Some TriRiver Water customers in Siler City received letters in mid-November with confusing address information.

The letters were federal requirements associated with the ongoing efforts to identify lead service lines throughout the country. TriRiver Water took over servicing Siler City in July and with it the responsibility of bringing the area into compliance with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Lead and Copper Rule Improvements. 

TriRiver Water took preliminary service line data and compiled it into a database. Then, the data was sorted and filtered to remove customers whose service lines were known to not be lead or galvanized. The data was then further refined to separate customers into three categories: service line unknown, service line galvanized, and service line lead.

Customers in each category have multiple data points associated with their account. Two of those data points are mailing address and service address. Those two data points are often the same but not always – because some customers may own multiple properties or prefer to receive mail through a P.O. box, etc. 

Due to a clerical error, the service address data points all got shuffled around. TriRiver Water has since confirmed exactly when in the process this happened and that the mistake did not affect any other data points. 

That means anyone who received a letter, received the correct letter for their property. The letter they received just had the wrong service address listed on the front of the envelope.

Of the 1,099 letters sent out, 81 percent of them should’ve been sent with the same billing address and service address. 

The remaining 207 letters break down into 82 sent to PO boxes, 79 sent to mailing addresses outside of Siler City, and 46 sent to customers who had duplicate properties associated with their mailing address. These 207 customers again received the correct letter, they just may not be able to determine which property the letter’s contents relate to because the service address listed is incorrect. 

We apologize for any confusion this has caused. Please do not hesitate to call us at 919-777-1122 if you have further questions or would like more information about your current service line material status.

Let us reassure you we triple checked our data to make sure the clerical mistake only affected this particular situation. No billing data was affected in any way.

In addition, the letters are purely informative. TriRiver Water has not confirmed the validity of the current service line classifications. That process is just beginning. 

So if you received a letter saying your home has a lead service line, that is purely based on old data. It may not be accurate. TriRiver Water will spend the next months investigating and verifying the data. You will receive a new letter (likely in fall 2026) when your service line materials have been confirmed.