Sanford’s water plant expansion includes advanced filtration to combat forever chemicals

Construction is underway in Sanford to upgrade and expand the facility that purifies Lee County’s drinking water.

TriRiver Water is the utility company that services all of Sanford and Lee County. The City of Sanford took over Lee County’s water utilities in 2004. In 2024, Sanford and Pittsboro merged their water utilities to form TriRiver Water, which went on to absorb the water utilities in Chatham County and Siler City in 2025.

This growth continues because Sanford, and now TriRiver Water, has a reputation for forward-thinking infrastructure planning. That planning allows municipalities to guarantee reliable access to high-quality drinking water for commercial and residential developments.

A drive down Poplar Springs Church Road will bring you face-to-face with evidence of that infrastructure planning: Construction crews hard at work on a $390 million upgrade for the Sanford Water Filtration Facility.

The water plant last underwent an overhaul in 1991. This latest upgrade will help TriRiver Water keep up with the booming population growth in the area, as well as the latest in water filtration technology. When the project finishes in 2029, Sanford’s plant will be able to deliver 30 million gallons of purified drinking water per day.

Treating emerging contaminants

While the nuts and bolts of how to clean and purify water have been known and practiced since the early 1900s, emerging contaminants are posing new challenges for water utilities. 

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continues to investigate and work on regulations surrounding emerging contaminants known as forever chemicals. Keeping those chemicals from being discharged into source water is the front line in protecting drinking water resources across the country.

The standard water purification process works wonders for removing most harmful agents found in source water. However, forever chemicals have proven capable of slipping through the standard process. That is why many water utilities have started installing advanced filtration technologies.

The Sanford plant’s expansion plan includes an entire area dedicated to granular activated carbon (GAC) filtration. This is an advanced filtration technique where the water that has already gone through the standard treatment process is then pumped through filters of activated carbon. The carbon pellets are excellent at absorbing a wide variety of forever chemicals. 

The EPA says GAC filtration is one of the best available technologies for combating forever chemicals. Adding GAC filters to the Sanford plant will ensure that TriRiver Water continues to provide customers with the highest-quality drinking water.

It is impossible to know what new chemical will threaten our drinking water in the future. Perhaps GAC will not be effective against it. With that in mind, Sanford’s plant expansion will build in extra space. That may sound minor, but it’s a significant forward-thinking infrastructure decision that promises to make the next technological addition to the filtration process significantly cheaper to retrofit.

For now, you can find the latest water test results from the Sanford Water Filtration Facility in TriRiver Water’s 2024 Annual Water Quality Report at http://www.TriRiverWater.com/SanfordWaterQuality24.

July 9, 2025

Contributed by TriRiver Water Public Information Officer Cameron Clinard.