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RANDLEMAN ­ - Scientific tests consistently show the water in Randleman Regional Reservoir equal in quality to Greensboro’s other water-supply lakes, the Piedmont Triad Regional Water Authority learned Tuesday.

Monthly sampling of the new reservoir yielded results virtually identical to similar tests in lakes Brandt, Higgins and Townsend , north of Greensboro, veteran board member Tom Phillips said at the agency’s monthly meeting.

“That’s exactly what all of our earlier studies said would happen,” Phillips said. “The people who were objecting (to the studies) just didn’t want this lake built.”

He learned about the similar test results in gathering data for a speech from Greensboro’s water resources department, he said.

The city’s existing water-supply lakes have good reputations for quality among urban water systems.

The regional authority met Tuesday in a construction trailer at the Randleman plant, a $40 million building two-thirds complete on Adams Farm Road in northern Randolph County.

Authority director John Kime and chief project engineer Joe McGougan later led board members on a tour of the plant, almost finished structurally but lacking much of its high-tech equipment. Officials expect it to begin distributing drinking water this summer.

In other action, the board unanimously named the plant in honor of Kime, who has guided the project since its early days as a regional effort in the 1980s.

The authority was formed by Greensboro, High Point, Jamestown, Archdale, Randleman and Randolph County after federal officials abandoned the lake as a flood-control project.

Water quality was an issue from the start, partly because large amounts of treated effluent flow into the reservoir from High Point’s Eastside Wastewater Treatment Plant.

The Deep River also passes a number of polluted sites flowing to the new lake, including former Seaboard Chemical Corp. and High Point’s closed landfill.

But studies over the years concluded pollution reaching the Deep would be rendered harmless by heavy dilution and chemical reactions.

Contact Taft Wireback at 373-7100 or taft.wireback@news-record.com