Crisis Provoked State Action: Design and Construction of Water Filtration Plants Began in 1984, 1985.

By Rory Sweeney, The Times Leader, Wilkes-Barre, Pa.

Dec. 24–In 1983, water companies didn’t have to waste much time sifting through regulations in the state Safe Drinking Water Act.

“It was literally a page and a half long,” said Mark Carmon, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection.

But after beaver droppings tainted some local water reservoirs, causing hundreds of cases of the stomach-upsetting parasitic disease giardiasis, regulations started to go into effect.

The federal government had created a more definitive regulatory framework, but states had the option to accept it or use their own. Pennsylvania was “one of the last of the larger states,” according to Carmon, to go it alone. “That, in hindsight, proved to be inadequate,” he said.

Reeling from the outbreaks, the commonwealth accepted the federal guidance and began requiring filtration and chemical treatment beyond chlorination.

“What you’re doing is you take your raw water and you introduce chemicals to make the particles of contaminants cling to other particles to make your filtration more effective,” Carmon said.

Necessary changes

DEP, which was at the time known as the Department of Environmental Resources, began working with water companies in 1984 and 1985 to design and construct filtration plants. Companies that had suffered outbreaks were the top priority.

“The schedule for implementation for them was accelerated beyond even other systems,” Carmon said.

But the agency soon found that one type of plant would not clean every water source.

“Water’s different everywhere you go, and I mean biologically and chemically … even in similar areas, so your treatment plant is going to be designed for your sources,” Carmon said.

DEP was simultaneously addressing faulty on-lot septic systems that were also polluting water sources.

The plants were designed using various technologies, from ultraviolet light purification to reverse osmosis, but “for big systems, filtration is the best alternative,” Carmon said.

After the plants were constructed, DEP began a program of unannounced, biannual inspections, Carmon said. The agency, he said, also samples water at three points in the system: the source plant, within the distribution system and at customers’ taps.

“It’s a very hands-on program,” he said. “The way we look at it is our job is to help you provide the best quality water to your customers,” both in its aesthetics, such as smell and taste, and purity.

Companies are generally compliant, as well, Carmon said, pointing to a 95 percent compliance rate in this 11-county region in 2006.

“The five percent were mostly bacteria-related where you’d have a boil advisory for a couple of days,” he said. “Every once in a while you get people who try to cut corners and you have to issue an enforcement action, but it’s very rare.”

In fact, technology has made source-water issues less urgent than distribution system ones. The biggest current problem is people attempting to break in and tamper with the system, Carmon said.

“Really that’s the most vulnerable part of the system now,” he said, noting that old pipes and the freeze/thaw cycle combine to cause line breaks, which can allow bacteria to enter the system and bypass the filtration safeguards.

“That’s where you tend to look for the problem when you do have them.”

Tomorrow: A look at the local watershed land.

Rory Sweeney, a Times Leader staff writer, may be reached at 970-7418.

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