By Noël Brandon
Chairperson of Chester Water Authority

As chair of the Chester Water Authority (CWA), it is imperative that I communicate to residents of our service area what the Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED) does not want you to know.  

The CWA is not a department or asset of any municipality that is ripe for monetization, sale, liquidation or acquisition. It is an independent authority established under Act 73 and governed by a nine-member board. This board is deliberately structured to reflect the regional nature of CWA’s service area: three members are appointed by the City of Chester, three by Chester County, and three by Delaware County. Act 73 creates boards appointed by multiple jurisdictions to prevent any single municipality from dominating decisions that affect a regional service and residents’ access to safe, reliable, and affordable water or wastewater service. It also guards against attempts to commandeer and use the revenues of a well-run water or sewer authority to finance a single municipality’s unrelated financial problems, or fund any other conceivable dilemma that might be faced by a municipal member of an Act 73 authority.

The Act 73 municipal authority structure embodies visionary and legislative action that was duly enacted by a unanimous vote of the Commonwealth’s lawmakers. The law ensured that all major constituencies with a stake in a water or sewer system’s operational health and existence have a seat at the table. It exists, above all, to shield a vital health resource from any harm.  

For over five years, the Commonwealth’s DCED has been spending millions of dollars on an attack on CWA aimed at forcing ratepayers into becoming the funding source, or in other words, collateral damage in the City of Chester’s long-running fiscal struggles. Any move to monetize the Authority for a single locality’s benefit would subvert Act 73’s unanimously adopted governance model. It would trade short-sighted political expediency for long-term regional stability, public health, and fairness to CWA’s 200,000+ customers, 80% of whom live outside the City. Further, any such funding is essentially a perpetual backdoor tax on all CWA ratepayers, which may well be unconstitutional in Pennsylvania.

This context makes it even more critical that proposals like DCED’s current funding of efforts affecting residents in CWA’s service area—and DCED Secretary Rick Siger’s request for a two-year extension of the City of Chester’s receivership—be subjected to rigorous public court review, including a transparent accounting of audits, fiscal performance, and the potential impacts on all ratepayers. CWA’s ratepayers have made it known that what the DCED is doing is simply wrong and unfair and they need to stop and develop a better solution to help the City of Chester.