Politics & Government

Backup Coming Soon for Doylestown Wells

A power outage knocked every one of the borough's water wells out of service recently.

The irony was almost too much.

Just three months ago, Doylestown council members approved an agreement that would r to power the most important water well in the borough.

During the discussion, they said it was a "knock-on-wood," "hope-we-never-need-it" kind of thing.

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But showed just how important the generator - which was recently delivered to Doylestown - really is.

"We've wanted one for years, but each time it came up in discussions on the budget, we'd say, 'How often have we lost power to all the wells at once?' and the answer then was, 'Never,'" said borough manager John Davis. "Now, we can say we have."

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Doylestown's director of water operations, Craig Eaton, will meet this week with representatives from Verizon to move ahead on installing the generator on the borough's main well, in the Maplewood neighborhood on the north edge of town.

Verizon agreed to donate the generator to Doylestown in exchange for the opportunity to add more communications equipment to the space it rents on the water tower. The generator also will power Verizon's equipment.

The remedy costs the borough nothing but provides much peace of mind in return, as the recent power loss aptly demonstrated.

The power outage happened during , which affected the overhead power line that feeds the borough's main well - which controls the borough's four other wells.

"There was a brief moment when we didn’t have any wells," Davis said. "It was a very unique circumstance. We’ve never had that happen before."

Doylestown residents and businesses never noticed that the wells were out of service, because enough water was stored in the water towers and other parts of the system to continue supplying water until the wells came back online, Davis said.

The borough "immediately" got two of the five wells back online, and, within a few hours, had four of the five wells operating again, he said.

In the past, Doylestown leaders have contented themselves with the knowledge that not only had they never lost power to all the wells at once, but they also have agreements with their neighbors, Buckingham and Doylestown townships, to call on if they need help. But in this case, Davis said, their neighbors had lost power, too.

These factors might have led the borough to add the money for the generator back into the next budget, but the agreement with Verizon makes that expense unnecessary.

"It eliminated the need to do emergency soul searching," Davis said, "because we knew the solution was already on its way."

The cost of the new generator has been estimated at $75,000.


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