The Western Intake Partnership is key to sustaining the Triangle region's excellent quality of life by ensuring that our region’s clean drinking water needs will be effectively met for generations to come. By utilizing a regional approach for drinking water management, the Western Intake Partners will help to foster a sustainable water future for our region, while providing reliable, high quality drinking water to our communities, the Town of Pittsboro, The City of Durham, Chatham County and the Orange Water and Sewer Authority (OWASA) service area.

In 2014, Chatham County, the City of Durham, Orange Water and Sewer Authority (OWASA), and the Town of Pittsboro began to explore ways to jointly meet the long-term water supply needs of the Triangle region. In 2018, the four water service providers signed an interlocal agreement to form the Western Intake Partnership. Jointly funded preliminary studies began in 2020. OWASA has supported the WIP since its inception, but officially began funding a share in the Partnership studies in 2022.

The Western Intake Partnership includes Chatham County, the City of Durham, the Town of Pittsboro, and the Orange Water and Sewer Authority (OWASA).

There are three main components that will be constructed as part of the Jordan Lake Water Supply Project.

The first component is a new Water Intake Structure which will be constructed to withdraw raw water from the western side of Jordan Lake. An underground pipeline will connect the Water Intake Structure to a new Pump Station, which will pump the raw water to the new Regional Water Treatment Facility.

The second component of the Jordan Lake Water Supply Project will be constructing a new Regional Water Treatment Facility, where the raw water from Jordan Lake will be treated to meet drinking water purification standards. After going through the purification process at the new Regional Water Treatment Facility, the treated water will be ready for distribution and public consumption.

The third component of the Jordan Lake Water Supply Project is the Treated Water Transmission Pipeline. The Treated Water Transmission Pipeline is a system of underground pipelines and two storage tanks that transports the clean, treated water to the Partners’ customers. Storage tanks will be constructed at an intermediate location in northern Chatham County, and at the point of interconnection with the City of Durham’s water distribution system, to ensure that clean drinking water flows smoothly from the new Regional Water Treatment Facility to the homes or businesses the Partners serve.

Jordan Lake is a manmade reservoir that was originally conceived by the Army Corps of Engineers as a flood control project following devastating floods in the 1940s. Between 1973 and 1983, the Army Corp of Engineers dammed and flooded Haw River and New Hope Creek to create what we now know as Jordan Lake.

During the conceptualization and planning phase, it was identified that Jordan Lake could also serve as a future water supply source for the growing Triangle region. Currently, the Town of Cary and the Town of Apex have a shared water intake on Jordan Lake. This shared water intake has supplied water from Jordan Lake to the residents of Chatham County for years.

In 1989, a property near Jordan Lake was purchased by the Orange Water and Sewer Authority (OWASA) with the intention of building a new water supply facility on this site at some point in the future to expand drinking water treatment capacity to meet the needs of the growing Triangle region.

The Triangle Region is growing rapidly and as it grows, the demand for drinking water is also increasing. To be able to sustainable manage increased future drinking water needs, Chatham County, the City of Durham, the Town of Pittsboro, and the Orange Water and Sewer Authority (OWASA) got together to form the Western Intake Partnership. Together the Western Intake Partners will be able to work together and use a regional approach to managing the future drinking water needs of the Triangle region.

Who can withdraw water and how much water they can withdraw from Jordan Lake is controlled by North Carolina’s Environmental Management Commission.

The Environmental Management Commission controls which utilities receive water supply allocations (meaning they can withdraw raw water to treat and use for drinking water) from Jordan Lake based on each utility’ forecasted future water needs. Each of the members of the Western Intake Partnership have received individual water supply allocations from the Environmental Management Commission for Jordan Lake. The Jordan Lake Water Supply Project will combine these individual water supply allocations and utilize a regional approach for managing future drinking water needs in the Triangle region. By using a regional management approach, the Western Intake Partners will be able to provide reliable, high quality drinking water to the Triangle region for generations to come in a manner that will be more sustainable and environmentally-friendly than if each Partner individually managed drinking water needs for just their service area.

To learn more about this regional approach to meeting the future drinking water needs of the Triangle region, click on the Jordan Lake Water Supply link at the bottom of this web page.

The vision for the Jordan Lake Water Supply Project was established before Jordan Lake was even developed. Jordan Lake is a vital regional water resource that was developed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to serve a variety of purposes, including supplying water for surrounding communities, mitigating flooding risks, providing habitats for fish and wildlife, and creating new recreational opportunities for communities in the Triangle region.

In 1989, a property near Jordan Lake was purchased for the purposes of installing a water intake and water treatment facility to treat and process the raw water withdrawals from Jordan Lake.

Shortly after the property was purchased, a study investigated possible sites for a new water intake on the western side of Jordan Lake and evaluated the feasibility of a raw water intake facility on the western side of Jordan Lake.

Once the Jordan Lake Water Supply Project is implemented, the Western Intake Partnership’s facilities will be able to provide up to:

• Initially, approximately 20 million gallons of drinking water per day to community members throughout our Triangle region service areas.
• We are also planning for the future – each of the Western Intake Partnership facilities are being designed and built so that the facilities can be easily expanded in the future if needed. In the future, these facilities could be expanded to be able to process and treat up to 85 million gallons of raw water per day at the proposed Regional Water Treatment Facility site.

The Western Intake Partnership aims to withdraw, transport, and treat water from Jordan Lake and deliver high quality drinking water to customers. The water will be treated and returned to the Cape Fear River basin after use. The water supply was anticipated in the design of the reservoir and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, Division of Water Resources’ water supply allocation process for Jordan Lake.

The Western Intake Partners performed an environmental review to identify and assess any potential environmental impacts of the Project. In compliance with both the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and North Carolina’s State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA), findings from the review were documented in an Environmental Assessment which will be submitted for regulatory approval as part of the Project's application to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and state approvals of the Project and 401/404 permitting. Quality and sustainability are core values of that define our work as the Western Intake Partnership. We are committed to being a good steward of the environment and of our communities.

The Jordan Lake Water Supply Project involves constructing a new Regional Water Treatment Facility that will treat raw water withdrawn from Jordan Lake. This new Regional Water Treatment Facility will treat and process raw water and test the treated water to ensure it meets all required drinking water quality standards, before the treated water is discharged from the facility and transported through the new Treated Water Transmission Pipeline to customers’ homes. The new Treated Water Transmission Pipeline that will be implemented as a part of the Jordan Lake Water Supply Project will also meet federal, state, and local requirements to ensure water quality and safety.

The Western Intake Partners are committed to ensure that they are providing customers with the highest quality drinking water and are committed to staying up to date about compounds of emerging concern, such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and 1,4-dioxane and the best treatment methods for removing these compounds.

Regulatory standards for these compounds are anticipated to be finalized in 2024. These compounds are occasionally detected in Jordan Lake at extremely low concentrations in the parts per trillion (ppt) – one part per trillion is equivalent to one grain of sugar in an Olympic-sized swimming pool. The Western Intake Partners are planning to incorporate advanced treatment technologies at the new Regional Water Treatment Facility to ensure that these compounds of emerging concern are being removed from all treated water that we will be providing to our customers.

The Western Intake Partners are currently collaborating on an Interlocal Agreement that will define how the Western Intake Partnership facilities and infrastructure will be designed, constructed, and operated. While the financing of individual Partners' participation in the various components of the Jordan Lake Water Supply Project may vary, the financing of project costs would typically be through utility reserves, bonds, commercial debt, or a combination of these funding sources. Bonds or debt would be repaid from utility rates and fee revenues in the normal manner of utility enterprise funds. Property taxes would not be used to fund this Project.

While there is no formal link between Western Intake Partnership's Jordan Lake Water Supply Project and Jordan Lake One Water Coalition (JLOW). Since the beginning, the Western Intake Partners have been active participants in the regional collaboration efforts, which has included state, local government, non-governmental organizations, agriculture, and development stakeholders that the Jordan Lake One Water Coalition has facilitated. The Jordan Lake One Water Coalition seeks to produce integrated watershed management recommendations for Jordan Lake, which would be implemented within the state's regulatory framework and directly by stakeholders.

Planning for wastewater service for residents in eastern Chatham County is outside the of the project objectives of the Western Intake Partner’s Jordan Lake Water Supply Project. No wastewater service is being planned in conjunction with the Western Intake Partner’s Jordan Lake Water Supply Project. Chatham County is not a wastewater service provider. Towns and developers are responsible for installing operating wastewater treatment facilities and/or septic field systems for residents in Chatham County.

When Jordan Lake was designed and constructed by the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, it was designed for the lake to hold approximately 45,800 acre-feet of water with lake levels being at an elevation of between 202 ft – 216 ft above mean sea level. At the State of North Carolina's request, this storage was designed to reliably supply 100 million gallons of water per day to support the Triangle region's communities. The conservation pool includes both water supply and low-flow augmentation.

As part of the state's evaluation process for Jordan Lake water supply allocations to the Western Intake Partners and others that occurred in 2015 and 2016, the State of North Carolina developed a computer model for the Cape Fear River and Neuse River basins to analyze the impacts of the proposed water supply allocations from Jordan Lake. In the Round 4 Jordan Lake Water Supply Allocation Recommendations Report, the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission concluded fully that allocating the Jordan Lake water supply storage pool would not significantly affect water levels in the lake or downstream in the Cape Fear River. Specifically, lake levels in the most significant periods of drought may be 1-2 ft lower in a future year when water withdrawals reach the full allocated amounts.

The Triangle region experiences occasional periods of drought and heavy rainfall. The most recent droughts of record occurred in 2001-02 and 2007-08. Lake levels will continue to vary in the future as they do today. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers manages Jordan Lake to minimize the impact of these variations, and utilities have water shortage response plans to conserve water during periods of drought. The state's 2016 Cape Fear River Surface Water Supply Evaluation acknowledges these natural variations will continue to occur, but it concludes that even with increased use of Jordan Lake water supply, the lake's storage is resilient enough to meet its water supply demands while also serving its recreational and habitat purposes, even if more extreme drought conditions were to occur.

The State of North Carolina controls and monitors water supply allocations from Jordan Lake. North Carolina General Statute 143-354(a)(11) authorizes the State's Environmental Management Commission to allocate Jordan Lake water supply storage to local governments based on need and the commitment to pay a share of associated capital, interest, administrative and operating costs, in proportion to their water supply storage allocations.

The most recent round of Jordan Lake water supply allocations (Round 4) was completed in 2017. At the conclusion Round 4, the State's Environmental Management Commission had allocated more than 91 percent of Jordan Lake’s available water supply storage pool with only 9 percent of the water supply storage still available that could be allocated in the future.

Each of the Western Intake Partners has their own defined water service areas and wastewater service areas. Residents within these service areas who are currently on wells connections for their water needs, may apply to connect to their water service provider. The idea of making water service available to residents near the future Regional Water Treatment Facility or along/near the future Treated Water Pipeline Distribution System has been investigated. Currently, Chatham County's water service area does not include the Western Intake Partner’s future Regional Water Treatment Facility, and the County does not plan to extend its water service to include the area surrounding the treatment facility, or along the transmission pipeline route.

The Jordan Lake Water Supply Project will include four separate construction component projects:

• Contract 1 – Intake and Raw Water Transmission
• Contract 2 – Regional Water Treatment Facility
• Contract 3 – Finished Water Transmission Pipeline
• Contract 4 – Transmission Pipeline Storage Tanks

These four construction component projects will be coordinated but contracted separately to be constructed most efficiently and cost-effectively.

At this preliminary stage of project planning and design, it is estimated that construction for the four Western Intake Partnership construction component projects will take about 3 to 3.5 years to complete. The exact timing of when each construction component project will start has not yet been determined, but it is common practice that the start and end of construction work for each construction component project will be staggered. This means that while each construction component project is expected to be completed within 3 years, the total duration of construction to complete the entire Jordan Lake Water Supply Project is expected to be a little longer.

The construction of the long pipelines that will make up the Treated Water Pipeline Distribution System will occur in short durations at various locations and will not require ongoing active construction work along the entire 16-mile pipeline route for the entire duration of the scheduled construction period for that construction project component.

The Western Intake Partnership facilities, which include the Water Intake Structure, the Regional Water Treatment Facility, and the Treated Water Transmission Pipeline will be operated by the City of Durham on behalf of the Western Intake Partners. The entities that make up that Western Intake Partnership – Chatham County, the City of Durham, the Orange Water and Sewer Authority (OWASA), and the Town of Pittsboro – are all non-profit municipal utilities or utility authorities.

The proposed site for the new Regional Water Treatment Facility is a parcel that is owned by the Orange Water and Sewer Authority and is located at the southeast corner of the intersection of Seaforth Road and North Pea Ridge Road, which is west of Jordan Lake and south of U.S. Highway 64.

In 1989, the Orange Water and Sewer Authority purchased property near Jordan Lake for a future water supply/treatment facility. Since that purchase, this site location has been the basis of planning for this proposed Regional Water Treatment Facility.

In 2022 for due diligence purposes, the Western Intake Partners conducted a Water Treatment Facility Site Alternatives Assessment for other possible sites in eastern Chatham County that could feasibly be used for a water treatment facility. The requirements for these potential alternative sites, which were considered as part of this Site Alternatives Assessment included: the site must have a minimum buildable area of 60 acres, which could be satisfied by either a single parcel or assemblage of contiguous parcels; favorable topography (i.e., not located in a floodplain or have streams/wetlands on the site); located near Jordan Lake; the ability to construct a Treated Water Transmission Pipeline from the potential alternative site finished to each Partner’s service area; and the site must currently be undeveloped. Seven potential alternative sites met the initial criteria and were screened as part of an evaluation process that conducted as part of the Water Treatment Facility Site Alternatives Assessment. The Site Alternative Assessment identified the initial site (located at the southeast corner of the intersection of Seaforth Road and North Pea Ridge Road) as the recommended site alternative that the Western Intake Partners should continue to move forward and use as the location for the proposed Regional Water Treatment Facility.

The proposed Regional Water Treatment Facility will directly support and help fulfill Plan Chatham (Chatham County’s Comprehensive Plan that was developed in 2017) vision for utilities and public services, which is described in Chapter 4 of the Plan Chatham Comprehensive Plan. Planning for the Jordan Lake Water Supply Project began more than 35 years ago in 1989, when the Orange Water and Sewer Authority purchased the property of the now proposed Regional Water Treatment Facility with the intent to construct a water supply/treatment facility on the property to access their state-issued water supply allocation from Jordan Lake.

On page 139 of the Plan Chatham Comprehensive Plan, there is a map (Figure 29) depicts this future Regional Water Treatment Facility. This Project will specifically achieve Utilities & Public Services Action Item 2: "expand public services" and Action Item 5: "partner with municipalities to provide water and wastewater service to economic development priorities,” which are both included as recommendations in the Plan Chatham Comprehensive Plan.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) owns the reservoir and lands immediately surrounding Jordan Lake. Portions of the lands around the lake are leased by USACE to the State of North Carolina to be managed by State agencies for recreation, forestry, and wildlife management. As with privately-held lands, a public infrastructure project must obtain an easement to locate facilities and pipelines on land owned by USACE.

Even at this early stage of project planning and design, the consultant design team for the Western Intake Partners has been coordinating closely with NCDOT on the placement of facility’s access driveway. The Project is still in the early planning stage of design, but preliminarily, the facility’s main access driveway is set to be located more than a quarter mile from the Seaforth Rd/N Pea Ridge Rd intersection. This access driveway will be used for employees, visitors, and deliveries a few dozen times per day when the new Regional Water Treatment Facility is in operation.

The site has multiple entrances for safety and resiliency reasons: the southern of the two Seaforth Road entrances will be the main access driveway. The western N Pea Ridge Road entrance would serve as a backup access driveway. Preliminarily, we expect that when this backup driveway entrance (western N Pea Road entrance) is being utilized in lieu of the main access driveway, it would be utilized by the same people for the same purposes.

A small stream divides the more-developed southern portion of the property (site for the future Regional Water Treatment Facility) from less-developed portions to the north. Locating the main entrance (the southern Seaforth Road entrance) where it is currently proposed with a separate entrance (the northern Seaforth Road entrance) north of the small stream, keeps the development more compact and eliminates impacts to the creek.

The entrance along N Pea Ridge Road, along the eastern side of the property, is a backup entrance to the facility's pump station to deliver water from the lake for treatment.

Engineering studies are now underway and will continue through 2024. Detailed design for the Regional Water Treatment Facility is expected to begin in 2025. While our Project Team has not yet reached the stage of design where we have a detailed understanding of the noise, lighting, and vibrational impacts that may be associated with the operation of the Regional Water Treatment Facility, we can share that the Western Intake Partners are deeply committed to being a good neighbor to the surrounding community, and we plan to incorporate a multitude of design features to limit and mitigate offsite noise and lighting impacts that could be caused by this Regional Water Treatment Facility.

Conceptually, our intent is to 1). limit the number of light fixtures, 2). use fixture designs that limit up-lighting into the sky, 3). use energy-efficient, warm-color LED and sodium light fixtures, and 4). use motion sensors and timers to limit unnecessary lighting. Interior lights would be turned off when not needed or shielded from outside view.

This is an important factor that shows just how much the Western Intake Partners care about proactively trying to be a good neighbor. We are planning a vegetated buffer of generally 100 feet wide around the property to screen the facility from view. We won't rely on just existing vegetation either! In fact, our proposal includes augmenting the current pine-dominant vegetation that is closest to the two roads with additional plantings to enhance screening nearer the ground beneath the tree canopy.

To protect public health and safety, the Regional Water Treatment Facility will have a metal fence around the developed portions of the facility. The fence has not yet been designed, but our intent is that the fencing complements the desired screening effect. The fence will be located inside a 100-ft vegetated buffer, so that from the road, a passerby or resident would see the trees (the vegetated buffer) but not the fence, except at the entrance gates, which will also be located 100-ft inside the vegetated buffer.

The Western Intake Partners are deeply committed to being a good neighbor to the surrounding community. Even at this early stage of project planning and design, our Design Project Team has coordinated closely with North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) regarding traffic expected during the construction and operation of the Regional Water Treatment Facility. The Facility will not experience frequent deliveries of chemicals or supplies or the pick-up/ removal of residuals – less than ten times per month on average. These delivery/pick-up trips may be by larger tractor-trailers, tanker trucks, smaller trucks. These deliveries/pick-ups would be expected to use the Seaforth Road main access driveway.

The Western Intake Partnership is conducting an engineering study to determine the best water treatment processes to utilize at the future Regional Water Treatment Facility. Granular Activated Carbon (GAC) can be useful for treating seasonal increases in algal compounds, as well as contaminants of emerging concern like per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). Preliminarily, the Regional Water Treatment Facility is expected to incorporate the ability to incorporate Granular Activated Carbon (GAC) into the treatment process, possibly in combination with other technologies to consistently deliver high quality water to our customers. To learn more about PFAS, we encourage you to visit the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s webpage about water treatment technologies created by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The Western Intake Partners understand the significant potential health impacts that exposure through drinking water to PFAS and other emerging contaminants can have, and we deeply committed to doing everything we can to protect the community members that we will serve. That’s why a central focus of our Project Team’s engineering study to analyze, assess, and determine the best water treatment process to utilize at our new Regional Water Treatment Facility will focus on understanding the most effective techniques for PFAS and emerging contaminant removal.

Additionally, we expect that sometime in 2024 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will issue regulatory limits that establish performance requirements for the associated water treatment process. To learn more about this topic, we encourage you to visit www.epa.gov/pfas.

The Western Intake Partnership partnered with the Town of Cary to conduct a Pilot Study to better understand the effectiveness of a range of treatment technologies for PFAS and other emerging contaminants, specifically for water from Jordan Lake. The Pilot Study began in 2023 and was completed in January 2024. The Pilot Study Report is being used to make decisions regarding the best treatment approach that we can utilize in the future Regional Water Treatment Facility.

The design process for this Project is still in a preliminary stage, but the Western Intake Partners are deeply committed to public safety. In general, water treatment facilities are highly regulated locations in the interest of protecting public safety. Designs of water treatment facilities are subjected to detailed reviews by state and local fire marshals and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality prior to construction, and these facilities are regularly inspected by State and local agencies.

The chemicals that we will use for our water treatment processes will be selected very carefully and will be managed on-site to minimize any potential for chemical spills or fire – both of which will be highly unlikely given the detailed safety protocols that will be put in place. Water treatment facilities are required to incorporate design features with multiple safety factors to minimize health risks, environmental risks, and safety risks to both employees and the public. Chemicals will be stored as required by both County and State building codes, which means inside secured buildings with fire-suppression sprinkler systems, automated monitoring, and alarms to alert staff to issues before unsafe situations can occur.

Chemicals used for water treatment processes (including settling solids, removing impurities, improving taste and odor, and disinfection) are not volatile and will be stored and managed so that the risk of fire, explosion, or leaving the site through air emissions is extremely low. Facility operators, who will work around these stored chemicals, will be required to wear protective clothes, protective boots, safety glasses, and gloves. Storage facilities will be ventilated and masks/respirators are not typically needed or required when working around these specific chemicals. There will be containment areas onsite to prevent any chemicals from impacting the public, in the rare chance that some volume of chemical were to be spilled during delivery or if a leak developed in a storage tank.

In its Round 4 Jordan Lake Water Supply Allocation Recommendations Report, the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission concluded that another raw water intake will be required to make optimal use of Lake Jordan’s water storage for which the state has a contract for with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Currently, the Cary-Apex water supply intake is the only one on Jordan Lake. The current raw water intake structure and its associated pumping station does not have the capacity to withdraw all the water associated with peak withdrawals for an average annual withdrawal of 100 million gallons per day. The resiliency of Jordan Lake’s water supply is another factor favoring the construction of a second water intake. Additionally, it is a best practice to have redundancies in major infrastructure elements like a water intake structure, so that in the very unlikely situation that the Cary-Apex water intake needs to be taken out of service, then there will be a back-up water intake structure that can help to support the intake needs to meet Cary-Apex service area’s drinking water needs.

More than 30 years ago in 1991, the Orange Water and Sewer Association completed a Water Intake Site Investigation Study to determine the best location for an additional water supply intake on Jordan Lake. This Study found that the best location was on the western side of Jordan Lake, near the Vista Point State Recreation Area south of U.S. 64 Highway and north of the "Narrows." Factors favoring this location included: water supply availability, a short distance from the deepest part of the lake to shore, and available options to minimize environmental, economic, and recreational impacts.

In 2022 as part of an updated Study for the Western Intake Partners, the Hazen and Sawyer consulting team evaluated alternative intake site options and how each alternative intake site option would impact the public, both on the lake and within the Vista Point State Recreation Area. This recent Study had access to additional information that was not part of the original 1991 Water Intake Site Investigation Study, including lake modeling and long-term water quality trends in this part of Jordan Lake, including for PFAS, 1,4-dioxane and other emerging contaminants. The 2022 Updated Study confirmed the recommendation made by the original Water Intake Site Investigation Study in 1991.

No other alternative intake site option would provide the combination of benefits as the intake site that we have selected for the new Water Intake Structure. The Western Intake Partnership will continue coordinating with the appropriate North Carolina and Federal agencies about the site location for the proposed Water Intake Structure and any potential impacts.

The Raw Water Pipeline will be located between the Water Intake Structure on Jordan Lake and the Raw Water Pump Station at the Regional Water Treatment Facility. To minimize impacts on the Vista Point State Recreation Area, the Partners plan construct the Raw Water Pipeline via tunneling. The Project’s Preliminary Engineering Study which includes recommendations for the Raw Water Pipeline route is nearing completion and should be completed in early 2024.

The Raw Water Pump Station, which will help transport the raw (untreated) water flows that are withdrawn from Jordan Lake to the proposed Regional Water Treatment Facility, will be located on property owned by the Orange Water and Sewer Authority (OWASA) that is near Vista Point.

The Project’s Intake and Transmission Infrastructure Preliminary Engineering Study developed and evaluated alternative routes for the Treated Water Transmission Pipeline. In the Preliminary Engineering Study, as part of the evaluation process for each of the alternative Treated Water Pipeline routes, hydraulic modeling, subsurface geotechnical investigations, cost assessments, and environmental, cultural, historic resource assessments were conducted for each alternative route. Based on the results of this extensive evaluation process, a preferred route was identified for the Treated Water Transmission Pipeline. The preferred route for the Treated Water Transmission Pipeline generally follows Seaforth Road and Big Woods Road on the western side of Jordan Lake. crosses under an upper reach of Jordan Lake via horizontal directional drilling, then proceed along Farrington Point Road, Old Farrington Road, Farrington Mill Road, and Farrington Road to the point where it will interconnect with the City of Durham's Water Distribution System near NC Highway 751 by Interstate 40.

The Project’s Intake and Transmission Infrastructure Preliminary Engineering Study, which includes the construction techniques and materials that will be utilized for the Raw Water and Treated Water pipelines, is anticipated to be completed in 2024. This Preliminary Engineering Study will provide preliminary guidance regarding the pipe sizing for the Intake and Treated Water Pipeline, which will be based on a hydraulic modeling analysis of the distribution system requirements. Factors that will influence that pipe size include flow requirements, flow pressure, and intermediate storage tank availability and capacity. Preliminarily, we expect the initial pipeline to have a diameter of between 36 in to 42 in and we plan to incorporate the ability to construct a second parallel pipeline in the future.

Several technical approaches are available to construct pipeline stream crossings, including horizontal directional drilling, tunneling, and open-cut construction. Recommendations for each crossing will be based on cost and non-cost technical factors, as well as the Partners' goal to avoid and minimize permanent wetland impacts when feasible. The WIP Preliminary Engineering Study of the transmission pipeline project elements is currently underway and is expected to be completed in 2024.