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Have you ever wondered what it takes to have not only the best-tasting water in the nation but also some of the lowest water bills? In this episode of Simple Civics, we go deep inside the remarkable Greenville Water system with Greenville Water Commissioner James Bannister. We uncover the century-old decisions and modern-day strategies that ensure Greenville has a secure and high-quality water supply for the next 100 years. This isn't just a story about pipes and reservoirs; it's a masterclass in foresight, environmental stewardship, and savvy financial planning.
From its early days sourcing water from Paris Mountain to the strategic development of the Table Rock and North Saluda Reservoirs, Greenville's water history is one of proactive leadership. James explains how these sources are part of a handful of Pristine watersheds South Carolina has, with old-growth forests that naturally filter the water. This incredible natural advantage, combined with a gravity-fed system that saves enormous energy costs, is the secret behind both the exceptional Greenville water quality and its affordability for 750,000 customers. We discuss how Greenville won the "Best of the Best" award for taste in the entire United States and the meticulous daily monitoring that maintains this standard. A key focus of our conversation is the Greenville Water 100-year plan, a strategic initiative to ensure water security for a century of growth. James shares a fascinating story of how this deep scientific analysis allowed them to delay a massive capital project, saving millions by securing better financing and taking advantage of federal infrastructure grants when the time was right. We also explore the constant work happening beneath our feet, detailing the Greenville water infrastructure projects, including an $81 million annual budget for replacing old pipes and building system redundancy. This forward-thinking approach extends to economic development, where the water commission can now precisely model the impact of a new large-scale industrial plant on the water supply, providing vital information to community leaders. Finally, James explains the Water commissioner duties and how the agency partners with other entities like the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) on innovative projects, such as brook trout restoration in the Saluda River, made possible by re-engineering how water is released from the dams.
Episode Resources:
Introduction
Kelly Byers: I'm Kelly Byers on City Council of Traveler's Rest, and I'm here with James W. Bannister, a Greenville Water Commissioner. And we're excited to explore public works today and learn more about our great water in Greenville County.
From Paris Mountain to Pristine Watersheds: The History of Greenville Water
James W. Bannister: Yes, it's not often that you hear it called the public works, although that is exactly what it is. It's just Greenville Water to residents who are here. And unlike a lot of water resource and water providers in a lot of municipalities and larger districts, it's water and sewer. But Greenville is an anomaly. We are just water. And Greenville water provides that. It actually, well, you didn't ask me this, but I'll give you a little bit of history. We used to get our water from the Paris Mountain State Park. And back in the late 1800s, nobody knew this, but there was a Giardia outbreak, sometimes known as beaver fever.
And so the citizens of Greenville got sick, and they all thought that something was wrong with the water source. It just was a lack of proper filtration. So they employed a firm from New York to come down and to see if they could help them find a better water resource. And that firm identified the South Saluda River, which is now Table Rock. And so they built the dam up there and then began treating the water. There's still the old treatment plant is right below the dam. As you drive by it, you can see it on the left. It's a brick building. And then within 30, 40 years, citizens of Greenville and the folks who were running Greenville Water at that time realized we probably need to make sure we've got another water resource as a economic engine for growth.
And just like they had done before, they brought the same firm in, identified the North Saluda River, which is now the North Saluda Reservoir. Those two watersheds are some of, they're only a handful. And when I say a handful, I don't think there's more than five in North America that are pristine, have old growth forests without any development on the property where the water comes from. So literally, we get the water, comes out of the sky, falls on our watershed, flows into the reservoirs, and then, and this is so key for cost effectiveness, it flows downhill to our treatment plants. And from there, it also is mostly gravity-fed to our 750,000 customers.
Kelly Byers: I saw on the website that we are one of the only systems in the world, I think, that is preserved in that way and very pristine. And I also was reading that we have one of the lowest average monthly bills in the country. So how do you manage having this award-winning, amazing system and also keeping the cost really low for residents?
The Secret to Award-Winning Water: Pristine Sources and Gravity's Power
James W. Bannister: The cost that we have to expend to put the water in a place where it's drinkable is less than a lot of other places. Number one, because we don't have to worry about upstream users who are contaminating the water and then we don't have to take that out and then get it ready for drinking in. There are a lot of places that we've gotten a chance to go see where their water resource is just it's amazing that they can get any drinkable water out of it in terms of what they have to take out. The fact that gravity is feeding the system means we don't spend money on pumps bringing the water up to a higher level to then create the pressure that takes it to the houses.
So, being in the mountains, being at the top of the watershed has in and of itself given us a position to be in where costs are pretty much the lowest water costs that we have in at least the southeast. It is both good stewardship and the fact that the water resources were so pristine to begin with. So we have less to take out even when it comes to just the natural flow from the sky through the forest to the lake.
Kelly Byers: So our excellent water is a result of incredible foresight from our leaders past and present. And I believe we're award winning in the state and in the country. And I've met people who've said when they were kids that there were commercials about how great the water quality is in Greenville. Can you tell us a little bit more about how one wins an award in best tasting water?
James W. Bannister: We're very careful about the quality and taste of the water. So there's a chemistry that goes along with that. The pipes have a chemistry. There's a pH that's involved with that. So we're constantly, and when I say constantly, we're monitoring the water daily from the lake through the system to the, out of the tap to make sure that we're not missing something. And we take them from different parts all over our service area, which is Laurens, Pickens, Greenville, and some parts of Anderson. And so then there's this whole process you go through. So we won in 2011. There's a national American Water Works Association, and you can bring your water, and it gets a little ridiculous. People will have a private jet that flies the water out there so it doesn't get too shaken up. We don't do anything quite like that. But we won the best of the best water in 2011, which means every other tap in the United States that participated in it, we won water taste.
And we regularly are best in South Carolina and in regional competitions. But we take a lot of pride in that. And we've got a little committee. There's some weird things that we think are lucky. Like there's one particular tap we like to go get the water sample for the taste test from. I'm not sure where it is. They kept that a secret, but we go to the same place every time.
The Greenville Water 100-Year Plan: A Strategy for Future Growth
So the first part of your question and talking about the foresight is an interesting one, because when I came on the commission about 12 years ago, one of the things that we were so proud of is that Greenville water with its two watersheds and we also have a tap into Lake Keowee. The end result is we have a significant amount of water for exponential growth into the foreseeable future. And that's important because generally speaking, you need to be about 50 years out in your planning if you're expecting that your water resource is going to reach the capacity for how many residents that it can serve.
And there are lots of ways to increase how many residents you can serve with water conservation. And there's certainly with as we get better with appliances and things like that. However, there comes a point where there's just so much water that an individual household has to have in order to function on a daily basis. And what we began to do, the commission decided that we didn't want to rest on our laurels. So you take the people who were in charge and nobody knows their names. You could go look it up, but in the early 1900s, and they said, okay, water's a key factor for economic growth and Greenville's prosperity. So what can we do to make sure that 150 years from now, we still have enough water? So the challenge we set ourselves was we want a 100-year plan.
And while we were fairly confident that we had enough water to get us the next 100 years, we had not really done the deep dive into the science of it to know with some certainty. And the other part of it was we had not begun keeping track of the different aspects of both how much rainfall we're getting, what does that translate into in terms of how much water goes into our reservoirs, and then our system? Do we have places where there are leaks?
And so once you say, okay, we want to tighten up the system, understand it at a much deeper level so that we can accurately predict, how much population growth we can withstand, it was about a five-year project. And two things that were neat about that, I think. One is we thought that we were going to need to put in a new transition pipe to one of our treatment plants. We were going to go from a 32-inch pipe to a 64-inch pipe because the plant had more capacity to treat water than the pipe coming into it would permit. Now, we hadn't gotten to a point where it needed to produce that much water, but it was one of those things where we're like, okay, we probably need to do this. So we had put that on our capital improvement project as a project to do in the next 10 years.
Once we got back the data, the actual data on when we might truly need this 60-inch pipe, we realized, oh, we got another 10 years. We can wait 20 years to do this. So here's what happened. Because we knew our timeframe precisely, we didn't run out to try to do bond money and fund it. We were able to wait. And then if you remember the bond market, that is the cost of borrowing money for a municipality or a public works department went way down. Way down, and the cost of goods has risen and fallen, we were able to capture a moment in time to lock in and acquire the parts that we need, the pipe itself, and the financing for it. And we did that at a moment where it meant that we did not have to raise rates.
So because we knew precisely what our timeframe was, we were able to strategically deploy our resources in a way that kept rates from going up with a comfort level that, okay, now we have a five-year, 10-year construction window where we can get this done. And so it's going to get done here in the next very near future. And on top of that, we were able to, because we had the project ready to go, the materials were there. When the federal government started coming around and giving grant money for infrastructure during the COVID or just post-COVID, a restart the economy kind of thing, we were in a position to file for the grant.
And really, there weren't any other big projects like that that were in a position to do that because nobody was ready to do that. So while other public works and roads and other things were trying to get their ducks in a row to be able to go get the money, we already had it. So we were like first in line. We were the first to be able to get it. And that then further offset the cost of this 60-inch main project, which made it even easier to say we didn't have to raise rates to get this done. So I can comfortably say, to just finish it up, I know that was a long way there, that we are 99 years out, 98, somewhere in there from today, at pretty aggressive, let's just say somewhere between Charlotte and Atlanta growth, that we're going to be able to provide water for folks.
Without having to acquire any new resource or really change anything. Now, obviously, over time, we'll tweak that and be prepared as that time window starts to shrink. But it was nice to know. And so our effort to try to do what our forebearers did in 1900, to be 100 years out thinking ahead, this was the culmination of that effort. And there's lots of little nifty stories about places where we save money, where we learn new things about our dams. Just institutional knowledge we had forgotten that has also been fun to see. It's been an interesting process.
Kelly Byers: Yeah, it's very neat to hear how you're continuing to think 100 years in advance and how challenging that might be and also how fun it might be to imagine what comes 100 years in the future. Because of all of your hard work, I feel like we take for granted, we just turn on the tap and this great water comes out and water can be something that's out of sight, out of mind, like the pipes you're talking about. Can you tell us what's happening beneath us to get this great water to our house?
Beneath the Streets: Upgrading Greenville's Water Infrastructure
James W. Bannister: Yes. So I'll just give you an example. We just approved a capital improvement funding. So you have a budget. And if your public works is working correctly, then every year you are systematically replacing old pipe with new pipe. Over the 100 plus years that we've been in existence, there have been different types of pipe, galvanized steel, ductile iron. We don't do PVC or any of the plastics. So certain pipes have been much better at lasting through the years than other pipes. So not only do you replace the older pipes, but you want to replace the older pipes that are maybe of the lower quality. And so our capital improvement budget this year was about $81 million. And we do that yearly.
Can't stay ahead of it if you're not on top of it year to year. So a lot of what's going to happen over the next five to 10 years is we're replacing a lot of main water supply pipes that are in the city of Greenville. They're the most expensive to replace because we got so tight around here with people and buildings and things of that nature, it's just hard to get at some of this stuff. It's disruptive because you got to tear up the roads then we got to pay to have those repaved but those have become a primary focus for the next three to five years. So unfortunately that's going to mean you're going to see some things going on around town where we're removing old pipe putting in new pipe.
And we are also we like to be in a position where if one pipe goes out, we can quickly cut that pipe off and reroute the water and have a backup system so it's redundancy. We have a major project that's going to tie into some places in South Greenville that will make pretty much the county of Greenville will be redundant as it relates to our main water pipes that carry water back and forth.
Kelly Byers: You mentioned water is a key to economic development, can you share how you interact with current or future businesses in Greenville?
Water as an Engine for Economic Development
James W. Bannister: So one of the other pieces of our understanding our water resource at a deep, deep level is that we make a water report to county council and to city council. And the idea here was if you had, say, a battery plant that wanted to locate in South Greenville, because that actually happened years ago, they are a huge water consumer.
And so when you quantify what you have and you say, this is how long we can provide water to our expected growth. If you took something like a battery plant and said, OK, what's that going to do? We'd be able to come in and report to county council or city council. This is going to take us from 99 years of being able to provide water, maybe down to 75. You just took 20 something years off of the expected growth potential for us with our current resource.
And so it hadn't happened yet, but I think there will be a time in the future where this kind of analysis is going to help community leaders understand if we're going to make this decision about how we're going to grow, this is the impact you're going to have on the water resource. And we probably at some point would step in and say, we would strongly recommend against this because you're going to leave us in a position where we don't have the ability to resource our primary goal, which is people having drinking water. Now, we're not anywhere close to that. We've got a lot of room in the system currently. But that is we're already thinking about those pressure points into the future. So that's how we see our role as it comes to communicating with the public about this is where we are.
Kelly Byers: One of the phrases that was helpful for me when I was first elected to office was government is not a layer cake, it's a marble cake. And you've mentioned working with the county and the city, and I know there's special purpose districts. Can you tell us how Greenville Water is interacting with all these other governmental entities?
A Marble Cake of Government: Partnerships with DNR, Duke, and More
James W. Bannister: When I got on the commission, one of the things that we recognized was that Greenville Water had been a little insular in the sense that we kind of did our own thing and weren't really paying attention much to what was going on around us. And we've changed that dynamic completely because it's just not reality this day and age. You've got to interact with other agencies.
And so we have a host of partnerships with a lot of the agencies that we deal with more often than not. Our members of Greenville Water, particularly folks on the executive committee, will be part of different panels or groups to bring our insight, our expertise, and also just to have our finger on the pulse of where are things going. So that might be how Duke adjusts or manages Lake Keowee, because that's a major water source for us, particularly with a wholesale agreement we have with Laurens. That's where generally their water comes from.
We're working with the Department of Natural Resources on a host of things. And one of the most exciting one involves brook trout and stream rehabilitation. Well, we're the only place in the state that has genetically original brook trout left. And so DNR wants to set up a system where we can start growing brook trout fingerlings to be able to make, maybe go put them back into mountain streams where they just don't exist anymore, but could. But right now, we're also working with DNR on the Department of Natural Resources. We have reworked the way we remove water and put it in the South Saluda and the North Saluda rivers.
So it used to be that when we had a rain event in the reservoirs, that water levels would rise pretty quickly. And then that water would go over the spillway. Unintentionally because nobody really had paid attention to it. What we realized was the water that's at the surface of the reservoir is hotter by a number of degrees. And it tends to be like a tablecloth that you maybe try to, a silk tablecloth if you've ever seen somebody try to rip it off the table and leave the dishes there. That's the way it went over the spillway. So it would build up, build up, water would rush over the spillway. You'd have a spike in the amount of water going downriver, which sounds great, but it's not because that water was at a higher temperature than was good for the floor of the fauna of the fish, etc.
So when we did this deep dive into our resource with the modeling and being able to understand it better, we also re-engineered how we release water into the reservoirs. So now we know when a rain event is coming, we can predict how much water will fall on our watershed and then how much that results in an increase in our reservoir. It's about one inch of rainfall equals a foot of water in both of our reservoirs. So particularly with the hurricanes, weeks before they get here, we model how much we're going to get and we start releasing water and we're releasing that from a lower level in the lake. So the water is coming out into the North Saluda and the South Saluda at a much lower temperature, which is really good for fish. Trout in particular and we can do it at a steady pace so it's not a flood event when it all comes over our spillway.
So the goal has been for the last 10 years is not to let any water go over the spillway it's all being released and trout unlimited has been very happy with us and how we're doing and we may actually be the North Saluda may be the first place in the state where new potential trout habitat is being created because that temperature change increases the length of the stream from our dam where trout can survive. We still got some work to do on that. It's part of a project called the 319 is grant money that the state administers. And we have given the state a watershed plan for the North Saluda that they have accepted. And so each year we get some money, along with other agencies, Save Our Saluda and some other folks, that is directly designed to impact stream bank improvement and habitat improvement, hopefully eventually to the point where there'll be some public access down there for new fishing opportunities.
Kelly Byers: So, Jim, you mentioned that a lot of water utility services provide both drinking water and take care of wastewater. Greenville Water is who provides our drinking water and ReWa is who takes water out of our house. If any, what relationship do you have with them?
The Relationship Between Greenville Water and ReWa
James W. Bannister: So we have a very good relationship with ReWa. That has been built up over the years. I am hopeful that in this term, or if I'm elected to the next term, that we're going to have some really exciting partnership projects to work on. I would like to see us take... The water that is currently treated to a tertiary is the correct term for the third treatment level. And it's almost, it goes in as sewage and it comes out almost at drinking water levels. And I'm hoping that we can partnership up with a project because the water that we use comes out of ReWa and then it ends up in Lake Greenwood. And it's a water resource for the next folks down.
And so in a lot of places that we have traveled to in terms of conferences and other things with Greenville Water, I'll just use Las Vegas as an example. They reuse 92% of their water is recaptured and put back into Lake Mead. So their total water retention is almost a complete, they don't lose much in the process, which is amazing to think about.
Kelly Byers: You've mentioned that you're a water commissioner. Can you tell us more about how one becomes a water commissioner?
What is a Water Commissioner? The Role and Election Process
James W. Bannister: Water commissioners are elected. We serve six-year terms. There are three of us, Philip Kilgore, Deb Sofield, and myself, are all water commissioners. We're elected citywide. So the commission also has the mayor. So he sits by designation by virtue of being the mayor. in this case, Knox White gets to designate one of city council members to also be. So it's, everybody is a voting member. So both the mayor and his designee get to vote. And then there's three.
So, the way our system is set up at the commission, the city with two votes can't override what the commission would want to do. So if the city came in and said, we like this $80 million, but we don't like it for your pipes. We want to take it and go spend it on something downtown that's a higher priority for us. They can't get that done. And so that division there was very important. On the other hand, we can't borrow money without getting approval from the city to go get our bonds. So it's a symbiotic relationship with the guardrails set up so that neither can take advantage of the other.
Kelly Byers: How did you personally become interested in water?
A Lifelong Passion: A Commissioner's Personal Journey with Water
James W. Bannister: And that's an interesting story. When I was in fourth grade, I was at Sara Collins Elementary School. And somebody from Greenville Water came to speak to our class and said, Greenville Water is now the number one pristine water source in the world. And it was, I got to find this newspaper article. I will one day. But anyway, he put it up there. Well, that was back in a day when Greenville was still rough downtown. There wasn't a lot of things that we were excited about Greenville for. But I remember thinking, okay, well, this, we're number one. Apparently this Swiss town and the Alps had gotten wiped out by an avalanche. So they were one. We were two. They got offed and we were, now we were the number one. I never forgot that. I said, one day I'm gonna be on the water commission. And so when I got out of law school, got back to town, got my feet underneath me, I was just waiting for the right moment and seat came open. I ran for it.
Kelly Byers: I was not expecting this story to start in fourth grade. Thanks, Jim. This was great.
James W. Bannister: Yes, I can't wait to come visit TR.
Credits
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