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New Selbyville treatment plant could trump water woes

Katie Peikes
/
Delaware Public Media
Construction of a new water treatment plant is underway in Selbyville

Construction of a new water treatment plant designed to filter out a gasoline additive is underway behind Selbyville's town hall. The hope is that the plant will significantly improve the town’s drinking water quality.

It’s an issue Selbyville has been dealing with for years, according to Mayor Clift Murray: Six of the seven primary drinking water wells in town are contaminated with low levels of methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE), a gasoline additive sometimes found in groundwater.

“We had a serious problem with MTBEs and we thought we had it beat with the new wells, and we didn’t have it beat,” Murray said. “So then we found some funding for this tower and I think it’s, it’s gonna work. It’s gonna get done.”

New wells were dug in town, but they quickly became contaminated. So in 2014, the town sought a new treatment plant and received a $2.75 million Drinking Water State Revolving loan to build it. The funding is 100 percent loan forgiveness intended to prevent the community from accumulating additional debt. On Monday, the town received a $500,000 USDA Rural Development grant that will help fulfill construction costs.

The treatment plant is essentially a two-level building equipped with a concrete formwork and area towers. The plant treats air coming through the water and the water will drop down into clear wells directly below the aerators. A pump will take the water to a lower level and send it through the system.

“This is a very specialized type of treatment because of the ubiquitous nature of the contamination, albeit low-level, in the town’s drinking water,” said David Small, the secretary for Delaware’s Division of Natural Resources and Environmental Control. “They’ve added two additional wells but they also ran into problems. So rather than digging additional wells, they decided to make the investment in treating the water that they have.”

Small praised Selbyville officials for the way they have navigated their drinking water challenges.

“You were working with the appropriate partners, us included, to make sure that your drinking water was safe and the public in your town was being protected,” Small said.

The source of contamination in Selbyville’s water is unknown. Dr. Karyl Ratay from the Delaware Division of Public Health said making sure the town has clean and safe drinking water must be a priority, no matter the cost.

“Clean drinking water is a core public health value,” Ratay said. “Some people don’t realize that over a century ago it was a leading cause of death — consumption of unsafe drinking water — and a lot of that was infectious diseases, which we watch for very closely.”

The plant is expected to be fully operational by April 2017.