Water by the Numbers - MPW
Mount Pleasant Waterworks (MPW) treats and delivers 8,740,000 gallons of water per day to approximately 66,000 people. That is roughly 130 gallons per day per person. Last year, MPW delivered 3,191,460,000 gallons of water.
So, where does all this water come from? Groundwater comes from an underground aquifer, which is a formation of sand that can hold a usable amount of water. MPW treats water from the Middendorf Aquifer, which lies 2,000 feet deep beneath the Coastal Plain of South Carolina. This water is treated using state-of-the-art reverse osmosis (RO) technology. In the RO process, water is forced through long tubes called pressure vessels. MPW’s 4 Reverse Osmosis Water Treatment Plants have a total of 176 vessels. These vessels contain 7 semi-permeable membranes which are rolled up in a spiral fashion. As water moves through the 176 pressure vessels, the membrane removes the impurities. Last year, MPW produced 1,486,856,000 gallons of water from the RO plants. It was necessary to purchase an additional 1,704,880,000 gallons of water from Charleston Water System (CWS) during the year, to keep up with demand and growth.
Treating and delivering all this water is not cheap. MPW spends about $791,976 a year in electricity costs. That’s about 9,740,769 KwH of electricity used. There are also 485 miles of water mains, 2,900 fire hydrants, 9,600 valves, and 6 deep wells in the system that must be maintained year round.
MPW – By The Numbers
- Average depth of deep wells: 1900 feet
- Temperature of water as it comes out of our deep wells: 98 degrees F
- Number of bacteria tests performed per month throughout system: 80
- Number of employees in the water department: 42
- Number of water accounts: 34,000
- Number of days with a water quality violation: 0
(Clay Duffie is General Manager of Mount Pleasant Waterworks and has more than 30 years of experience in water and wastewater management practice. He is a past President of the South Carolina Water Pollution Control Association and the SC Section of the American Water Works Association (AWWA) and has led numerous national seminars on environmental leadership and utility management issues.)
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--Press Room
