T
By Keith Starner and Mike Hill
he Town of Mount Olive is located 70 miles
southeast of Raleigh, in southern Wayne
County and is home to Mount Olive College
and Mt. Olive Pickle Company. The Town
is in the central coastal plain of North
Carolina, and the closest city is Goldsboro,
13 miles to the north. The Cretaceous-age
Upper Cape Fear Aquifer is the source of
drinking water for the Town, the College,
and the pickle company.
In addition to being the second best selling
brand of pickles in the country and the
number one brand in the Southeast, Mt.
Olive Pickle Company is heavily vested
in the community. The Company hosts an
annual New Year’s Eve Pickle drop at the
corner of Cucumber and Vine. The New
Year’s Pickle descends a flagpole into a
brine vat to celebrate the coming of the
New Year. Each April, the community also
celebrates the NC Pickle Festival with heavy
participation from Mt. Olive Pickle Co. The
Pickle Company has about 500 employees,
is the largest employer in the Town, and has
been in business since 1926.
Mount Olive College (MOC) is one of the
leading private Christian colleges in North
Carolina. MOC is a small, accredited, four-
year religious liberal arts college located
northwest of the Town of Mount Olive. The
college has 900 traditional students and has
a variety of programs of study.
Mt. Olive is the first in the country to use
a new water treatment technology with red
and white sand filtrations. The Town’s water
system has 69 miles of distribution lines,
and has a finished water storage capacity
of 1.5 million gallons. The system serves
southern Wayne and parts of Duplin and
Sampson Counties. Water is distributed to
a population of 5,700 through more than
2,500 metered residential connections.
Average daily water use for the Mount
Olive water system is about 1 MGD. The
system uses groundwater pumped from its
four water supply wells which are screened
in a highly confined aquifer. Average well
depth is almost 300 feet, and the wells
have a very high average yield of about
eight hundred gallons per minute. Two
central water treatment plants are used in
the system to treat the high-quality, good-
tasting water. Mt Olive Pickles appreciates
the water quality very much as it uses more
than 40% of the water system’s production
in producing its famous pickles.
Mount Olive’s water supply wells are
drilled into the Upper Cape Fear Aquifer.
This prolific aquifer covers a large part of
North Carolina’s Coastal Plain, and is noted
for its high quality water. In the vicinity of
Mount Olive, water from the Upper Cape
Fear contains high amounts of dissolved
ferrous iron and manganese, and needs to
be treated to remove these elements before
distribution to the public.
The Town holds Central Coastal Plain
Capacity Use Area (CCPCUA) permit
number CU3020. The CCPCUA rule was
enacted to regulate withdrawals from the
Cretaceous-age aquifer system in North
Carolina’s central coastal plain, because
water levels were declining, salt water was
encroaching, and in places, the aquifer
system was being dewatered. The CCPCUA
rule requires production cutbacks in yield
to reverse these effects. Fortunately, Mount
Olive’s wells were not required to cut
back production because they are located
outside the declining water level or the
dewatering zones defined by the rule. Permit
conditions require the Town to take monthly
measurements of the static and pumping
water levels in each well. The system is
looking into installing pressure transducers
in the wells to automatically take water
levels. Operators currently use an electric
tape to measure the water levels.
Mount Olive Uses
New Sand Filtration Technology
28
NCRWA.COM |
Winter 2014
feature
