North Carolina has announced more than $472 million in funding to support drinking water and wastewater infrastructure projects across the state. In total, 145 projects in 66 counties will receive financial assistance aimed at improving system reliability, protecting water quality, and increasing resilience to extreme weather events.
The funding package is intended to help local governments modernize aging infrastructure, strengthen systems against future storms, reduce contamination from per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), and identify and replace lead service lines. The announcement follows recent storm impacts that disrupted water services in several communities.
“After Hurricane Helene, tens of thousands of North Carolinians were without access to clean and reliable water for weeks. Upgrading our state’s aging water infrastructure must be a priority,” Governor Josh Stein said. “These investments will make our infrastructure more resilient in the face of future severe weather or disasters and improve access to clean drinking water for North Carolinians across the state.”
Projects funded in this round cover a broad spectrum of needs, including drinking water treatment upgrades, wastewater plant rehabilitation, system resiliency improvements, asset inventories, and feasibility studies for utility mergers or regionalization. Major examples include:
- Cape Fear Public Utility Authority: $17.8 million for improvements at the Southside Wastewater Treatment Plant.
- City of Goldsboro: $33 million for a drinking water treatment project to remove PFAS contamination.
- Town of Newland: $10 million to enhance the resiliency of its drinking water system following Hurricane Helene.
- Town of Forest City: $5 million for sewer system resiliency improvements.
Funding for the selected projects is drawn from multiple state and federal programs. These include the State Revolving Funds, which offer low-interest loans for drinking water and wastewater investments, and supplemental SRF appropriations linked to Hurricanes Helene and Milton and the Hawai’i wildfires, providing zero-interest loans and principal forgiveness for eligible communities. Additional resources come from the Community Development Block Grant–Infrastructure programme, the State Reserve Program prioritising smaller and storm-affected counties, and the state’s Viable Utility Reserve, which supports distressed utilities through construction funding, asset inventories, and merger or regionalisation studies.
The DEQ Division of Water Infrastructure reviewed 198 eligible applications requesting $1.89 billion in total funding. Final selections were approved by the State Water Infrastructure Authority at its 18 February meeting. A full list of funded projects is available on the DEQ website.
