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While West Easton is happy to see new businesses take up residence in our community, it expects these businesses to operate with approvals in place and not circumvent paying their fair share for services.

Deltawash Lehigh Valley, a business that does laundry for commercial businesses, such as hotels, moved to West Easton earlier this year. They are located in one of Developer Abe Atiyah’s buildings, near the DUI Center.

Deltawash began washing operations without obtaining a business permit, tapped into the borough’s spring water for washing their customer’s laundry, and has no meter recording the amount of water it is using.

The spring water originates from the Spring House located at the War Memorial property, near Borough Hall. From the Spring House, piping diverts it toward the river. A cistern, located on the Atiyah property is where water is being piped to a large holding tank that Deltawash rigged to feed their washers.

Their discharge is sent into the sewer system. This system is used to determine what residents are charged by the Sewer Authority, based not only on the volume it treats, but also reported by water meters. The lack of a water meter on the Deltawash business is a problem.

Dan DePaul and I attended the Joint Sewer Authority’s public meeting held on November 20th. We had hoped to get some assistance, once they were made aware of the unrecorded discharge of wastewater into the system that every community pays to treat.

They threw it back into West Easton’s lap.

Deltawash originally estimated 5000 gallons a day when they informed the borough of their proposed business. Their estimate to the Joint Sewer Authority, as disclosed at their meeting on Monday, was 2000 gallons per day.

I’m not going to argue about water ownership. I’ve done some light research into it and it is a muddled accumulation of court decisions, based on whether the source is privately or publicly owned, above ground, part of an underground aquifer, the use of, maintenance of, diversion of, responsibility for, and other factors, not the least of which is the original use of water used downstream and possible abandonment of any rights that may have existed downstream, if they weren’t used for a significant length of time.

The rule of capture or law of capture is common law from England, adopted by a number of U.S. jurisdictions, that establishes a rule of non-liability and ownership of captured natural resources including groundwater, oil, gas, and game animals. The general rule is that the first person to “capture” such a resource owns that resource.

I would suspect the “capture” was made with the Spring House, but I’m not a lawyer.

I would expect that our Solicitor will have to look into the legalities of it all, should it be the will of the full Council to do so. It might be worth doing so, if Deltawash (or anyone else) should one day decide to try and hold the borough responsible for water quality, or supply volume, from the spring.

One thing is clear, however. A meter will have to be installed on Delta’s spring water intake pipe to record the amount of water actually entering their facility if they are intent on using spring water to supply their machines.

This is the amount that will be used in determining sewer waste charges. The Joint Sewer Authority offers no “evaporation” adjustments.