Hilton Head Public Service District (PSD) on Sept. 20 completed its tenth year of operations of its Aquifer Storage & Recovery (ASR) well. ASR is a supply technique wherein the well is used to store treated drinking water in the brackish aquifer during winter months of lower demand, and the same well then recovers and re-treats for distribution the stored water in the summer months of higher demand.
The PSD’s ASR well is located at its Royal James Drive site in Hilton Head Plantation. The ASR well annually stores and recovers approximately 250 million gallons of drinking water. By comparison, the PSD’s above-ground storage tanks each hold about 2 million gallons of drinking water and its elevated water towers each hold about 300,000 gallons of drinking water. Over the past 10 years, approximately 2.5 billion gallons of drinking water have been recovered and re-treated for distribution using the ASR well.
The PSD has been awarded a $10-million grant from the South Carolina Infrastructure Investment Program (SCIIP) that will be used in part to construct a second ASR well in the PSD’s service area. The second ASR well is planned to be located on the Ashmore Tract in the vicinity of William Hilton Parkway and Folly Field Road. The project will require leveraging local funding as well.
“Our ASR program has yielded tremendous benefits for the utility and our customers,” said PSD General Manager Pete Nardi. “It allows us to store an amount of drinking water that is simply impossible to store above ground. The technique not only aids our peak-season water distribution but also plays a critical role in our disaster resiliency. Our first ASR well was instrumental in speeding the recovery from Hurricane Matthew in 2016. We look forward to the expansion of our ASR program and the benefits it will bring our island for generations to come.”
