles settle to the bottom. The water then moves through pipes to a series of filtration tanks during Stop 5, Filtration - from the sedimentation basin, the water flows through a filter designed to move any remaining particles left in the water. The filters are made of layers of sand and carbon. From there the water moves on to the last leg of it journey before it reaches the home: Stops 6 and 7: Corrosion Control, additives and Fluoride are added and Disinfection and Fluoride - Fluoride is added to protect teeth. Clorine is added to kill any germs or contaminants and to keep water disinfected while it is pumped through 4200 miles of pipes to reach customers. In the bottom left corner of the page is the Charlotte Water logo in white font.

Even though you are finished with that water… we’re not done with it just yet. Once that water goes down that drain, it starts the second leg of its journey. Traveling through our 4,288 miles of wastewater pipe eventually leading to one of our wastewater treatment plants. The wastewater goes through a multiple step process to clean and treat the water so that it is safe to put back into the natural water system.

Looking for a nice visual graphic again? We’ve got you covered.

iagram titled in white caps font Waste Water Treatment at top left describes the workflow of waste water treatment from residential home on its 10 step journey to the waterways. Landscape of the diagram is blue sky at the top, green space representing grass in the middle and the bottom depicts a water way connecting to a lake. All the structures described are using a graphic design of navy blue and light blue tones representing any body of water aspect, all pipes connecting everything are olive green. 1- residential home wit white caps font below it, Waste Water From Home Enters Sanitary Sewer; 2 - large gravity filter structure with tank is identified with white caps font as Primary Treatment: Grit Removal gravity pulls larger particles to the bottom and Primary Clarifier solids are separated from water by settling to the bottom of the clarifier; two green pipes leave that structure, one is item 3 - white caps font Sludge Solids move to the digester as identified by line pointing to green pipeline and the other is item 4 - white caps font Liquid and Small Solids point to another section of green pipe; from there material move through to two basins 5 - Aeration Basins: Air is circulated and bugs clean and move phosphorus and nitrates, the moving into item 6, Secondary Clarifier-Additional solids are separated from the liquid and piped back to the biosolids digester; from there the material follows the pipeline to item 7: Efficient Filtration in a round tank to filter out any small particles is followed by a trip to item 8: a tank for Disinfection with either UV or Chlorine and from there the pure water goes out to natural water source such as a lake. Now moving back to that second pipe routing to item 3; that material moves to item 9, a large round tank identified as a Digester- a bacterial process called digestion is used to reduce the amount of organic matter and the number of disease causing microorganisms; from that tank the material travels to a pipe to item 10, a building with a tank identified for Dewatering, the last bit of water is removed from the biosolids before it is loaded onto trucks where it will seek its final stop as Biosolids, used as a soil amendment and organic fertilizer for crops not used for human consumption. At very bottom right order of diagram is Charlotte Water logo in white font.

Pretty cool, huh? Well, that is just the tip of the iceberg for what we do at Charlotte Water. There is plenty of amazing people in Charlotte Water that do fun stuff every day to help keep your water is clean and safe.

Make sure to check in with our blog so you don’t miss anything!

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