SDG Engineering, Inc. Bostic · North Carolina
In Memoriam of a Practice A Legacy of Service

SDG Engineering,
Inc.

Professional water & wastewater engineering,
in service of communities across North Carolina.

2002 Retired 2025

For more than two decades, SDG Engineering quietly shaped the infrastructure that communities in the western Carolinas rely on every day — the treatment plants, the sewer lines, the water systems. The kind of work most people never see, and never have to think about, when it is done right.

This page exists because the company's founder, Kurt D. Wright, PE, has retired. The firm has closed its active practice. But the record of its work, and the career behind it, deserves to be preserved.

The name SDG stands for the Latin phrase Soli Deo Gloria — "to the glory of God alone." It was a principle Kurt built the firm around from day one, and one that informed how he approached every project that followed.

§ 01

The founder

KW
Founder & President

Kurt D. Wright

PE · BCEE · PWAM

A professional engineer with more than forty years of practice in water and wastewater systems, Kurt Wright founded SDG Engineering in 2002 after a career at several established engineering firms. The practice operated out of Bostic, North Carolina, serving municipal clients across Rutherford County and the broader region.

  • 1977 B.S., Urban and Environmental Engineering, UNC-Charlotte
  • 1984 Licensed Professional Engineer, North Carolina (license #11694)
  • Pre-2002 Senior Project Manager, Gannett Fleming; prior roles at Concord Engineering & Surveying and Pease Associates
  • 2002 Founded SDG Engineering, Inc.
  • 2012 Joined the Buried Asset Management Institute–International (BAMI-I); later appointed to its Board of Directors
  • 2013 Board Certified Environmental Engineer (BCEE)
  • Professional Water Asset Manager (PWAM) — completed CTAM 100, 200, 300, and 400
  • Retired 2025
§ 02

Selected work

SDG's portfolio spanned nearly every dimension of municipal water and wastewater practice — from rate studies and permit applications to multi-million-dollar treatment plant rehabilitations.

Town of Spindale, NC 2012 – 2013

Spindale Asset Management Plan

Chief author of one of North Carolina's most acclaimed municipal asset management plans. Developed for a wastewater system serving roughly 4,300 residents across 5.5 square miles, the plan was reviewed by the NC Division of Water Infrastructure and awarded a "gold star" rating — described by state officials as the best AMP submitted to DWI at the time. The plan was later presented at the 2014 WEFTEC Conference in New Orleans.

Town of Spindale, NC Completed 2019

Spindale Wastewater Treatment Plant Rehabilitation

The Capital Improvement Plan's highest-priority project, directly resulting from the 2012 Asset Management Plan. The rehabilitation rightsized the facility from six million gallons per day down to three — a response to the decline of the town's textile industry — and modernized it with new fine-bubble diffusers, SCADA-controlled blowers, and a reconfigured aeration and equalization design. Funded through a $9 million zero-percent loan, with $1 million forgiven as grant.

Town of Lake Lure, NC Multi-year

Town Engineer

Served as Lake Lure's Town Engineer on a portfolio that included penstock safety evaluation and QuakeWrap liner installation, intake drum gate hoist replacement, butterfly valve assessment, generator repairs, and evaluation of the wastewater interconnect between Chimney Rock Village and the Town of Lake Lure.

Not only is Kurt technically capable, but straightforward and honest.

David Arrowood · Director of Public Works · Town of Lake Lure, NC
§ 03

Practice areas

SDG's technical scope covered the full lifecycle of municipal water and wastewater infrastructure — planning, design, permitting, construction administration, and asset management.

§ 04

With gratitude

To every municipality, public works director, town manager, contractor, colleague, and client who trusted SDG Engineering with their communities' infrastructure across twenty-three years of practice — thank you.

The water keeps flowing. That's the legacy.

This page is preserved by

Your WP Guy — keeping the record online.

When a business closes its doors, its story shouldn't disappear from the internet with it. Your WP Guy hosts this page as a small way of honoring the work. If you're a business owner thinking about your own digital legacy, here's what we do.