Clean water should be coming soon for residents north of Mahomet that were affected by a natural gas leak nearly four years ago.
Senator Chapin Rose announced last week that $3.8 million in State funds have been approved through the capital appropriations bill and are awaiting Gov. JB Pritzker to release them.
When completed, the two-phase, $6.8 million project will extend the Sangamon Valley Public Water District (SVPWD) lines to the northwest corner of Champaign County to provide relief to homeowners who have been without clean water since Dec. 2016.
Mahomet residents Jim Risley and Jodi Eisenmann, whose homes were affected by the leak, approached SVWPD about cleaning up the mess early on.
SVPWD General Manager Kerry Gifford added, “We wanted to get involved, hands on and help the community up there in any way we could. So we moved forward on that (the study and plan) with the goodwill of the board understanding this is our mission: we want to help these people.”
SVPWD footed the bill for a study and plan design before presenting the idea to Rose.
“Water is what we do and we certainly understand the importance of helping these folks who are affected by the people’s gas leak, get off their wells and onto a safe water system,” Board Chairman Meghan Hennesy said. “The board agreed that there was no problem in funding that expense and we thought it was a worthwhile project.”
A natural gas leak at Peoples Gas’ storage facility known as Manlove Field, located on Route 47 just south of County Road 2800 North in rural Mahomet, occurred in Dec. of 2016.
Almost a year later, the Newcomb Township residents, who relied on a well for their water supply, were experiencing sputtering water from the faucets and after a shower, they felt a film on their skin. One homeowner could even set their faucet on fire with a torch because of the amount of gas running through the system.
After a press release from Spiros Law Firm uncovered what was happening in homes near Manlove Field in Oct. 2017, Rose, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) and the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency alongside the Illinois Attorney General took steps to provide immediate relief to the residents and establish new regulations to protect the soil and water supply from natural gas leaks.
Rose assembled a Mahomet Aquifer Task Force that led the charge for recommendations on how to best protect the aquifer, which provides 850,000 people with clean water.
The Attorney General filed a lawsuit against People’s Gas almost immediately. To date, that suit has produced mandates for Peoples Gas to install and maintain gas detectors in homes impacted by the natural gas released from the facility, to continue to offer and maintain gas-water separators, complete a comprehensive inspection of all 153 of the facility’s wells, provide the state with written procedures for operations, maintenance and emergencies and supply each homeowner with fresh drinking water.
Although the lawsuit is still pending, Rose said that the Attorney General should do more for the homeowners.
According to Rose, Peoples Gas has provided everything from bottled water for the last three-and-a-half years to a state-of-the-art water filtration system that is the size of a dishwasher for the homeowners.
But as a utility with endless funds, Rose believes that the Attorney General should require Peoples Gas to completely remedy the polluted water issue by paying the nearly $7 million to run water mains south, north and east of the Manlove Field.
“You have corporate actors with deep pockets, unlimited pockets,” Rose said. “That’s not the taxpayers responsibility to clean that up.”
SVWPD said that they could begin the next phase of the engineering study as soon as Pritzker releases the funds. Rose said the capital program that passed is a five-year program.
“While this is a great first step, the ultimate solution, the actual construction timeline, will be based upon governor Pritzker deciding to release the funds for the work,” Gifford said.
“That seems like a political piece that we don’t really understand nor do we really want to be involved in other than it’s important to us to be able to do the work to secure clean water for these folks.”
Phase 1 will include water main extensions running north on IL-47 and east on 2500 N. At the completion of Phase 2, 26 residents will have a public water source instead of the contaminated well they have now.
From the very beginning, Hennesy made sure that the funds for the project would not be put onto the back of SVWPD’s current customers.
“Other water districts and municipalities are also taxing bodies and so they have other sources of revenue that can come in and then they have different types of budgets where they have more flexibility with the types of monies that they have coming in, and then where they can move, move those monies as appropriate,” she said.
“We have a single source and our source of funding comes from people paying for the water and the sewer that they use, and that’s it. That’s our only source of funding.”
Gifford added, “We’re not going to gamble or trade off people’s hard earned money. It’s just a simple service, they’re going to pay for what they use on that service.”
Generally speaking, developers usually foot the infrastructure bill at the beginning of their project.
“Since Kerry came on board, he’s done an excellent job of making sure that we are solvent, that we have money in the bank and that we approach projects that we need to do in a fiscally responsible way,” Hennesy said. “We understand what the scope and the cost of the project is going to be, but also where the funding is going to come before we even approach a project like this. He’s done an excellent job for the district.
“Then the board members are also very aware of the fact that we have a big job to do. We owe the community the service of doing that well. And because of how we run, we have to be aware of the financial pieces of that.”
With Peoples Gas not stepping forward to pay for the project, Rose made Phase I part of the capital appropriations bill so that the homeowners would be some relief sooner rather than later.
“I saw opportunity this year and took it,” Rose said.
“The Attorney General’s office has had 2.5 years to compel the polluters at Peoples Gas to clean up their mess and get these people clean water. Not only has the current Attorney General failed to force Peoples Gas to extend fresh clean water to these homes, he actively opposed the homeowners attempts to let the judge in the Attorney General’s suit know how they felt about the job he is doing! Somebody had to do something to get clean water for these people – this is a situation where we are able to get our tax money to come back into our community with a project like this – a project that is desperately needed.
“The AG should compel People’s Gas to reimburse the taxpayers for this cost and also to fund Phase 2 of the project when ready for construction – so that we can finally bring clean, fresh water to each and every home impacted by People’s Gas’ negligence.
“That’s money that could be spent on other items that maybe don’t rise to the emergency issue of clean drinking water but are no less important.”
Gifford said that while other environmental issues, including natural gas in the soil, may take decades to clean up, running a public water source to the homes will mitigate the issues homeowners continue to have today.
“Gas is still in the ground. That’s for the politicians, the EPA, the Public Health Department, all those organizations and Peoples gas to figure out how they’re going to remediate.
It’s sad to see that this happened December 2016 and there’s still no remediation taking place. That’s very disappointing. So, we’ll get that out of the home. They’ll have safe drinking.”
