The abundance of the water supply in an area means nothing if there aren’t measures in place to protect the purity of the water from contamination.

The Williamsport Municipal Water

Authority maintains a Source Water Protection Plan which includes contingencies in case of an emergency situation. The plan is updated yearly, said Edie Gair, licensed professional geologist with the state’s Department of Environmental Protection.

The WMWA also has the flexibility of using the wellfield located near Lycoming Creek or the reservoirs in the Mosquito Valley area.

“Right now, we’re using the wellfield, not because we’re in a drought situation, but we like to exercise it once a year,” said Wendy Walter, director of compliance, safety and security at the water authority.

“If there would be a spill on (Route) 15 right near that, we’d shut it off like that. There, problem solved, figure it out, let it pass through whatever needs to be done. That’s the flexibility of our sources that allow us a quick and immediate response,” Walter said.

Other systems in the state often do not have those options for handling potentially contamination situations because of what Walter termed redundancy in the system.

“Other systems don’t have that,” said Jared Dressler, acting director of the state’s Department of Environmental Protection Northcentral Region.

“Williamsport has done a very good job of being proactive, identifying those dependent sources so that you’re not backed into a corner when something bad happens,” Dressler said.

Part of the being proactive is holding tabletop exercises, or discussions, which bring together all the different people from agencies which might respond to emergency situations, said

Kurtis Wagner, a source water protection specialist with the state’s Rural Water Association.

“They would talk through scenarios and how the scenarios would be responded to and the best things or best practices that they could do to make sure they respond correctly,” Wagner said.

“They’re really helpful because in our situation with the police there, the fire companies were there…the emergency management planning committee and a bunch of others and then the water and sewer suppliers. Here’s a scenario. What do you do? Who do you call,” said Shannon Rossman, the county’s Planning & Community Development director.

Protecting the actual watershed in an area is actually the job of the specific system.

“They control their infrastructure. They control their facilities. Different systems would have different philosophies as well,” Wagner explained.

“One of the popular ones-tampering with a public water or community water system is actually a federal offense. Putting up federal signage to say that trespassing on this facility could be punishable by law; educating the public that this is a serious crime is important,” he said.

“Some systems try to use the out-of-sight, out-of-mind methodology. So, if you can’t see the facility, you can pretty easily hide a wellhead in a warehouse. So, putting your facilities in buildings, putting physical barriers, fences, locking, using alarms systems. You can also, especially in 2022, looking at cybersecurity measures is essential,” he added.