Nov 10, 2023 By Joseph Casilli 4 min read

The East Dunkard Water Authority’s 1,600 customers in Greene County recently woke up to an unpleasant surprise: the water system’s abrupt breakdown and subsequent shutdown. Residents found themselves without access to running water for three days, impacting their ability to do essential daily tasks such as showering, cooking, and running a business. The Southeastern Greene School District canceled school. Most notably of all, there was no safe water to drink.

All Pennsylvanians want to be able to turn on the tap and trust that safe and clean water will flow. But this issue has plagued residents in this community for many years, as this water system has repeatedly struggled to maintain water quality and reliability.

The aging infrastructure requires urgent replacement and numerous public health violations need to be addressed to comply with state drinking water laws, including a 2020 Department of Environmental Protection corrective action plan and another 2022 administrative order. Sadly, this is not unique to this one system.

Over three decades ago, I started working in the family utility construction business. During my high school and college years, I did everything from carrying grout buckets in the ditches where we were laying replacement pipes to putting down asphalt across roads in Greene County and around the region. Today, my company works with many different private water utility companies and government-run water utilities, so we’ve seen it all. I have seen firsthand, time and time again, that many municipalities in Pennsylvania are facing the same uphill battle to modernize infrastructure while keeping water bills affordable.

Mostly what I have seen are Band-Aids being applied to water systems. It may offer short-term relief, but it can’t fix the underlying issue. Decades of deferred maintenance inevitably leads to situations where quick fixes become impossible and systems fail to work any longer.

Other drinking water systems can and should learn a lot from East Dunkard.

When dealing with critical infrastructure such as our drinking water systems, we cannot let them deteriorate to the point of imminent failure before seeking help or being issued emergency orders from state regulators. We must recognize that ensuring safe and reliable infrastructure does have a cost – planned, ongoing investments.

Second, we must acknowledge that there is also a cost for not making necessary ongoing investments. Addressing East Dunkard’s issues in a pinch will now ultimately cost customers more time and money. Emergency repairs are always more costly and often have a much greater impact on residents’ quality of life and safety than strategic, planned replacements.

We must also take a step back and acknowledge that local governments should be given the choice to sell their water or wastewater systems if they find themselves unable to keep systems operating in compliance, either because they do not have the funds, expertise, or both. While state lawmakers lack jurisdiction over municipal operations, they can offer support by endorsing legislation, such as Act 12, which ensures that municipalities have the choice to sell their systems and receive a fair price to support other important community priorities if they opt to sell.

Pennsylvania American Water, a company we have worked with for years, is planning to buy the failing East Dunkard system and could assume full control in late 2024 or early 2025, if the state utility commission approves the proposed acquisition. While residents deserve access to clean, safe, and reliable water in the short-term, they also deserve a more substantial solution moving forward.

Selling the system is a long-term win for residents because Pennsylvania American Water’s planned $17 million investment will improve the water treatment plant’s ability to reliably provide safe drinking water, address ongoing concerns from the state’s consent order, and, as East Dunkard Water Board Chairman Jerry Dorsey notes, “unburden the authority of having to correct deficiencies in our system that we simply couldn’t afford.”

Joseph Casilli is executive vice president and third-generation owner of Casper Colosimo & Son, Inc., based in Pittsburgh.