Now showing: surface water treatment

The Beaufort-Jasper Water & Sewer Authority (BJWSA) has produced a video about how it treats Savannah River surface water to become drinking water. Check it out here.

Hilton Head PSD purchases treated Savannah River surface water from BJWSA on a wholesale basis. The PSD recently has built an Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR) well that we will use to store the treated surface water in the winter months of lower demand, and withdraw it for re-treatment and distribution in the summer months of higher demand.

The ASR Well injects treated water into a limestone aquifer for storage during periods of low demand, displacing the native brackish groundwater. The same well then is used to withdraw the water from the center of the storage zone during periods of high demand.

Treated Savannah River surface water is one of our three sources of drinking water, along with brackish groundwater treated by Reverse Osmosis (RO) in our plant across from Windmill Harbour, and fresh groundwater treated at our well sites. These diverse sources of drinking water are critical for recovery from a hurricane or other disaster. The PSD has diversified its sources as a result of ongoing saltwater intrusion into our traditional source of groundwater, the 150-foot-deep Upper Floridan freshwater aquifer.