Duncannon’s ongoing water problems are causing a wallet ache for the developers of Petersburg Commons, the small neighborhood of townhomes at the north side of the borough.
“We’ve been trying to finish the project, but we’ve run into problems with water,” said Wayne Lesher, the home builder and owner of WSL Inc. from New Bloomfield. He was at the Penn Twp. Municipal Authority meeting on Oct. 6.
WSL is the construction partner for Petersburg Commons, which is in Penn Twp. at the intersection of Market Street and Route 849 just north of the Duncannon line. Petersburg’s partners, which includes attorney Allen Hench of Newport, want to restart construction at the development soon.
However, they’ve run into a well-known snag — Duncannon’s mysterious water losses have reduced pressure in the system and that will not meet the needs of the developers.
Specifically, Hench, Lesher and company want to build a six-unit building and that requires a fire-suppression sprinkler system, they said. The water pressure is insufficient for the application.
The partners had the water system pressure in Petersburg Commons checked by Trinity Fire Protection of York in July, according to a letter Hench and Lesher sent the Penn Twp. Municipal Authority asking it to resolve the water issues.
“As noted, your system appears to be unable to deliver — not only the needed pressure — but also the necessary quantity of flow,” Hench wrote in that letter.
In an email attached to the letter, Trinity owner Michael Drew Jr. noted that the static water pressure of the system is 67 pounds per square inch (psi) and that drops to a residual pressure 11 psi. Both are very low pressures that would not meet the development’s needs. The developers also questioned whether the pressures were adequate enough for existing fire hydrants.
However, at the end of the letter, they asked the municipal authority to build a pump station to address the pressure problems, falsely equating it to work being done for Sunshine Hill and Stone Mill Estates. In that case, the Stone Mill developer Yingst Homes and Fishing Creek Valley Associates are building a filtration plant that will serve two neighborhoods. The authority isn’t installing a pump station for pressure concerns.
At the meeting on Oct. 6, Lesher also asked the authority to do something about the issue, but its members noted the authority buys water in bulk from Duncannon Borough for Petersburg Commons.
“That system has been that way before that was built,” authority member Henry Holman III said.
Lesher has brought his concerns to the borough, too, asking them to increase pressures so the developers can build new homes. But the borough isn’t having it. It literally cannot do those things because it still does not have a resolution for its water problems.
“If you’re losing water, the pressure is going to be lower,” said Jeffrey Kirkhoff, the borough council president. “We told Mr. Lesher we didn’t think anything should be added to the system.”
Kirkhoff also is on the infrastructure committee and the Joint Authority Operating Committee (JAOC), a collaborative between Duncannon and Penn Twp. to manage water and sewer issues for the limited places their systems connect to each other.
For years now, Duncannon has been losing between 40 and 50 percent of the water its wells produce. The borough has done everything anyone has suggested to find and fix suspected leaks, including the advice of water system experts and the state Department of Environmental Protection. They’ve fixed large and small leaks, but it hasn’t made a dent. They’re scratching their heads, even after replacing mains, valves and aging infrastructure that could be a problem later on.
“We spent $500,000 last year on water loss issues,” Kirkhoff said.
The borough even has more repairs on the water lines under the intersection of Route 274 and South Main Street at the Route 11/15 off ramp scheduled for this year. But until those issues are resolved, the borough can’t add large scale development and water uses to its system.
The Penn Twp. authority has suggested other options to the builders. They could build a pump station and storage tank at Petersburg Commons. That would allow them to proceed with the townhomes.
They also could change and resubmit plans for the next buildings of the development. If they went with duplexes instead of multi-unit townhomes, that could eliminate the sprinkler requirements.
Lesher didn’t like any of those options, saying each would reduce the developers’ profit margins.
But other solutions hinge on fixing leaks that haven’t been found yet.
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