Drinking Water

New drinking-water standards announced by President Clinton yesterday are expected to protect most of the nation from dangerous contaminants while adding $2 to many monthly water bills. The new rules, which go into effect in two years, would require 13,000 municipal water suppliers to use better filtering systems to remove the parasite cryptosporidium - which sickened 400,000 people and killed 100 people in Milwaukee in 1993 - and possible cancer-causing byproducts of disinfection chemicals.

Residents of 72 homes in Washington Township were advised yesterday not to drink their water, after tests showed dangerously high radioactivity levels in their private wells. Eleven wells were found to have radioactivity levels higher than federal standards for drinking water, and 61 others were found to have levels significant enough to warrant additional tests. Township officials hand- delivered letters yesterday warning residents of the 72 homes not to drink their water. At a news conference, officials released the results of tests performed by Public Service Gas & Electric of Maplewood that showed radium levels at 11 homes in violation of the federal National Primary Drinking Water Standard, Mayor Jerry Luongo said.

Five families learned only days ago that their drinking water was contaminated with MTBE, a suspected carcinogen - the result of a gasoline leak that state officials acknowledged yesterday they became aware of more than two years ago. A crucial report on the contamination sat unread somewhere for the last 13 months - no one knows exactly where - at the state Department of Environmental Protection. "It was misplaced, we suspect," said DEP spokesman John Gerdelmann. BP Amoco discovered evidence of a gasoline leak in June 1998 at a gas station at 440 Street Rd. and promptly notified DEP, Gerdelmann said.

For three days, probably longer, a fuel tank has been leaking home heating oil into the ground and a nearby creek in Upper Makefield, spilling about 450 gallons and causing alarm about the extent of the possible contamination. The leak, discovered by authorities Monday evening, is coming from a tank connected to a home on Scott Drive. The house had been foreclosed upon, and its current owner, PNC Bank, had put 500 gallons of fuel into the tank about two weeks ago to keep the pipes from freezing.

Construction of a treatment plant that would remove radium from municipal wells was given the go-ahead yesterday by the township planning board. Paul DeCosta, superintendent of the Municipal Utilities Authority, said construction of the plant on American Boulevard near the Black Horse Pike was expected to begin in the spring. The plant would remove radium from three wells. Plans call for the radium to be flushed down sewers and sent to the Gloucester County Sewer Authority for treatment, DeCosta said last night in a presentation to the Washington Township Council.

Cleanup of a 2,500-gallon fuel spill in the Mill Run Creek continued yesterday, the result of a Friday afternoon truck accident at Cheltenham Avenue and Broad Street that sent gasoline gushing into the nearby waterway. A state environmental official confirmed yesterday that at least 50 dead bass, trout and sucker fish surfaced in the creek on the Ashbourne Country Club grounds Saturday. The fish likely died as a result of the spill and ensuing cleanup, said Peter Trosini, a spokesman for the Department of Environmental Protection.

Charles Koch is a worried man. He's also an angry man - angry about the toxic chemical that has seeped into wells in his upscale Bucks County neighborhood and is threatening drinking water wells there and across the country. "I have major league concerns," said Koch, 61, who lives 500 feet from an intersection where MTBE, a gasoline additive, from a service station has seeped into 25 wells in Buckingham and Doylestown townships. Six of those wells tested above the level the federal government considers fit for drinking.

Caught between the possibility of big fines and the logistics of adhering to strict federal regulations, the Upper Moreland-Hatboro Joint Sewer Authority's industrial users say impending restrictions on their pretreatment programs could put them out of business. Not to mention that the technology to meet regulations under consideration by the federal Environmental Protection Agency does not exist, say industry representatives and members of the authority. "It's clear nobody will be in business, because we can't meet those regulations," Andy Strange, director of engineering at Elastomeric Technologies Inc. in Willow Grove, said during a meeting requested by the joint sewer authority to discuss the regulations.

More than 50,000 Camden residents, as well as such commercial customers as restaurants, were warned last night to boil their water for the next 48 hours after a 30-inch sewage pipe was crushed. Because of the water emergency, all of Camden's public schools will be closed today, Board of Education President Philip E. Freeman Sr. said late last night. They will remain closed, Freeman said, "until we know the water is safe. " The problem occurred about 10 a.m. yesterday while workers for a private contractor overhauling the city's water infrastructure were changing a main valve near East State Street and River Road in Cramer Hill.

The unwieldy, lengthy process of cleaning up Hough's Creek began last week, as county environmental officials took stock of just how much damage nearly 500 gallons of leaked home heating oil did to the creek and soil. The initial assessment: The damage isn't really too bad. Dead fish have not been seen, and no drinking water has turned up tainted, said David Noll, an environmental protection specialist with the Bucks County Department of Health. The leak was discovered Monday night on the property of a vacant home on Scott Drive, and it found its way to the Delaware River, where a sheen was observed Monday.