Navy could pay $12 million to clean water in Montco and Bucks
The Navy could be paying upwards of $12 million to filter contaminated drinking water around former military bases in Montgomery and Bucks Counties.
The Navy could be paying upwards of $12 million to filter contaminated drinking water around former military bases in Montgomery and Bucks Counties.
Elevated levels of perflourinated compounds, which have been linked to cancer and reproductive issues, were found last year in several drinking water wells in Horsham, Warrington, and Warminster. At an open house in Horsham Wednesday, local officials, and Navy and Environmental Protection Agency representatives said they are making progress on fixing the problem.
The Warminster Municipal Authority has signed a $4 million agreement with the Navy to install a "granular activated carbon filtration system" on three contaminated wells, said WMA General Manager Timothy D. Hagey.
The authority has been testing a smaller version of the system - which works much the same as a household Brita filter - for about two months.
"It's been very effective so far," said Hagey, who hopes to get the full system up and running within a year.
Horsham, which has lost about a quarter of its water supply, has asked the Navy for a similar system on two wells that tested above the EPA's threshold and three others that tested just below.
Tina O'Rourke, business manager for the Horsham Water and Sewer Authority, said its $8.7 million proposal would cover the cost of the water it has been buying from other towns, the filtration system, and the cost of connecting to homes that currently have private wells.
Some of those private homes just need to tap into a nearby water main, O'Rourke said. But others will require that new water mains be extended out to areas that are currently off the grid.
Warrington, which began testing for the contaminants after they were found in neighboring towns, is just beginning to develop a scope of work for its contamination.
Although Warrington lost about 30 percent of its water supply, remediation there may be cheaper because all three contaminated wells could feed into a single filter, said Fred Achenback, director of the township's water authority.
Until the filters are in place, all three municipalities will continue buying water from neighboring towns - at a steeper price that the Navy has promised to reimburse.
About 45 homes on private wells are receiving bottled water from the Environmental Protection Agency. That will continue, officials said, until they can be connected to the filtered municipal water supplies.
The contamination, which was widely used in firefighting foams and other industrial products until a decade ago, has been clustered around the former military bases at Willow Grove and Warminster. The Navy has agreed to bear the cleanup costs, but an EPA representative said the agency is still exploring whether there may be additional sources of contamination.
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