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dents can probably recall periods of days and even weeks without power due to inclement weather or equipment failures. Although they do still happen, Vernesoni attributes improved service to better built equipment, better equipment designs, better line insulators and regular maintenance.

Along with those improvements have been power increases to meet modern day demands. Vernesoni said when he started, those overhead lines carried 34,500 volts. Today most lines on the island are at 115,000 volts.

With any voltage comes a need for safety. According to a 2019 Kiplinger article by Stacy Rapacon, and other survey results, power lineman rank among the top 10 most dangerous jobs in America.

“Electricity is always a present danger,” said Vernesoni. “Working with charged lines takes some mental toughness. One mistake can make a life changing difference, if not end it.”

He went on to say that while linemen like to kill the power when they can, that is not always possible, leaving them inches from a charged power line. Vernesoni said so far he’s been fortunate to have never been needed on a mayday rescue call.

One reason might be the focus on safety.

“You might say we are inspectors,” Vernesoni added. “We spend a lot of time inspecting our gear, inspecting the truck, the safety equipment and checking the poles.”

Training is also an important key to job safety. There is always continuing education. According to Vernesoni there is ongoing CPR training, hazard recognition, forklift operations, first aid and regular safety meetings.

“Safety is a top priority,” he added. “So we are always training with safety in mind.”

Vernesoni said when he started, most of the training was through on-the-job activities. These days, however, it’s not at all unusual for a new recruit to have already graduated from some type training program like the Electric Line Academy offered at Nash Community College. “I was a green recruit when I started,” he said. “I started with no formal electrical experience and they trained me from the ground up.” Vernesoni said he had dabbled in construction and a few other careers, but after getting married he decided to look for something with benefits. When he heard the co-op was hiring, he put in an application. Little was required other than having a Class A CDL and meeting a few physical requirements.

“The job can be physically tough with a lot of heavy lifting, pulling and climbing,” he explained. “Anyone afraid of heights gets weeded out early.”

Those who stick with it are not going to see a typical 9-5 job. Some work days are actually at night and no two work days are the same.

“Every day is different,” Vernesoni explained. “Some days it’s the weather, other days it is the traffic. At times it’s the poles or the height of the pole and other days it can be the voltage.”

There are even days when the work is not restricted to just Hatteras Island. Just like when other crews descend on the Outer Banks following a major devastating storm, Vernesoni and his fellow workers have headed out to Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana to help in those storm-impacted areas.

“We are always more than glad to help other co-ops when called,” Vernesoni added. “They come help us and we’re ready to go help them. And the guys are treated like rock stars after a storm event." 

CHEC photo

Workers complete a maintenance project at the Cape Hatteras Electric Cooperative Buxton Substation.

Danielle Puleo photo

Inside the DCWD treatment facility where the trains and well tanks are housed.

Dare County Water Department keeps the water flowing

by Danielle Puleo

Have you ever thought about how convenient it is to turn on the faucet in your home and have running water flow out immediately? Water is a resource that the Outer Banks is both aware and fond of. So readily available to us, but how? Much of that credit belongs to the Dare County Water Department (DCWD).

Patrick Irwin, public utility director at DCWD, has been involved with water plant operations here on the coast for the past 30 years. He sees five million gallons of water leave the plant in Kill Devil Hills every single day. Not to mention the other four water plants in Dare County, all of which service millions of gallons of water on a daily basis. “The first water systems on the Outer Banks were a result of the Ash Wednesday Storm,” Irwin explained. In 1962, after the historic storm hit the mid-Atlantic states, Kill Devil Hills and Nags Head worked together to get water from the fresh pond that still resides by the Dare County ABC store off of W. Eight Street in Nags Head using surface water treatment.

By 1980, the Skyco plant was established, feeding water to residents of Manteo all the way up to Duck through the Kitty Hawk pump station. The plant in Kill Devil Hills was started in 1989, running three million gallons of water per day. Rodanthe saw its water plant in 1995, five years prior to the purchase of the Cape Hatteras Water

Association, where the Frisco plant was then built.

Sixty years of innovation and technological advances have made it possible to accommodate the surplus of visitors and residents alike that come to the Outer Banks every year. Expansions are still taking place.

“We’re actually doing an expansion right now,” Irwin shared. Two new trains – the equipment used to pump one million gallons of water per day with treatment – are taking the place of the original three trains located at DCWD headquarters in Kill Devil Hills.

“We are tearing out the original three trains from 1989 and replacing them with 1.3 million gallons a day due to the technology,” Irwin said. “So, we’re getting an additional 900,000 gallons a day in the same footprint.”

With massive amounts of water flowing to households across the county comes immense responsibility and the need for a dependable team. From billing to operations to the construction of these new trains, everyone in this department has to work together seamlessly.

Irwin explained that employees working in the billing department create the bills and handle all phone calls that come in every day of every month. Water treatments take place regularly throughout a day in the lab; testing the alkalinity, chloride, calcium, phosphates and so much more is essential to sustainable water. Operators are out night and day checking on water towers, providing needed maintenance to equipment, logging water levels and numbers on spreadsheets and monitoring the wells and plants.

Laurie Seal and Laurie Kellogg work together in the billing department of DCWD to ensure customers are taken care of. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, their day-to-day began looking a little different. While they did not work remote due to their essential status, they did have to close the doors.

“We closed the doors to public and really began utilizing our auto-teller while still taking care of everybody,” said Kellogg. The facility’s auto-teller, similar to that of a bank’s, was in place prior to COVID-19. However, customers opted to come in the office and pay bills face-to-face. Starting in March 2020, everyone had to shift to accommodate for social distance regulations.

With partitions in place and sanitizer readily on hand, the women handle all payments electronically or through the auto-teller. Electronic forms were set up to accommodate the remote ways of billing. “The county has been very good at giving us whatever we need,” said Seal.

As for the operators, their normal work day had to shift as well. Jordan Curles, WTP superintendent at DCWD, shared that operators have a packed work day: day-shifters start by checking and logging numbers on a spreadsheet that is constantly monitored. Daily labs are the name of the game before hopping in their vehicles to drive up to Duck and check the six to seven water tower locations for chlorine. After these tasks are attended to, the afternoon is full of maintenance on the

Danielle Puleo photo

Trains, also known as the equipment used to pump one million gallons of water a day with treatment, inside DCWD treatment facility.

fourteen wells DCWD maintains and the one very large water plant located at the Kill Devil Hills facility.

Six operators are staffed at the DCWD Kill Devil Hills plant along with one chief operator and Curles himself. Curles noted that after the pandemic hit, operators would drive individually. “We started sanitizing before and after every shift,” he added. Before partitioning rooms off with shower curtains, only one employee was permitted to be in a single room at a time. Masks are worn at all times.

“We are very fortunate we were able to operate and keep going,” Curles said. “These guys are used to operating during storms, hurricanes and extended power outages,” Irwin added. “They were pretty prepared.” While in the control room, Curles pointed out the system used to control all the pumps in their system. A color-coated array of cyber pump tanks displays the water level of physical pumps around the county. “All the different tanks and tower levels are controlled through there,” he said. “If it gets to a level where it’s about to overflow, we get an alarm and it will turn red.”

Managed on a minute-by-minute basis, the system is the key to ensuring that the sections of Dare County under their control are getting the water they need.

As Irwin walked through the trains that have been pumping water since 1989 and the wells that run to the plant, he explained the process of transforming the salty well water into fresh water. “This is about a 75% recovery plant because you have to take the fresh and reject the salt,” Irwin explained. A process that is complex, but necessary.

Water flows into the plant from wells connected to aqueducts under the surface of the towns. From there, it is shifted and chemically balanced to rid salt through the trains. Six large pressure vessels lie in the back of the indoor facility, where the water undergoes its final polish before going off to two 10 million gallon holding tanks. Ten million gallons sounds like enough to feed a town for a while, but Irwin stated that the facility could do close to that amount per day in the summer months. To think, the water that flows so readily from our sink faucets and shower heads has gone through an entire transformation before it ever hits our hands. Twenty million gallons of treated water in reserves, 10 of which can be gone in 24 hours, could not be possible without the crews at water treatment facilities like DCWD. 

Danielle Puleo photos

Top: The auto-teller inside DCWD in Kill Devil Hills. Bottom: A monitor screen displaying the system used by DCWD to control the water pump tanks throughout the county.

Danielle Puleo photos

Construction of the trains set to replace the current trains from 1989 is underway.