1 day Ago By Mike Jones
It’d been 446 days since Pennsylvania American Water Co. took receivership of the troubled East Dunkard Water Authority following a dayslong outage in October 2023, but with a few strokes of a pen the company took formal ownership of the Dilliner plant and its distribution system. Dignitaries gathered Tuesday morning at the water treatment plant on Route 88 near Dilliner to finalize the sale and hand over official control to PAWC, which will now provide water to about 4,200 people living in southeastern Greene County.
“If you think of the journey – a year-plus to get to this point – for it to culminate in all this hard work,” PAWC President Justin Ladner said during his remarks to PAWC employees, state officials and county leaders amid the sound of whirling pumps inside the treatment plant. Ladner praised the PAWC and East Dunkard crews for working together to make the transition as smooth as possible. He noted that there have been no water quality violations since PAWC took receivership last February and pointed to $2 million in upgrades the company has already made to the plant and water pipelines in the system.
They found and repaired 82 leaks in the system that had hemorrhaged 16 million gallons of water, while workers made a variety of safety and equipment upgrades to improve water quality. “Perhaps one of the biggest things is building trust,” Ladner said of responding to questions and concerns from the community as the transition happened. “It’s an ongoing journey.
We’ve come so far, and it’s only the beginning. I want to thank everyone for their patience.” Ladner and East Dunkard board member Jerry Dorsey made their way to a nearby conference room where they signed paperwork to make the sale official.
East Dunkard’s board agreed in July 2023 to sell the system to PAWC for $5 million after years of struggling to maintain the plant and ongoing complaints from customers about poor water quality. “We just couldn’t survive,” Dorsey said about the authority’s struggles “If they didn’t come in when they did, we wouldn’t have water. .
.. They are our savior coming here.
” That was evident in late October 2023 when EDWA’s treatment plant stopped functioning due to a “chemical incident” that left most customers without water for three days. That led to the state Department of Environmental Protection – which oversees small water authorities such as these – to ask the Commonwealth Court to approve an emergency receivership in order to get PAWC workers into the plant to make immediate upgrades ahead of the sale. The state Public Utility Commission approved the sale on March 13, paving the way for Tuesday’s formal transfer.
The $5 million sale price won’t go to East Dunkard Water Authority or Dunkard Township, which technically oversaw the board’s operations. About $3 million of it will be used to pay down debt and the remaining $2 million will be placed in an escrow account designed to help pay for future easements or to be used for legal fees in defense of a lawsuit filed by dozens of customers against East Dunkard Water Authority over poor water quality. Whatever remains in the escrow account when the lawsuit ends will then be paid back to Pennsylvania American Water for costs it incurred while upgrading the system during the receivership period.
With the sale complete, PAWC officials said they would begin contacting their newest 1,600 customers in Dunkard and Greene townships, and portions of Cumberland, Monongahela, Perry and Whiteley townships. Customers will begin receiving their new bills in mid-May, and those who have automatic withdrawals or credit card payments are asked to create an account through PAWC’s website. Over the next few years, PAWC officials said they plan to make $16 million in system upgrades to continue improving the water quality.
There will also be outreach to the new customers in the coming weeks and various events designed to educate people on its grant assistance program for low-income customers. There will certainly be adjustments for customers over the next few months, although officials said they hope the receivership will ultimately lessen the burden of the transition. Ladner even caught himself when talking about the facility, nearly referring to it as East Dunkard before calling the plant and distribution system by its new name.
“It’s really exciting to hear ‘Dilliner District,'” Ladner said of what PAWC is calling its newest distribution system. As the dignitaries spoke inside the treatment facility about the process to transfer the system from one entity to the other, contractor David Vandergrift stood perched on a lift to remove the East Dunkard sign from atop the plant’s facade. Once the paperwork was signed and ceremonial photos were snapped, he got the go-ahead to slide Pennsylvania American Water’s logo into place, symbolically announcing to the community that the transfer was complete.
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