I am pleased to report to the membership that Davidson Water, Inc. has 63,057 total connections and 56,548 active meters. That is an increase of 971 active taps from prior year. Currently, we have 76 full-time employees and 3 part-time employees.

Water Treatment Plant and Water Quality: Highlights of 2019

• Average Flow-10.208 MGD
• Peak Flow-15.238 MGD
• UCMR 4 (Unregulated Contaminate Monitoring Rule - 4th round) first phase of testing completed. UCMR 4 is monitoring required by EPA every five years for unregulated contaminates.
• Completed Lead & Copper test (over 50 samples, every 3 years) with no lead detection
• Completed design of bleach system for construction
• Began renovation/repairs of C.O. Pickle Plant
• Sponsored an Intern from Yadkin Valley Academy
• Won the Patriotic Employer Award from the US DoD for supporting our employee, Chris Lynn, during his deployment in the US Air Force Reserves

Our distribution system saw line upgrades, line extensions, and pipe relocation of 13.04 miles. Over 40 active projects including upgraded replacement pipe for Robbins Country Road, 24” on Michael Road from Old Salisbury to Hwy 150, 16” on Hwy 150 from Lamb Road to West Davidson tanks, 6” line on George Murphy Rd, DOT bridge relocations, business fire lines, and numerous subdivisions. Hwy 109 Pump Station in Thomasville is permitted and will begin construction soon. This pump station upgrade, along with the associated 40,600 lf of 16” transmission lines on Holly Grove road to Tower Road, will replace some troublesome lines as well as provide future water for growth to the eastern end of Davidson County and Randolph County.

Our meter department installed 1,429 radio read meters bringing the total number in our system to 51,696. We plan to have all meters replaced with AMR (Automatic Meter Read) technology in the next two years.

Customer Service and IT: The trend of online activity continues to increase. We sent just over 670,000 bills to our customers, with nearly 125,000 of those bills being emailed as opposed to being mailed through the USPS. This brings the percentage of emailed bills for this past year to 18.5%, which is a substantial increase over the previous ratio of 13.5%. On the payment side, roughly half of all payments being made utilize some form of electronic payment, with around 25% of all customer payments coming through our website.

This past fall, we upgraded our servers and storage array with additional disk space and memory to better provide for expansion and future storage needs. Since fault tolerance and redundancy play huge roles in our server environment, we were able to upgrade our existing hardware while all customer and employee operations continued normally without interruption.

Our Employee Portal has become a focal point for our employee’s needs. We just completed our most recent insurance renewals using the Portal, after updating the information with our current insurance options. There have been numerous improvements, all of which are helping to improve employee access to information.

Employee Giving & Community Outreach: Davidson Water employees have demonstrated an admirable need to give back to the community in more ways than one. Again, we set a record in employee giving in our annual United Way campaign contributing $9,521, up over 5%. Our annual Food Drive at Christmas is always a huge success. Our employees contributed $500 in cash and 362 lbs. of food for Greater Things Outreach Center in Welcome. We partnered with Welcome Elementary School and contributed over $867.00 in Christmas gifts to Angel Tree children.

Davidson Water annually awards four college scholarships in the amount of $2,000.00 each to deserving high school seniors in memory of past board members. Last year, recipients were: Lucas Antinori, Lexington Senior High School; Leslie Miranda, East Davidson High School; Landon Nobles, East Davidson High School; and Parker Shoaf, West Davidson High School.

Davidson Water also awarded four $1,000.00 scholarships to students attending Davidson County Community College. Last year, recipients were: Ethan Collett, East Davidson High School; Holly Joyner, East Davidson High School; Robby Joyner, East Davidson High School; and Emily Moore, Central Davidson High School.

This past year Davidson Water celebrated our 50th anniversary. At our Member Day last May we hosted approximately 450 people at our Welcome office with food, games and drawings. We also opened the Water Plant for tours. We partnered with Davidson County Schools and administered a coloring contest for all schools in Davidson County from grades K to 5th grade. On our website we’ve published a number of short videos that chronicle the 50 year impact Davidson Water has had on our community. Thank you for helping us celebrate the past 50 years, and we’re excited about what the next 50 years will bring!

In closing, I want to emphasize our commitment to our mission of providing safe, reliable water to our members at the lowest possible cost. We will continue to do that with the leadership of our board and management, the expert guidance of our professional staff, the dedication and expertise of our employees, and the support of our members. Thank you for your support.

Ron Sink, General Manager