PILOT MOUNTAIN — Only at 20 percent of its water capacity, Pilot Mountain is “overflowing” in water, but lacking in options with what to do with it.

The Pilot Mountain Board of Commissioners met yesterday evening with representatives from the School of Government at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for a community education workshop to learn about inter-local water/sewer partnerships and agreements as a potential means for handling the town’s excess water.

Plants in Pilot Mountain that once utilized the majority of the town’s water have closed, leaving the town with an excess of 1.5 million gallons of water a day that are unused.

Mayor Earl Sheppard said the town is only using 200,000 gallons of water every day.

The biggest concern for the town is finding customers or developing a partnership to sell water.

“If the Surry County commissioners are looking to expand the water and sewer, we would like to be a supplier for them or work out a deal,” he said.

In the past, the town tried to supply water to King, but instead it signed a water deal with Winston-Salem. Efforts to sign within Surry County have also fallen short, since Mount Airy has an inter-local agreement with Dobson.

The UNC representatives have traveled throughout the county offering the workshop to each municipality as part of a $56,000 grant provided through Golden LEAF. The grant aims to educate the community about inter-local water system partnerships. The workshop includes local statistics and data on utility rates, debt, water supply and demand and discussion of the major issues involved in potential water partnership models and basic terminology of partnerships.

“The community workshops are a big part of the grant,” said Andrew Westbrook, one of the two representatives who spoke with Pilot Mountain officials on Thursday. ”Our hope with the workshop is to facilitate dialogue between the communities in Surry County for a working group.”

The working group is not a voting board, but rather a discussion board that will include representatives from each municipality joining to discuss water partnerships and agreements.

“We want everybody to go into discussion with the same base of knowledge and that way everybody knows where everyone is coming from,” said Rick Morse, the another UNC representative. He said the working group is planning on meeting in early August for its first gathering.

“We’re not promoting one type of partnership over another, we’re just here to help the different jurisdictions to discover what’s best for the county.”

Contact Erin C. Perkins at eperkins@mtairynews.com or 719-1952.