Aug. 6—JOHNSTOWN, Pa. — The Greater Johnstown Water Authority made two changes on Thursday to the rules governing compliance with the ongoing sewer remediation project affecting customers in Johnstown and Westmont.

The board voted 5-4 to do away with the requirement for private lines to be pressure tested at the time when ownership of a property is transferred.

Also, owners of structures with slab-on-grade foundations will no longer need to have lines under their buildings pass pressure tests, as part of the overall effort to have the two municipalities' systems meet flow-rate standards set in Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection consent orders.

Regarding sales, a new property owner could keep paying a surcharge — currently $25 per month, set to increase to $50 at the start of 2023 — instead of doing repairs needed to pass.

"We are no longer going to try to have any dealings with real estate transactions or to stop or hinder deeds from transferring from an owner to a buyer," said RDM Johnstown LLC Resident Manager Michael Kerr, whose company manages the authority. "Before that, we required that, before the sale happened, that the house be compliant with the pressure testing rules that the authority has. The change now is that we're just not going to be involved in that real estate transaction, and we're going to assess the new buyer of the house the same surcharge that we're assessing the current owner."

Pressure testing requires lines to hold 5 pounds of air per square inch for a period of 15 minutes to be considered watertight. Given the age and longtime use of most private systems in the area, few will likely pass without needing repair work that often involves digging up basements to reach lines.

Slab-on-grade

Slab-on-grade is a shallow foundation for a house that has no basement, which results in the sewer lines being close to the surface and above the water table, so there is "no hydrostatic pressure pushing water into your sewer lines," according to Kerr.

Owners of such properties will be required to pass pressure tests on lines up to the structure and install ports for visual inspections. But they will not need to dig up first-floor living rooms, kitchens, etc. in order to get pressure-tested lines under the structures.

Kerr said that to his recollection, no inspections have been done on slab-on-grade residential properties in Johnstown since the authority purchased the city's sewer system in 2020. He did not know the exact number of times the issue has arisen in Westmont properties since GJWA bought that borough's lines earlier this year, but could immediately recall one instance.

These new rules apply to all property owners in Johnstown and Westmont.

Don Hall II (Westmont), Marc McCall (Westmont), Richard Rambish (Johnstown), James McDonnell (Southmont) and Chuck Arnone (Johnstown) voted in favor of the two changes. Dave Vitovich (Johnstown), Ed Cernic Jr. (Johnstown), Anthony Caputo (Johnstown) and Kevin Pile (Southmont) were opposed.

"I think everything should be the same for everyone," Cernic said. "I look at people in the city. On average, they're of lower income, and a lot of those people had to do those upgrades. I'm a representative of the city on the water authority. I have to stick up for them. I just thought it should be fair. That's all."

The issues came to the forefront in the time since the authority purchased Westmont's lines. A handful of residents and realtors raised questions during recent GJWA meetings.

The water authority requires pressure testing.

But when Westmont operated its system, property owners had an option to pressure test up to their foundations and then televise the lines underneath a house and make repairs. The lines beneath the structures did not need to be pressure tested.

Almost 300 owners who did that kind of work have certificates of completion from the borough that were good for 15 years. Those property owners are not being required to pay a GJWA surcharge at this time.

"The authority is going to honor the certificate that the borough gave to those people," Kerr said. "However, we require pressure testing on resale, so as those houses go up for sale, they're going to be required to meet a pressure test the same as all the other accounts in the system, and if we identify those houses before a sale as contributing excess flow, they'll be required to pressure test as well."

A future buyer of one of those properties could opt to take the surcharge instead of coming into compliance, as per the new regulation passed on Thursday.

Overall, Kerr said there have been "complications of meshing two different sets of rules."

"We have to give some credence to the way it was done before we took it over," Kerr said. "We're trying to be as stringent as possible without totally undoing what these people were explicitly told."

Cernic said, in his opinion, the changes created a "two-tiered system" that is "not fair to everyone."

"Whenever we bought the (Westmont) system, it was said that everything had to be under the same rules," Cernic said. "Everything seems to be changing all the time. I just like to deal with consistency and fairness to everybody."

Kerr said that approximately 65% of the properties served by the water authority have been pressure tested.