East Coventry to sue North Coventry Township, municipal authority, over sewer sale

EAST COVENTRY — Township supervisors voted unanimously July 8 to take the first step required to file a lawsuit against the North Coventry Municipal Authority and North Coventry Township in connection with the township’s efforts to sell its sewer system to Pennsylvania American Water for $7 million.

At issue is the fact that East Coventry does not own a sewer treatment plant. The sewage it collects in its system is piped to the treatment plant along the Schuylkill River run by the North Coventry Municipal Authority. There it is treated under the terms of an agreement among the authority, East Coventry and North Coventry townships.

Last August, the East Coventry Township Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to sell its sewage collection system to Pennsylvania American Water for $7 million. Chief among the reasons for the supervisors’ decision, they said, was the fact that the private utility has offered to spread the cost of a $27 million project to bring sewers to the Parker Ford section of town among all its customers, not just East Coventry customers.

But for the sale to go through, an agreement must be reached between East Coventry and the North Coventry Municipal Authority and North Coventry Township to transfer that treatment agreement to Pennsylvania American.

Since November of 2023, the sale of the system has been stalled while East Coventry officials try to negotiate a new agreement with the North Coventry Municipal Authority. It has not gone well.

After nearly a year of limited response to East Coventry’s outreach about the sale, and after East Coventry had already voted to sell to Pennsylvania American, an obstacle arose as a result of the authority’s refusal to transfer the treatment agreement to Pennsylvania American.

For months “we were going back and forth between East Coventry and the authority,” explained East Coventry Township Manager Eugene Briggs.

He said North Coventry “has deferred to the authority to lead the negotiations.” The point person for the authority has been the authority’s solicitor, Gregory Phillips, who declined to comment on the matter for a previous article and did not return a phone call seeking comment this week. Similarly, North Coventry Township Manager Erica Batdorf returned a phone call, but declined to comment on the matter.

Briggs said the two sides seemed to be closing in on an agreement, but “we reached an impasse in mid-June.” He said East Coventry thought many of the issues had been resolved but the hang up is “North Coventry wants to make PA American a bulk-rate customer, but has not provided any information on how PA American would be charged. They did not tie it to a flow rate, or any costs to upgrade the plant.”

Pennsylvania-American officials have not been at the negotiating table, but East Coventry has kept them abreast of any progress on a regular basis, said Briggs.

“I don’t know anybody who would sign up to be charged for a service without knowing what the cost would be,” Briggs said. “I don’t understand why they think that’s OK.”

The delay caused by the extended negotiations and now, more potential delay caused by a lawsuit, could push back the start of expanding the system to include 384 dwelling units, with a capacity for an additional 70 to accommodate growth, in the Parker Ford area of town. The $27 million project is a project that has been urged by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection due to the number of failing individual septic systems in that part of town, polluting nearby waters.

Pennsylvania American has the capital to do the project and has offered to spread the $27 million cost of connecting Parker Ford to sewers among its 2.4 million customers and not solely on the comparatively smaller customer base of East Coventry’s 1,484 customers. That burden could cause East Coventry sewer bills to rise by 143%.

Putting the entire cost on just the Parker Ford customers would result in a 527% increase for them over the current rate of $185 per quarter.

The area to be provided sewer service under the expansion is between Pigeon Creek and the Schuylkill River, bisected by Route 724, from the line with East Vincent Township west to Sanatoga Road.

“I’ve been telling people in Parker Ford we hope to get the project underway in 2026 or 2027 and I remain hopeful we can stick to that timeline, but we’re uncertain about where we stand now,” said Briggs.

The action that the board of supervisors took at the July 8 meeting was to file a “writ of summons,” which puts North Coventry Township and the North Coventry Municipal Authority “on notice we are going to file a complaint in court,” Briggs said. “We did not want to take this step, but they forced our hand.”

The board also voted to hire a special counsel to handle the case, Joe Frank of the West Chester firm of Lamb McErland, at a cost of $350 per hour.

The board will meet with Frank in closed-door executive session at some point during its next scheduled meeting, which is on Aug. 12, to discuss next steps said Briggs.