“ From toilet to tap “ the direct discharge of wastewater into the Randleman “ Lake “

The EPA would not allow the direct discharge of treated wastewater into the Corps of Engineers proposed Randleman reservoir project. The Corps of Engineers recommended a treated sewage discharge pipe located downstream of the Randleman Dam.

In a February 22, 1985 letter to the Acting Director of the N.C. Division of Environmental Management, Corps of Engineers District Engineer Colonel Wayne Hanson writes:

I would like to advise you that there is no question about bypassing the effluents.
The bypassing scheme is an absolute requirement of the project.

When the Corps of Engineers abandoned the project in 1987, the Piedmont Triad Regional Water Authority started their plans to build the proposed reservoir, with the Eastside Wastewater Treatment Plant discharge flowing directly into the lake.

Knowledge of this major change in the project was not public knowledge until one month before the February 1991 public hearing on the Inter-basin Transfer permit.

Alison Davis, in a January 13, 1991 Greensboro News & Record article, “ Officials question water cleanliness in lake plan ” writes:

Officials in some areas the reservoir will serve aren’t convinced discharging
into the lake is a good idea. Some said they didn’t know of the water
authority’s plans.
“ That’s news to me “, Greensboro Mayor Vic Nussbaum said. ‘” I don’t
recall ever hearing it before. If that’s the case, I’ll have to be looking into it. “

“ If you go ahead and get it piped on down, you don’t have to worry about
an instance where a toxic spill happened “, said Tom Gore, High Point’s
acting water treatment supervisor. “ If that one instance ever happens
we’d probably wish we’d piped below the dam.”