More approvals will be needed
By:John Tredrea
Township officials last week OK’d Elizabethtown Water Company’s servicing of the 16-house King’s Path neighborhood, located just east of Hopewell Borough. The locale has been plagued with a serious well-water contamination problem.
Wells in King’s Path have been found to contain up to 500 parts per billion of tetrachloroethylene (TCE) and other volatile organic compounds linked to health problems. More than one part per billion is unsafe, the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) says.
Under a plan that will have to be approved by the DEP and state Board of Public Utilities (BUP) as well as the township, Elizabethtown would connect King’s Path into its public water system by running a pipeline from the development about 1,500 feet south to county Route 518, about 4,300 east along that road, then about 1,850 feet south along Province Line Road, where it would connect to an Elizabethtown main.
The township has been negotiating with Elizabethtown for several months on providing water for King’s Path, since Hopewell Borough Council turned down the DEP’s request to provide the development with water. The council said it would not provide the water unless King’s Path agreed to be annexed by the borough. The township didn’t like that idea, and decided to pursue the Elizabethtown option instead.
Borough officials feared providing the water without annexing King’s Path could set a precedent leading to unwanted development on township lands. Hopewell Township encircles the mile-square borough.
A resolution adopted unanimously by the Township Committee Aug. 17 grants a limited franchise to Elizabethtown under which the water company could bring King’s Path into its system. Elizabethtown has "indicated a willingness to provide" water to the neighborhood, the resolution states.
In recent Township Committee discussions of King’s Path, Kathy Bird and other committee members have expressed concern that running a new public water line from the Elizabethtown main on Province Line Road to the neighborhood on the eastern edge of Hopewell Borough could spur unwanted development by providing access to an important public utility.
Township engineer Paul Pogorzelski addressed those concerns before the committee voted. "You’ll have no new construction, via subdivisions or anything else" as a result of running the new water line, Mr. Pogorzelski said.
He said this is because the "State Development and Redevelopment Plan is so powerful now." Under that plan, he said, the area between King’s Path and the Elizabethtown main on Province Line Road has been designated to remain rural.
No time frame was given for the project, but since DEP and BUP approval are needed, in addition to actual construction, connection of King’s Path to public water is probably months away.
Although it has not admitted any responsibility for the King’s Path contamination problem, Rockwell International offered months ago to pay the estimated $350,000 cost of connecting King’s Path to Hopewell Borough water. The cost of connecting to the Elizabethtown main has been estimated at $800,000.
For decades, Rockwell used a four-acre tract adjacent to King’s Path as a dumping ground for materials from a now-closed factory it operated in Hopewell Borough two blocks west of where King’s Path now stands. TCE and other volatile compounds are found in industrial solvents, also known as de-greasers, used in many factories.
Township officials, including Committeeman and Board of Health Chairman Robert Higgins and municipal attorney John Bennett, have predicted the township will be on firm legal ground in trying to get Rockwell to pay the cost of connecting King’s Path to the Elizabethtown system.
Messrs. Higgins and Bennett said they base that confidence on two factors: Hopewell Borough’s refusal to provide water, and the fact that, if King’s Path did join the borough to get its water, it would have had to connect into the borough sewer system as well, bringing the overall cost of the job close to the estimate of the Elizabethtown connection.