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LIFEBLOOD OF THE BOROUGH - Is Phoenixville ready to tackle drinking water issues?

Wed Apr 1, 2009 / Education and Outreach

LIFEBLOOD OF THE BOROUGH
Is Phoenixville ready to tackle drinking water issues?

By Joe Rooney
The Phoenix Correspondent

Editor's note: This is the first in a four-part series running through Saturday that will examine issues surrounding the Schuylkill River, local environmental concerns and public safety. Today's piece examines the state of drinking water in the borough.

PHOENIXVILLE — For residents of Phoenixville, the smell and taste of what leaves their water tap can be unnerving.

Phoenixville's municipal drinking water comes directly from the Schuylkill River, by way of the Phoenixville municipal water treatment plant in the southeast corner of the borough.

"The Phoenixville water plant is in need of a considerable retrofit," says Barry Cassidy, executive director of Main Street CDC. Many improvements are necessary to improve the quality of Phoenixville's drinking water, and an outline for an improvement project calls

for $3 million to bring the 1968 municipal facility up to date. Of the $3 million needed to get the project started, Cassidy said, "No contracts have been secured to begin the project. We don't have the money."

The Phoenix has interviewed several residents over the course of the past few weeks to gauge their opinions on the state of the municipal drinking water, and many expressed concern.

"I won't drink it," Jeff Guys, a Phoenixville resident. "I buy bottled water."

A pedestrian at Black Rock Sanctuary who asked not to be identified, when asked what he though about Phoenixville water, said, "I've lived a lot of places, and when I moved here 20 years ago, I'd never tasted such horrible water."

When asked about how the borough plans to secure money to begin the water treatment upgrades, Steve Nease, borough finance director offered several possibilities.

"The first option is always cash," he said. "If we can pay up front with grants, then that's the best option. If the money cannot be secured though grants, we'll have to consider a loan or bond, depending on the amount of the project we'd take on at this time."

What if the grant money doesn't come through? That leaves the users of Phoenixville water left to pick up the bill. Are the residents ready to foot the bill for cleaner water?

Pollution in the Schuylkill River isn't something new. Water quality took a turn for the worse when coal was discovered at the river's headwaters. In 1824, the river became a major transportation artery, connecting industry up and down the river's banks, from the Yuengling Brewing Company in Pottsville to Phoenix Steel, right here in our back yard, until the Schuylkill merges into the Delaware River behind League Island in Philadelphia, sight of the Navel Shipyard.

The Schuylkill Canal transported coal downstream, and finished goods upstream. After 100 years of abuse, the river's value as a source of drinking water was considered compromised — polluted by the foul waste discharges from the hundreds of manufacturing operations along it's 140-mile curving spine, it's navigability corrupted by billions of tons of sediment deposit along the river's bottom.

After World War II, the river was as polluted as ever. And in 1947, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the United States government began an environmental clean up of proportions the world had since never seen. The Schuylkill River Project was the first major environmental clean-up effort undertaken by a government agency in the United States. It was the largest clean-up effort in the world at the time, its primary concern removing the coal silt that accumulated in the river as a result of the activities in the coalfields in Schuylkill County.

Without The Schuylkill River Project, the river would probably have been abandoned as a source of safe drinking water, and the Phoenixville we know today may not have ever been able to find a foothold in revitalization if not for a strong, clean river to support it.

So what's wrong with the drinking water today?

Phoenixville's 40-year-old and obsolete municipal water treatment facility doesn't help, either.

For Phoenixville residents, clean water from the Schuylkill means everything. The question remains: Are the residents OK with water service as it is, or are they ready to foot the bill for much-needed water treatment upgrades?

 http://www.phoenixvillenews.com/articles/2009/04/01/news/srv0000005021579.txt