HENDERSON — Kerr Lake Regional Water System in Henderson is already hard at work procuring funding for an updated facility to handle their more than doubled water capacity, if they receive their Interbasin Transfer Certificate from the N.C. Department of Environmental Natural Resources.

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The company recently filed  “documents of intent” with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources to double their intake from the Roanoke River at Kerr Lake. The water will be distributed in other water systems, including the Fishing Creek, the Neuse and the Tar River Basins and areas in the Research Triangle Park. There are no plans to return any of the water to the Roanoke River.

 Kerr Lake’s system requested $7 million from Congressman B.K. Butterfield in the 2009 VA-HUD independent Agencies Appropriations Bill under EPA's State and Tribal Assistance Grant (STAG) Program to fund Henderson’s water treatment plant’s rehabilitation and expansion. The money will be used for upgrades and expansion.

The grant proposal says, “The proposed expansion at the Kerr Lake Regional Water System Treatment Plant consists of upgrading and expanding existing facilities to provide a firm capacity of 20 million gallons per day.”  The project will cost more than $20 million when finished. This project received $1.9 million in the 2002 and 2003 VA-HUD Appropriations bills.

In the grant proposal Kerr Lake states they need the grant because “The current service population for the Kerr Lake Regional Water System is projected to more than double in the next 30 years. Growth will come from increased usage among existing rate-payers and expansion into new service areas. Many low-income people will switch from individual well-water (sometimes of relatively poor quality) to a public water system that meets all federal and state drinking water regulatory requirements (KLRWS was recently selected as best tasting drinking water in North Carolina).” Those awards were received from 2000 to 2002.

In their scoping document presented at five public meetings to discuss the proposed Interbasin Transfer, the water system says the total county populations in the system’s service area in 2010 is estimated at 181,613. The population for counties in their service area in the year 2040 is 248,959.

Matching funds will be provided by the system’s three partners, the City of Henderson, which owns 60 percent of the company, the City of Oxford and Warren County which own 20 percent each. The construction and rehab project is expected to take two years for completion.