History

The Utilities Board of the Town of Citronelle d.b.a. South Alabama Utilities (SAU) is a rural utility that provides water, natural gas and sewer to Mobile County and part of Washington County and has been serving customers since 1953.

The first meeting of the board was held on January 13, 1953 in the Town of Citronelle. 

The board was originally made up of three board members but in 1978 it was changed to a five member board.  The Utilities Board of the Town of Citronelle was incorporated on April 27, 1978 and passed a resolution on July 25, 1985 to do business as South Alabama Utilities because of the large part of rural Mobile County that customers were provided service.  From the time of it's first meeting SAU has grown from a few hundred customers to approximately 20,623 water, 6,139 gas and 3,686 sewer customers.

In the late 1990’s for South Alabama Utilities to compete for new development it felt it was essential that sewers be made available in areas where SAU already had water infrastructure in place.  In the past years SAU has built a growing network of utility-managed Decentralized Wastewater Treatment systems.  SAU builds the treatment and dispersal system, and operates and maintains the entire system.