Water Quality Program Specialist - Field Operations

Date Opened: Wednesday, July 23, 2025 12:00 AM

Close Date: Saturday, August 23, 2025 12:00 AM

Department: Charlotte Water Department

Salary: $71,878.00 - $89,847.00 Commensurate with Experience

Welcome to the City of Charlotte

Charlotte is America’s Queen City, opening her arms to a diverse and inclusive community of residents, businesses and visitors alike. Here you will find a safe, family-oriented city where people work together to help everyone thrive. The mission of the City of Charlotte is to deliver quality public services and promote the safety, health, and quality of life for all residents.

Our guiding principles include:

• Attracting and retaining a skilled and diverse workforce

• Valuing teamwork, openness, accountability, productivity, and employee development

• Providing all customers with courteous, responsive, accessible, and seamless quality services

• Taking initiative to identify, analyze, and solve problems

• Collaborating with stakeholders to make informed decisions

SUMMARY

Charlotte’s local government, with more than 9,000 employees and a total budget of $3.65 billion budget, works hard to ensure that the community will be a winning city for everyone – a truly remarkable place to live, work, learn and play.

Charlotte Water is an enterprise department of the City of Charlotte and one of the largest public water and sewer service providers in the southeast with over 330,000 customer accounts and over 1100 employees. Our service area includes the City of Charlotte, Mecklenburg County and the towns of Huntersville, Cornelius, Davidson, Mint Hill, Matthews and Pineville. Charlotte Water’s FY 26 budget is $651 million and a five-year capital program of $2.2.28 billion. We enjoy the highest credit ratings from Moody’s and S&P Global as a result of sound financial planning and management and strong support from our City Council. We value competent, skilled candidates with a customer service focus to work in a team environment

Salary:

$78,890.00 - $87,655.00 Commensurate with Experience

Summary:

The primary purpose of this position is to serve as the ORC (Operator in Responsible Charge) for Charlotte Water’s collection system. Work involves detailed regulatory monitoring as associated with the Safe Drinking Water Act and other federal and state regulations; acts as contact for regulatory agencies; collects and analyzes detailed data; responds to customer complaints; collaborates with others to ensure water quality standards are met. This position aids Field Operations staff with ongoing compliance training, works closely with others ensuring compliance of systems with Federal and State regulations, and communicates with other Charlotte Water Divisions to resolve operational challenges.

Major Duties and Responsibilities:

• Visit the system as often as is necessary to ensure the proper operation of the collection
• Operate and maintain the system efficiently to ensure the compliance of the system with any permit(s) issued for the system.
• Visit sites within 24 hours of knowledge of a bypass, spill, or overflow of wastewater from the system.
• Ensure Reportable SSOs (Sanitary Sewer Overflows) are reported to DEQ.
• Provides education and training as needed on regulatory and reporting requirements.
• Notify staff of the need for repairs and modifications to ensure compliance.
• Reviews regulatory data and reports; stays abreast of regulatory requirements; identifies issues and provides related recommendations; and represents the department on regulatory issues and with the regulatory agencies, including permit negotiations.
• Formally responds to NOVs and other notices as required.
• Reviews and analyzes data to make recommendations on ways to improve compliance in the distribution and collection system.
• Identifies trends in data and provides high level reports for strategic planning and operational purposes.
• Reviews regular monitoring reports for water quality in the distribution system including close coordination with distribution and laboratory staff.
• Manages oversight of analytical equipment for process control.
• Conducts, leads, and participates in research of monitoring Sanitary Sewer Overflow program and work procedures, research spill causes and repeat still trends to reduce SSOs.
• Coordinates laboratory work with laboratory services.
• Provides leadership and coordinates on special projects related to continuous improvement programs as related to water distribution and collection systems.
• Provides education and training as needed on regulatory and reporting requirements.
• Represents the Department on regulatory issues an