Water Woes: Lock Haven City Council Contemplates Joint Municipal Authority
By Emily Wright
LOCK HAVEN – Lock Haven City Council discussed the pursuit of a joint water authority between the City Authority, the Suburban Water Authority, and the Central Clinton County Water Filtration Authority (CCCWFA) during its meeting Monday night.
In a letter sent to the City Council on January 3 from Greg Mayes of the Suburban Water Authority, he stated that water systems throughout the country are “facing significant increases in rates due to more regulations and monitoring requirements, removal of lead piping, addressing ‘forever’ PFAS contaminants, and aging infrastructure”. He stated that Clinton County is no exception to the rising costs and that Suburban Water Authority is facing significant additional revenue needs which will require increased rates.
Due to increased rates, Suburban is considering options to reduce costs for City residents, one of those options being consolidation. Mayes stated in his letter that the most feasible approach may be through the formation of a Joint Municipal Authority and that there should be significant cost savings with a merger. The Joint Authority, according to his letter, would potentially be formed by the municipalities in which the customers reside, which would include 11 municipalities, “to varying degrees based on the number of customers served”.
Mayes states that the purpose of his letter was to determine whether there is sufficient interest on the part of the current system owners and operators to investigate the option of a merger considering the benefits of a combined joint municipal authority, and concluded by asking on behalf of the City and Suburban Subcommittee whether there is interest in investigating the formation of a Joint Municipal Authority.
Leonard Young, Chief Operator of CCCWFA, had also sent a letter on January 4 to address the council requesting a meeting to discuss how to move forward concerning the emergency water source project currently underway.
Young noted that based on the project’s status update on December 27, 2023, DEP and SRBC permits have not been obtained by the City of Lock Haven and also that condemnation of easements may cause delays until mid-February. He also highlighted that Keller Dam has remained full “for quite some time”, and the Ohl Dam has recovered naturally “to a level of approximately -8 feet” despite just getting to the coldest portion of the year.
“Based on the information above, we feel it is inadvisable to consider activating the temporary sources at this time. We feel that Ohl should be allowed to fill naturally, water from Keller Dam should be used for the system, and the final temporary piping connections made and the wells activated only if conditions change and reservoir levels once again drop,” he stated in his letter before listing some concerns that CCCWFA has.
The first concern is that once the wells are activated and the piping charged, they will need to be run periodically even if they aren’t needed for the water supply to keep a chlorine residual in the temporary piping. In addition, generators must be kept on-site, running continuously whether the system is running or not. This added expense could be avoided if the system is not activated until it is needed. “We feel that by monitoring consumption and reservoir levels, we can determine a threshold at which there will be a sufficient time period, such as two weeks, to procure the generators and make final connections,” he said.
Another concern is that as the temperature drops, the buildings will need to be continuously heated in order to prevent the chemicals from freezing. Young explained that if the pipes are charged and the wells are shut down, there is a risk of the pipes freezing, which could lead to damage or the formation of ice particles that could block the transmission main and cause a sudden increase in pressure, resulting in further damage to the pipes. Additionally, once the system is in use, it will be necessary to regularly test the well water and monitor surrounding wells.
To conclude the concerns mentioned by CCCWFA, Young stated that leak detection efforts made by the city so far “have apparently had little effect on the city demand”. “We hope that detection efforts on the transmission mains may locate some sources of lost water and reduce demand further,” he said.
Present at Monday’s meeting was CCCWFA board member Rich Marcinkevage, who provided clarification about the information provided in the letter on behalf of Mr. Young after questions were raised amongst City Council members. “The letter does not say that there shouldn’t be a temporary source pursued, it says that at this point in time, there’s not a need to implement the temporary source because as long as the Keller Dam is full, there is no need to pump additional water into the system,” he explained. “We’re going into the colder weather, so if we do initiate that then you’re going to be committed to actually running that system either intermittently to keep the chlorine residual into piping around or possibly continuously to keep things from freezing. As long as Keller Dam is full and the Ohl Reservoir is filling naturally, there’s no need to put additional water into the system, so you don’t need to actually rent the generators, pay for heating the buildings that are going to have chemicals in them, pay the power costs, and all the other issues with monitoring everything else,” Marcinkevage explained.
Marcinkevage clarified that CCCWFA recommends the City refrain from using a temporary water source at this time and instead, wait to implement it if or until it is necessary. “It won’t become necessary unless conditions change, and conditions have gotten better since they were when this whole thing started,” he said. “When the whole thing started, Ohl was down almost 16-17 feet; Ohl was down eight feet as of last week, and Keller has been full for most of the month. As long as Keller is full, you’ve got enough water to satisfy the demand right now,” he said.
According to Marcinkevage, the reason for requesting a meeting with Lock Haven City Council is to set up a meeting schedule so that discussions about the path moving forward can take place, and to decide at what point in time and at what threshold the City will need to implement a temporary water source if it becomes necessary. “We don’t know whether conditions might not get worse again, and you might need to do this in April or May, but Dobson [GD&F Consulting Engineers] should be able to come up with a timeframe for when you actually need to put in the final connection and get the thing ready to go,” he said. “If that’s like a two-week period, then you monitor conditions and when you get to where it looks like you’re going to have that [happen] at a certain date, two weeks ahead of that you start making final commitments,” Marcinkevage said.
CCCWFA previously presented several questions to Lock Haven City Council in late November, some of which were reiterated in Young’s letter. Most notably, Young asked whose insurance would cover the costs if something went wrong with the project, and what would the insurance cover specifically. He asked if an agreement would be necessary in this regard. Other questions posed were concerning access to transmission mains in the event of an emergency, operation details, and funding for the project.
Council Member Barbara Masorti spoke about a meeting that was held with the Suburban Filtration Authority and the City Authority. “We discussed a lot of the options and what the bigger picture, long term, down the road looks like for the water system and the possibility of forming a joint authority,” she said. “Before we went any further and made any additional moves towards actually getting this process going and pursuing joining together, we wanted to make sure that all of the entities that were involved with this process were willing to move forward towards forming a joint authority. We didn’t want to start this process, and then have one of the four organizations all of a sudden back out,” she explained. “So what this is really asking is, does the city of Lock Haven City Council agree that we as a committee will continue to work with the Suburban Filtration Authority and the City Authority to look to the future for the water system and forming a Joint Municipal Authority,” she said.
Mayor Joel Long asked if the letter was making a request “for exploration” of a joint authority at this point in time, which Masorti confirmed. “It is exploration at this time. It’s just the willingness of council to say ‘yes, we want you to continue to pursue in that direction as a community and that we have supported council to continue to do so’,” she explained.
Mayor Joel Long made a motion to notify the Suburban Water Authority, CCCWFA, and the Lock Haven City Authority that the City Council is interested in meeting for further discussion. All council members voted in favor upon a roll call vote.
