Monitoring threats to clean drinking water

By DAVID HULSE

MILFORD, PA — The wooden pipes that provided Milford’s drinking water in the town square’s fountain 150 years ago are gone, but the water still comes from the same springs rising from the Sawkill Creek watershed.

The Sawkill Creek watershed encompasses about 22 square miles stretching from Shohola and Westfall townships in the north and west to Milford and Dingman townships in the south and east.

Tom Hoff of the Milford Water Authority said those springs, which today serve some 655 households in the borough, are under more pressure than ever before.

The issue isn’t so much supply, he said. “My suspicion is that there is lots of water. The question is our means of extraction and return. Is that okay?” he asked.

Sewage treatment is a big question. Much of the subsurface in Pike County is bluestone ridge, not the best of permeable surfaces for home sewage systems. Still “properly done,” he felt that one and two-acre home lots could co-exist with the county’s high quality streams.

Commercial development is another issue. “Industry, big-box stores and parking lots pose more of a problem,” in their interruption of rainwater retention and creation of additional non-point pollution, he said.

Non-point pollution is big issue, because Hoff explained, Sawkill Creek is what is known as a “losing stream,” where a portion of the stream volume always migrates into the ground waters which feed the borough’s springs.

That also leaves the borough system vulnerable to traffic accidents and trucking spills along Interstate 84, which bisects the watershed. “We’re not going to get rid of Route 84,” so to prepare for traffic issues, Hoff said the authority has been working with PennDOT, which has provided detailed maps of the interstate showing the location and flow direction of culverts and drains along the highway.

The water authority sits in with emergency planners and Pike’s emergency communications center dispatches the water authority with other agencies when accidents involving spills occur.

Still, Hoff admitted, current technology will only provide a warning in case of a problem. “We really can’t do too much about it,” he said.

He said the borough is looking at alternative water sources, in the event that the borough’s water supply is compromised. An incident could create a problem that lasts for “hours or for years,” he said.

In a short-term incident, the authority could invoke a “boil water” order for users, or add chemical additives to neutralize a problem.

Longer-term pollution is a more difficult problem. Hoff said that one of the borough’s test wells possibly could be used to supply water, as could the Delaware River, but “that would be very difficult,” he said.

Hoff said the borough has received $100,000 in grant money to create a management and best-practices plan.

The grant also has a public education requirement and the authority has developed a water curriculum that has been included in fifth-grade classes in Delaware Valley schools, in addition to a series of articles published locally in the Pike County Dispatch.

The planning effort wasn’t mandated, but he said “we wanted to know more about how it works and we felt that the information would be very useful to planners,” Hoff said.