Three weeks before the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority was ordered to tell 100,000 Pittsburghers to boil their water, the state Department of Environmental Protection found that the authority made changes to its water treatment chemicals without approval from the state.
It was the second time in three years that unauthorized changes to treatment chemicals landed the PWSA in hot water. More bad news for the embattled authority could come as early as this morning, when Pittsburgh Controller Michael Lamb, accompanied by Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale, will release a performance audit of the region’s largest water supplier.
According to the DEP, on Jan. 6, state inspectors at the PWSA’s main treatment plant along the Allegheny River in Aspinwall found the facility was using ferric chloride and caustic soda as coagulating agents in place of lime because the lime feed equipment was not operational. The permit violation was noted in a DEP “field order” issued the same day and in a report dated Feb. 8 and sent to Bernard Lindstrom, the PWSA executive director.
The DEP, in a written response to questions from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, said Wednesday that its ongoing investigation is looking at whether water quality or public health was put at risk due to the chemical change. It said it had not found any evidence of that to date.
In April 2014, the DEP cited the water authority for switching corrosion inhibitors used in the water treatment process, from soda ash to caustic soda, without approval. In January 2015, the PWSA went back to using the soda ash treatment specified in its state permit, and the state found no water quality impact due to the temporary change.
The DEP is responsible for making sure public water systems meet federal and state clean drinking water standards. But it has delegated oversight of the PWSA and 35 other community water systems in the county to the Allegheny County Health Department, which conducts federally required “sanitary surveys” every three years and less extensive annual “cursory surveys.”
[Read more: PWSA says water leak releasing 10,000 gallons a minute as search for rupture narrows]
Jim Kelly, deputy director of the health department, said there are rough parallels between the two unauthorized chemical substitutions.
“In 2014, PWSA was permitted to use one chemical and the other was listed as a secondary option in the permit, but DEP was supposed to be informed before a switch,” Mr. Kelly said. “In the situation last month, PWSA has a permit to install a new liquid lime feed system but hadn’t done it yet.”
Will Pickering, a PWSA spokesman, declined to comment Wednesday night.
The DEP field order Jan. 6 was the first of three it issued last month. On Jan. 24, DEP issued a field order alleging that PWSA had failed to “effectively operate and maintain public water system facilities” at its operation in Highland Park. That order requested flow diagrams, including customer locations near the reservoir and filtration plant, and focused on turbidity readings, chlorine levels and contact times, the same focus as the Jan. 31 boil-water order.
Mr. Kelly said the health department was not informed that the state was reviewing operations at the Aspinwall and Highland Park facilities until DEP issued its boil-water order, which lasted for almost two days and required the placement of temporary water tanks in the eastern and central parts of the city.
“We did not know the DEP was at the facility, and don’t know the questions it asked or how it found the [low] chlorine levels it found,” Mr. Kelly said. “When we talked to the [DEP] regional administrator, she instructed the inspectors to contact us, but they didn’t. They haven’t completely shared with us.”
He said the DEP finally called the health department after the boil-water order was issued, and has since apologized for the “oversight.” The failure to communicate may be the result of a lack of clearly defined roles and reporting requirements.
“We need an agreement, and we’ve been asking for a memorandum of understanding for a while,” Mr. Kelly said.
Better communications with the health department’s experienced inspectors might have allowed the DEP to avoid having to issue the boil-water order, said Robin Shaw, the health department’s supervisor of inspectors in the water management program.
“From an inspector’s point of view, we have a lot of experience with the PWSA and maybe understand how the system works.
Don Hopey: dhopey@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1983, or on Twitter @donhopey
First Published: February 16, 2017, 5:00 a.m.