Overlapping Programming | Wastewater Facilities | Drinking Water Supply |
Solid and Hazardous Waste | Electric, Power & Pipelines | Communications | Stormwater Facilities
Drinking Water Supply
There is currently no measure of the total water supply available in the county from the larger regional sources available for future supplies.
Chester County uses the Brandywine Creek, Octoraro Creek, and Schuylkill River, among others, as part of its drinking water supply, as do many other counties. There is no set allocation on what geographic location can withdraw what quantity of water at any given time. As a result, there is no tracking of who is drawing what quantity and how much will be available to Chester County in the future. The County should examine cooperative regional projections to see how much water will be available 20-30 years from now, and to ensure that Chester County can acquire the amount of water it will need to supply its citizens for the future.
The State Water Plan, under development, will have implications on local and county water and infrastructure planning.
In recent years, areas of the state have been experiencing conflicts over how water sources can meet the supply and demand of residents. The creation and development of the State Water Plan will affect the way that water is planned for throughout the county, from water withdrawals, to the creation of critical planning areas. Because these aspects have not been finalized, it is not known how this state-wide planning effort will coordinate with the planning timeframe of Landscapes2, or the impact it will have on infrastructure planning throughout the county.
Some rural municipalities of the county are concerned that public sewage and water purveyors will establish franchise areas within their boundaries and unwanted growth and development will result.
Many rural municipalities in Chester County want to maintain their undeveloped character, and so they have adopted land use planning and zoning documentation to reflect those desires. Water supply and sewer providers need to consider local and regional planning efforts before proposing expansions to the franchise and service areas that they serve. Such expansion of services can contradict the long-standing adopted planning efforts of rural municipalities.
There is a lack of awareness among municipal officials that aquifers do not have the capability to cleanse or dilute themselves.
When an aquifer becomes polluted, there is a significant possibility that the base flow of hydrologically connected streams will also become polluted. Thus, groundwater pollution can lead to negative impacts the surface waters of the County which supply drinking water to its residents. Today’s polluted aquifer can become tomorrow’s polluted stream. In areas of the county where there are abundant aging on-lot sewage disposal systems, the risk for a system failure resulting in fecal contamination of the local aquifer exists. Additional threats to aquifers include nitrates and pesticides, as well as other agricultural, landscaping and stormwater-related pollutants.
Water balance issues, involving the amount of water that is withdrawn from and the amount of water being returned to a stream and watershed, are becoming increasingly important in land planning.
Regulatory programs will require water balance information. Regional suppliers can withdraw millions of gallons of water per day, and treatment plants can discharge millions of gallons of water per day. There is no system in place for tracking the effects of these large withdrawals and discharges on the health and available water quantity of the streams of Chester County. When water withdrawals and discharges applications are made, the impacts on the source watershed and receiving watershed are not always considered.
There is little consistency between Act 537 Planning and water supply planning.
In Suburban and Urban Landscapes, where public water and sewers exist, the two should be planned for and expanded simultaneously. This supports Landscapes Policy 6.3.3, as it relates to joint utility rights-of-way. PADEP currently requires that applications for public sewer provide information on the public water supply, as well as a guarantee that the receiving sewer system can accommodate the proposed flows.
Overlapping Programming | Wastewater Facilities | Drinking Water Supply |
Solid and Hazardous Waste | Electric, Power & Pipelines | Communications | Stormwater Facilities
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