Aqua President: Borough to benefit from repairs, investments
KAYLEE LINDENMUTH / SHENANDOAH SENTINEL FILE - Aqua Pennsylvania President Marc Lucca at a public meeting regarding the sale of Shenandoah's water authority to his company in 2020.
SHENANDOAH – Among the benefits of the potential sale of Shenandoah’s water authority are repairs that would see less water wasted in the system and better roads in town.
Aqua President Marc Lucca spoke one-on-one with the Sentinel last week in an in-depth interview about the proposed sale, and you can read more from that interview here.
His company agreed to purchase the Municipal Authority of the Borough of Shenandoah for $12.5 Million in 2020, a sale that, while approved 6-1 by borough council, has seen several residents voice opposition.
Lucca said the MABS water system is aging and, in some cases, pipes were installed in the late 1800s.
Of the 571 Million gallons of treated water produced by the water system in 2016, he said, 155 Million were used by consumers and 416 Million went missing — 47 Million were chalked up to billing errors or metering issues, and the remaining 369 Million was either lost through pipe leaks or used in the fire hydrant system.
“[The water] comes from the dams, goes through the plant, treated, but it either doesn’t get to the intended user or they don’t know if it got to the intended user,” Lucca said. “That’s a considerable amount of water loss from a reservoir.”
He said the water loss could create problems in a drought.
“You want to be able to conserve as much of that water as possible, but when you’re leaking that much water through your system, you have no choice but to continue to provide water and feed those leaks, or repair them, which is the proper thing to do,” Lucca said.
He said the leaks require an immediate investment for Aqua to replace or repair pipes to reduce loss.
“They’re paying to treat the water, they’re paying to transport the water and at the end of the day, it’s not getting where it needs to be,” Lucca said. “That’s wasted money.”
“Customers are paying for that, because it goes into the overall cost of running the system” Lucca said.
Lucca said Aqua estimates that the distribution system needs an investment of about $13 Million, and $10 Million for the plant and pump station.
MABS employees had questioned the number at public meetings in 2020, saying they were well higher than necessary.
“Based on our due diligence, this is what we believed needed to be done,” Lucca said. “Once we own the system, we’re going to continue to work on the system to understand the system, and if that number comes down, it comes down.”
“Just because that’s our estimate now, doesn’t mean that’s where we wind up, but we have to start with what we see in due dilligence, and that’s what we did here,” Lucca said.
In terms of system investment, Lucca said the company, and therefore the MABS system, benefit from economies of scale, i.e. they buy in bulk pipes, chemicals, and other items for the system at a lower price than MABS itself can.
“We get very attractive prices,” Lucca said, adding that they generally get orders sooner because of how much they buy.
Lucca added that water quality and reliability suffers from an old, leaky system, like MABS is described as.
“We’ve seen, over time, where we’ve replaced a significant amount of main, water quality has gotten better, customer satisfaction is higher, because there’s fewer interruptions of service,” Lucca said. “As we repair the system, as we improve the system operations, we have less waste, better operations, better water quality, and better customer service.”
Line repairs in town would lead to road improvements in town, as well.
Aqua, per the terms of the Asset Purchase Agreement with Shenandoah, would repave roads from the midpoint to the curb, for the stretch they dig up.
Currently, MABS repaves only the hole that they dig for repairs. He said that those sorts of repairs would be temporary under Aqua ownership, noting that only patches are possible in certain times of the year.
“I’m not going to take kindly if I get calls from the town that says, look, we have problems with the repairs in the street,” Lucca said. “We’re going to go in and make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Lucca also said that lead service lines exist in some cases in Shenandoah and said that they replace 200 of those across their system each year.
“When we come in and do a main replacement, we’re not doing a partial replacement on a lead service line,” Lucca said. “If the rest of the pipe is lead, into the house, we will replace that with the owner’s permission, and there is no direct cost to the customer.”
Lucca also said that the company actively seeks grants and loans, particularly through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, to finance repairs and upgrades.
“The residents of Shenandoah will be happy to be our customers,” Lucca said. “We will take care of their system so that we can take care of them.”
“People should never have to think twice about the safety of their drinking water and whether a fire hydrant in front of their house is going to work,” Lucca added.
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