Greenwood residents will be pleased to note that the quality of drinking water here is among the best in the state, according to an annual report required by the Safe Drinking Water Act.
The act requires local utilities to issue an annual “consumer confidence” report to customers. This is the second year Greenwood has issued such a report, according to Dudley McBee, assistant manager at Greenwood Utilities.
The report, which is being mailed to customers with this month’s bill, details where Greenwood gets its water, as well as the levels of various contaminants, such as cadmium, copper and lead.
“Every water system in Mississippi has to do that same report,” McBee said. “It’s done by our own people as well as by the state department of health.”
The report notes that all drinking water, including bottled water, might reasonably be expected to contain at least some contaminants. But the presence of those contaminants does not necessarily pose a health risk unless they exceed certain actionable levels.
According to this year’s report, there are no actionable levels of contamination in Greenwood’s water supply.
Greenwood gets its water from nine area wells, all of which draw from the Meridian Upper Wilcox Aquifer, McBee said.
He described an aquifer as a vast underground geological formation that contains water or waterbearing rock.
“They run, some of them, for miles and miles,” McBee said.
Last year, the utility pumped a total of 1.43 billion gallons of water. McBee described Greenwood as “lucky” for having a supply of both the quantity and quality of the Wilcox Aquifer.
He said a good rule of thumb for water use is about 3,000 gallons per person per month. Thus a family of four uses about 12,000 gallons a month.
“We have the capacity to pump 7 to 8 million gallons a day,” McBee said. “But the highest we’ve pumped so far this year is around 5 million.”
Despite the existing excess capacity, McBee said the utility already is studying the feasibility of adding another well.
“We’ve had an increase in the number of people installing these in-ground sprinkler systems, and they put a pretty good strain on your capacity,” he said.
