RALEIGH, N.C. -- "It looks disgusting. I don’t know if you’ve seen pictures of it but it’s about the color of iced tea."

• One resident says brown water has come through her home about seven times in the last year
• Aqua North Carolina serves more than 280,000 people in the state
• Aqua North Carolina says it's implementing a plan to fix the issue

That's how Becky Daniel describes what occasionally will come out of her faucet, or her bath tub, or drip into her laundry machine.

"There were certain instances where we couldn’t give my son a bath that night because of brown water. We had situations where I couldn't cook rice or pasta that I had been planning to cook for dinner. Another situation where I had been doing white laundry didn’t realize there was brown water and ruined the whole load," said Daniel.

In total, Daniel says it's happened about seven times in the last year at her home and one time at her child's school.

Aqua North Carolina serves Daniel and more than 280,000 people in the state.

Right now they're in the process of asking for an around 8 percent rate increase by the North Carolina Utilities Commission.

But first, Aqua will have to go through public hearings including one Daniel will be at next Monday night. “I don’t believe that they should get their full rate increase until they can resolve the issues that they’re having,” she says.

Aqua North Carolina's President Shannon Becker says they are working to fix issues.

“We understand that there is a concern by our customers, we understand their concerns about some water quality challenges in certain communities and we have been aggressively attacking those issues," said Becker.

He also says there's a plan they're implementing now.

“This plan that we’re working on, not only does it involve adding capital to install new filtration, we’re also going to install or have already begun is an enhanced operational improvement plan to clean tanks on a regular basis as well as uping the amount of flushing that we do within the system.”

Becker also explains “There’s still some areas that have heightened mineral content and it’s not always consistent so we might be fine for a while and then all of a sudden something happens. We also have main breaks that will happen like any utility that will stir up and discolor the water there.”

Below is the full statement from Aqua:

Aqua North Carolina understands the concerns expressed by some residents related to customer complaints about discolored water. 

On Saturday, June 16, a water main break occurred and was fixed the same day within the Swans Mill subdivision. A system pressure advisory was issued to customers at that time, noting the main break and the potential for water discoloration. While this is likely the cause of recent water discoloration issues in this system, we understand the effects heightened levels of iron and manganese is having on water quality for our customers. 

Moving ahead, we are committed to making ongoing system enhancements to improve both the quality of water and reliability of service. We will continue to focus on addressing iron and manganese that exists naturally in the groundwater. While these minerals don’t affect health, they can make water look orange or brown and affect the way it tastes and smells. 

Working collaboratively with our state regulators, we have more recently developed a robust water quality improvement program to do just that:

•        For wells with high levels of iron and manganese, new filtration treatment will be installed. Our goal is to install new filtration treatment within a reasonable timeline; the wells that need it most will see filtration within the next three to five years; installations will be prioritized based on the amount of minerals in the water and the volume of capacity for each well

•        Areas with moderate levels will be treated with a process to improve overall water aesthetics;

•        Systems with little to no iron and manganese presence will be monitored and treated as needed

All systems will be monitored on an ongoing basis to help ensure safety and overall quality of the water source. We are also employing an aggressive water quality operations plan to help make sure water consistently flows clear. That will mean an increase in scheduled system flushing in many communities and a robust tank-cleaning program that spans our operation across the state. 

This plan is currently underway and we have developed a website (www.ncwaterquality.com) and reached out to our customers with more information about our work. We also encourage customers to sign up on the site to receive updates on our progress. 

We are committed to continually improving the service we provide and thank our customers for their patience as we carry out this important work.