Authority finds new source of water

By Dale Heberlig, April 17, 2004

Shippensburg Borough Authority approved a 30-year agreement Tuesday to purchase up to 650,000 gallons of raw water daily from the Franklin County General Authority's Letterkenny Reservoir.

The water will be used by the authority to replace Gunter Valley as a source in the Shippensburg-area public water system.

The agreement calls for the authority to pay a minimum of $228,125 over the first five years of the agreement, based on a minimum daily usage of 500,000 gallons and a charge of 25 cents per 1,000 gallons.

If the authority consumes more than 650,000 gallons daily in a 90-day average, however, that price could jump sharply. The agreement gives the FCGA the right to charge its "finished water" rate for anything over the 650,000-gallon limit. That rate is currently $3.30 per 1,000 gallons - more than 13 times the base rate.

Profit from sale

Authority member Chris Woltemade calls the pact "a good agreement" in light of the authority's loss of Gunter Valley. He pointed to the $1.8 million profit realized by the authority in the sale of the 3,500-acre watershed.

"We were between a rock and a hard place with the loss of Gunter Valley," Woltemade says. He predicts the authority can live with the 650,000 gallon-a-day limit and generally avoid surcharges for exceeding that limit.

"I think it's reasonable for the FCGA to charge a surcharge if we go over the limit," he says. "They have to have some way to plan consumption."

Authority member Keith Swartz said a warning system to raise "red flags" when consumption is too high is a necessity.

Water department foreman Louis Larson told the authority it shouldn't be difficult to install a warning system to trigger an alert when consumption approaches the limit.

The authority approached the FCGA in 1999 about buying water, but the overture faded until Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection began pressing for the breaching or overhaul of the dam at Gunter Valley.

Sold to state

Negotiations to buy water from the FCGA accelerated in the past 18 months as the Gunter Valley watershed was sold to the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and DEP flatly demanded that the water level in the dam begin to be lowered, ultimately by 10 feet.

Gunter Valley is the borough's last non-well supply source and water from the impound is treated at a plant built along Route 641 near Roxbury in the early 1990s. The plant will remain in service to process the untreated water purchased from FCGA.

While Gunter Valley is still in use, its life span is nearing an end and the authority has reduced its dependence on the reservoir in recent years.

A 600-foot connection between that plant and Letterkenny Reservoir must be installed. Authority engineer Steve Huntzinger says design and construction of that 12-inch main along with land acquisition and permitting could easily take 12 months to complete once the agreement is finalized.

The agreement includes a clause required the Shippensburg Borough Authority to share, at a 22 percent clip, the cost of certain capital improvements that DEP requires of the FCGA to maintain the water allocation permit for Letterkenny Reservoir.