The City of Monroe’s drinking water system is supplied by two individual watersheds – the Lake Twitty watershed and the Lake Lee watershed. Both are fed by streams which receive runoff generated by private properties containing buildings, driveways, parking lots, and lawns. Other runoff is generated by public streets, open farmland, and public parks. All of these sources contain some sort of pollutant at various levels, and all contribute to the degradation of our streams and lakes. The City of Monroe will, in the future, be testing the local streams for water quality. These tests will help determine the constituents entering our water supplies and how we can, as a community, address any concerns which may be found through the testing procedure.

     Currently, under North Carolina state law, new commercial construction projects are required to provide water quality features on sites where certain threshold percentages for impervious surfaces are exceeded. These features help remove suspended particles and other pollutants before the water flows downstream into the water supply lakes. These water quality practices are required when the site is located within a designated area which surrounds one of the two water supply lakes.

     Testing performed by the North Carolina Department of Water Quality has determined that nutrient concentrations are high in both lakes, as well as low dissolved oxygen levels below the Lake Lee dam and depressed concentrations of oxygen below the City of Monroe wastewater treatment plant. For more information on local streams and creeks please visit the following N.C Division of Water Quality web sites:

• Link To Monroe's River Basin
• Monroe's Sub-Basin within the Yadkin-PeeDee River Basin