Photo by Dani Fresh

There’s so much to do.

Like a homeowner restoring a neglected house or a certain solid waste authority rehabbing a neglected incinerator, Capital Region Water is juggling a maintenance backlog, regulatory demands and modernization of the city’s water and sewer system. Add to that community outreach, and they’re bringing sunshine to a vital asset that is largely unseen.

“We don’t want to be the island underground,” said CEO Shannon G. Williams. “We want to try to make the most of the situation we’re in. The city is rising like a Phoenix, and we want to rise together.”

Today, the fully professional Capital Region Water provides sewer services for about 130,000 residents in Harrisburg, the townships of Lower Paxton, Susquehanna and Swatara and the boroughs of Paxtang, Penbrook and Steelton. It also provides drinking water for 67,000 people. (And let’s put this myth to rest right now: Harrisburg drinking water DOES NOT come from the Susquehanna River. Read on.)

Created from restructuring the Harrisburg Authority and revitalized through the city recovery plan, Capital Region Water now operates as a “special purpose unit of local government.” Peek inside, and it’s as busy as the North Pole on Christmas Eve. A $50 million upgrade brought a decrepit sewage-treatment plant into the 21^st century. Long overdue maintenance is getting attention. Partnerships are leveraging resources for mutual benefits. And a plan for controlling stormwater is generating ideas for greening up neighborhoods and exciting ratepayers who are, after all, the ultimate customers.

Become Clear

Jess Rosentel pointed to a tree at Capital Region Water’s Advanced Wastewater Treatment Facility. The wastewater division superintendent is a whiz with analogies, and this tree explained the path of water from dirty to clean.

The leaves: houses and businesses with toilets and drains. Twigs and branches: connectors linking to sewer lines. The trunk: sewer mains carrying all that, um, stuff here for thorough, environmentally friendly scrubbing before restoration to the river.

The AWTF occupies nine acres off Cameron Street, near Steelton. Built in 1957, its last major upgrade was in 1976, when men wore polyester suits and disco was king. On average, 22 million gallons flow into the facility daily—enough to fill tanker trucks stretching from Harrisburg to Baltimore, said Rosentel.

Add a sudden deluge, and 80 million gallons can surge in. “I figure that’s from here to Georgia,” he said.

When wastewater arrives, it’s been pulverized by the trip through pipes flowing under 43 square miles of land. Bars catch large debris, such as toilet paper or litter washed from streets. Of course, as seen through a small glass jar Rosentel held up, it’s still an unappetizing gray flecked with brown and green.

The plant slows its passage, allowing more solids to settle and be swept up. Then, Rosentel said, an “astronomical population of naturally occurring beneficial bacteria” is added, along with specially generated oxygen those aerobic bugs need to breathe. The process converts still-dissolved solids into solids that will, once again, settle and be collected.

Now, the water in another jar has become clear, but there is still the matter of nitrogen. It once flowed from the plant to the Susquehanna River and, eventually, the Chesapeake Bay, promoting algae buildup harmful to aquatic life and all the human life dependent on it.

Hence, upgrades required by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. The $50 million project was funded with a $21.5 million Pennsylvania Infrastructure Investment Authority loan, a $973,000 Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development grant, a $26.7 million bond and $2,234.36 in Capital Region Water funds.

The upgrades introduced another “biologic process,” no chemicals required, said Rosentel on a stroll across catwalks winding through the outdoor complex. In 3.5 million gallon tanks, churning fins pump oxygen into the water, and additional naturally occurring bacteria convert those harmful nitrates into nitrites.

That was “nitrification.” Now comes denitrification, when a tiny trickle of methanol piped into each tank feed bacteria that convert nitrite to nitrogen gas. The gas, said Rosentel, “will bubble up and out.” Bye-bye, nitrogen.

The water is also chlorinated to kill disease-causing pathogens before it’s returned to the Susquehanna River, and all those solids generated are squeezed of their water and turned into nutrient-dense biosolids that permitted farmers can use on their fields. Plus, residual methane helps heat digesters and buildings, while creating electricity that’s sold back to the grid and generates renewable energy credits, for additional revenue.

Rosentel is a 12-year facility veteran who lauded its 42 workers, and supportive members of the community and CRW board, for turning around a neglected asset.

“There’s nothing that makes you feel better than seeing the effluent become clear,” he said. “The job that we do down here has an enormous effect on the environment.”

Going Green

Remember those 80 million gallons of potential wastewater? It’s an important point. Like about 700 older U.S. cities, Harrisburg houses a combined system that carries wastewater and rain in the same pipes. When a storm blows in, any excess water is designed to overflow into the Paxton Creek and Susquehanna River, bypassing all the purification processes built into the wastewater treatment plant.

Not good. So, in 2014, Capital Region Water reached a consent decree with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state DEP to reduce overflows. There will be costly engineering and construction involved—some cities build giant tanks for holding the excess—but in tangent, CRW has also launched City Beautiful H20.

The concept is simple. Dirt and greenery absorb water. Pavement does not. So, community greening—or green infrastructure—strategically installs trees, gardens and other projects such as rooftop gardens that slow stormwater from rushing off pavements and into sewers.

Capital Region Water seeks ideas for greening from a community ambassador group, and it goes out into the community, where it is increasingly visible. Residents gladly share opinions, whether they want traffic bump-outs that make space for greenery while forcing motorists to slow down or parks to make neighborhoods more inviting.

“City Beautiful H20 is really about investing in our community to reduce those overflows and improve water quality, but also using green infrastructure and other structures to beautify our community,” said Williams.

Initial greening projects are planned for Harrisburg’s Camp Curtin and Summit Terrace neighborhoods, and others will follow. CRW officials note that these are carefully engineered initiatives, designed to extract the hoped-for stormwater reductions and requiring long-term maintenance to stay effective.

Critical Needs

Don’t pay attention to 134 miles of collection system for, say, 50 years, and you have a giant mess on your hands. Lines half clogged with gunk. Leaking pipes eroding the ground around them, causing costly and dangerous sinkholes. Brick sewers hand-laid in the Civil War era that have stood the test of time but, in the words of Engineering Director David W. Stewart, still require “tender loving care.”

The painstaking road to good maintenance starts with triage—CRW officials use the word a lot—to manage immediate dangers. They also inspected inside 4,000 manholes for evident signs of trouble, like standing at an intersection and looking around for visible traffic hazards.

Add to that, sorely needed recordkeeping through computerized management and millions of dollars invested in GIS mapping just so CRW knows what it has. Put the pieces together in coming years, and CRW can catch up to deferred maintenance, addressing the most critical needs first, and create an upkeep schedule.

“That’s what you don’t see living in this community day to day, but it’s so fundamental to having a professional utility that’s managing the community’s infrastructure to do the tracking of the work, seeing what’s underground and assessing criticality,” said Community Outreach Manager Andrew Bliss.

Common Goals

Efforts for City Beautiful H20 and much else that Capital Region Water undertake are leveraged in classic fashion through partnerships with community groups, businesses and government.

After all, said Williams, the people of CRW are “stewards of the community’s water system.” When the city is repaving a street, CRW might take advantage of the opportunity to rebuild the water infrastructure below. As CREDC tries to attract businesses to the region, CRW markets its high-quality water as an enticement.

Operating “out in the sunshine, as opposed to underground” broadens the ratepayer base while promoting economic development that creates jobs, taxpayers and opportunities, said Williams.

“It’s not just siloed,” she said. “If we’re all working toward the common goals of the community, and we’re working together, then we get bigger impacts.”

Capital Region Water says it strives to keep the impact of its $40 million capital budget in the area. Local residents are hired whenever possible, and a partnership with Harrisburg School District is introducing students to water management careers and the educational path needed to get there.

Stewart said that Capital Region Water officials were disappointed that only about 3 percent of the $30 million spent on general contracting went to minority- and women-owned businesses in the wastewater plant upgrades (all electrical work was done by a woman-owned business). Staff and board are “doing whatever necessary” to develop capability—such as giving minority-owned businesses experience as subcontractors on larger jobs—and requiring contactors to comply with a pending MWBE, he said.

As for that drinking water, the community asked that Capital Region Water’s DeHart Watershed, the northern Dauphin County reservoir that provides drinking water for 67,000 people, be preserved in its pristine state, said Williams. In 2016, years of careful negotiations yielded an agreement that will save in perpetuity the surrounding 7,500 acres of filtrating forest lands that help keep the water so genuinely tasty that it wins industry awards.

Under the agreement, the Ward Burton Wildlife Foundation and The Nature Conservancy got an easement protecting the land’s natural assets. Simultaneously, Fort Indiantown Gap contributed $9 million to compensate Capital Region Water for the easement, under a program that helps the Army cushion its facilities.

Real Impact

All this sweat and toil begs the question: Why should a professional with the talents and capabilities needed to revitalize a creaking water system come to work for Capital Region Water?

It’s the “rare opportunity,” said Stewart. Larger cities, such as Philadelphia, are doing the same work for 100-year payoffs. In smaller Harrisburg, Capital Region Water staff and board members, working with many others, are “planning for the next 40 years, and doing it in a way that can be really transformational to the city and really benefit residents who had been neglected.”

“It can make a real impact in 20 years,” Stewart said. “There’s going to be a dramatic transformation.”To learn more about Capital Region Water, visit www.capitalregionwater.com.

Author: M. Diane McCormick