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Ice cream shop closed for violations

Owner Robert Gerenser says he won’t hook up to the public water system.

By Linda Seida, Staff Writer
   NEW HOPE — The Bucks County Department of Health has closed down a former borough councilman’s ice cream shop because he refused to tie in to a new public water system.
   The department shut down Gerenser’s Exotic Ice Cream on South Main Street on Nov. 26.
   The shop’s owner, Robert Gerenser, sat on the council in 2001 and cast the lone vote against the borough’s agreement with the Bucks County Water and Sewer Authority to install the $6 million public water system.
   ”No restaurant in their right mind would want this,” Mr. Gerenser said Monday. “Water is expensive. you pay for every flush.”
   He said his decision to rely on his own well was not based on the expense, but, rather, because “I will do whatever it takes to preserve my rights as a sovereign citizen.”
   He said he fought to insert language in the borough’s agreement with the authority to make sure no one would be forced to hook up to the new system.
   ”No one means no one,” he said. “You don’t have to hook up to public water.”
   But a county health department supervisor said Tuesday it is a matter of protecting the public.
   ”Our job is to make sure what he offers there is not going to make people sick,” said Bill Roth, supervisor of the department’s Doylestown division’s environmental sanitation division. “Our position is that public water has to be supplied to the whole facility.”
   To obtain a waiver, Mr. Gerenser would have to convince a hearing officer he has just cause, Mr. Roth said.
   Bucks County calls for mandatory hookups for restaurants where public water is available.
   New Hope’s agreement with Bucks County Water and Sewer does not require a tie-in to the system, however, according to borough Manager John Burke.
   Mr. Gerenser lives above the shop his family has owned and operated for more than half a century. An independent businessman, even while the public water system was under discussion in recent years during council meetings, he stated he would not tie in to it because he has a healthy and well-maintained well with an ultraviolet purification system.
   Five part-time employees were laid off when the shop shut down.
   ”And it’s Christmas,” Mr. Gerenser said. “What are they going to do?”
   In addition to his refusal to tie in to the system, the department also cited Mr. Gerenser for minor health code violations and disrepair, including improper garbage and refuse disposal and employees not wearing hair nets.
   Tying in to the public water system is an expensive proposition. The fee is $7,200, not including the cost of a private contractor to perform the plumbing work. There is also a $125 permit fee payable to the borough.
   Property owners who hooked up before Nov. 1 paid an introductory connection fee of $1,500, and the borough had waived the permit fee.
   Mr. Gerenser ran unsuccessfully for a return to the council in the November general election on a platform that called for revitalizing the business community. He also established a new taxi service this year.
   He annually re-enacts the crossing of the Delaware River by Lt. James Monroe, a Revolutionary War hero who went on to become the fifth president of the United States.
   He also has portrayed Gen. George Washington in the annual Christmas Day crossing of the Delaware at Washington Crossing.