Water authority leaders in Petrolia feel frustrated after a meeting this week with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

The Petroleum Valley Regional Water Authority met with the DEP Tuesday to discuss water samples with lead amounts over industry-standard action levels.

As the Butler Eagle reported Tuesday, PVRWA officials believe they're unjustly being held accountable for water quality issues that are their supplier's fault. The authority buys its water from East Brady Water System.

PVRWA isn't formally in violation yet, according to the DEP. But in April, three of 20 water samples tested returned lead levels over the action level. Because that's more than 10 percent of samples, the DEP requires further action.

PVRWA officials hoped to make their case to the DEP that East Brady's system, not theirs, should be addressing the issues. Instead, they say they are left with expensive marching orders from the DEP.

“We now have to perform a corrosion control feasibility study costing around $10,000 or more,” said Jeff Shumaker, chairman of the authority's board. “We may have to install a corrosion control system. All of this will cause hardship on our finances with elevated expenses possibly resulting in higher rates passed on to our customers.”

Nicholas Kerr, PVRWA's general manager, said the DEP wants a corrosion control study by March. They will need to start collecting samples for it next month, he said.

Kerr maintains that lead level problems in their system can't be their own fault. Their water system was built long after lead pipe usage was discontinued.

He also points to prior violations by East Brady that might have passed along issues.

The authority wasn't using caustic soda, a chemical used to maintain pH levels in water that lessens the corrosion of lead pipes and fixtures, despite its permit requiring it.

In March, the DEP issued a violation for not having an active feed of caustic soda. It hadn't had one since at least 2016, according to an engineer for East Brady.

The chemical was implemented in April, according to the DEP, three weeks before PVRWA's latest lead testing.

“DEP refuses to admit that the absence of caustic soda caused our low pH and lead and copper failures, but went on to mock PVRWA's managers for testing too soon after caustic soda was restored,” Shumaker said. “We are confused to say the least.”

East Brady performed its own corrosion control study in 2018 to determine how best to address copper tests over DEP action levels.

It found pH treatment using caustic soda to be affordable and effective enough.

Kerr claims that move passed the buck to them to pay for another, more expensive treatment: an “inhibitor,” or a chemical put into water to line the inside of pipes, creating a barrier from contaminants, such as lead.

The most commonly used is zinc-orthophosphate. Kerr said adding it to their water would be expensive as it would require building a temperature regulated building, buying a chemical injector system and other costly upgrades.

Kerr said the cost will be hard to handle as they have only about 800 water bills to split a cost of “hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars.”

“Our cost of cleaning water may be significantly higher than East Brady's,” Kerr said.

The March deadline isn't a decision made by the DEP, according to Tom Decker, a spokesman for the agency, but rather simply a requirement stipulated in the Safe Drinking Water Act.

The law gives an agency 18 months after the end of the monitoring period during which the action level was exceeded.

“The purpose of a corrosion control feasibility study is to identify corrosion control priorities, evaluate viable corrosion control approaches and select the optimal corrosion control treatment,” Decker said.