"Pipe will continue to corrode, erode and break, thus affecting water quality and reliability," said Pape, who also serves as chairperson of the Pennsylvania Chapter of the National Association of Water Companies. "We have arrived not at a crisis, but at a turning point. We can react, or we can proactively adopt strategies to address the operational and financial issues we face."

 

Pape advocated a number of recommendations from the task force that need legislative action to help address the state's infrastructure challenges:

 

-- Require asset management to ensure that all utilities maintain an inventory of assets, track their assets' conditions, and prepare long-term plans for rehabilitating or replacing major assets.

 

-- Move Pennsylvania toward full-cost pricing to ensure that system owners are charging customers the total cost of providing water service.

 

-- Ensure that fees collected for water/wastewater service are appropriately reinvested.

 

-- Adopt the Collection System Improvement Charge. This proposed surcharge on customers' bills would enable wastewater utilities to recover fixed costs of revenue-neutral system improvement projects between base rate cases.

 

In 2006, the American Society of Civil Engineers issued a report card for Pennsylvania that rated the water infrastructure D-plus, with the state's wastewater infrastructure earning a D-minus grade. To address aging infrastructure, Pennsylvania American Water has proactively invested in its systems to ensure reliable water and wastewater service for customers, investing approximately $195 million in 2008 and approximately $160 million in 2007.