City of New Bern adopts new wellhead protection plan for safer water supply - WCTI12.com

City of New Bern adopts new wellhead protection plan for safer water supply

Ensuring a safe water supply for people living in the City of New Bern - That's the goal of the new protection plan adopted by the New Bern Board of Aldermen.

The Local Wellhead Protection Plan for New Bern was presented by Director of Water Resources, Jordan Hughes.

Hughes says the water supply in New Bern comes from underground wells.

Hughes says this plan aims to monitor and identify any areas of contamination concerns around those wells.

He says identifying any issues of concern allows them to educate community members and businesses, "Now that we know the type of businesses and the types of industries that are within those areas of concern, we'll start distributing some public information then, just to remind them about things they can do onsite."

Hughes adds about 20,000 customers depend on safe drinking water from the City of New Bern every day.

And while they're doing their part to help target any contamination in the water supply, Hughes says there are ways you can help, "For any business or property owner, just good common sense, make sure you're taking care of any type of waste product or petroleum product and disposing of that as you should, not just dumping it in the ditch or in the stream, or on the ground."

Hughes says the City of New Bern currently has 20 wells, so if contamination does occur in one of those wells, they'll take that well offline for operation.