Water Table

By a 6-0 vote, the Tabernacle Township Planning Board gave preliminary approval last night to the reopening of a quarry on Bozarthtown Road. Residents had protested that operation of the quarry would increase truck traffic and possibly damage the water table. As a condition of approval, the board ordered James E. Haas, owner of the 63-acre sand-and-gravel operation, to construct a landscaped buffer zone on the site's Bozarthtown Road border, drill wells to monitor local water-table levels and improve the quarry's entrance and exit roads.

Upper Uwchlan supervisors have approved an ordinance designed to close a loophole in the township real estate transfer tax regulations. "This is to protect us from anybody cheating us from our 1 percent," Supervisor Charles Lobb said at Monday night's meeting. He said under the old regulations, buyers could legally avoid paying tax by understating the value of their property. The new ordinance will permit property to be transferred by family members and nonprofit groups for a nominal sum. The ordinance would also exempt some farm transactions.

Ronald Calabrese is over one hurdle, with what could be a marathon left to go. The Upper Providence developer received a recommendation from the township Planning Commission this week for a plan to build 10 single-family homes on his Summit Trailer Park property. However, the recommendation came with a two- page list of conditions. The conditions deal mainly with erosion control and storm-water management, something Calabrese has argued with residents and township officials about for more than a year.

Ambler's borough manager announced Tuesday that all residents must restrict their water use for the next 30 to 60 days. The summer's drought had depleted the water table to dangerously low levels, and the North Wales Water Authority fears that wells could be overpumped if mandatory restrictions aren't applied, borough manager Donald Colosimo said. Other municipalities supplied by the North Wales Authority - Lower Gywnedd, Whitpain and Upper Dublin - were on mandatory restrictions this summer while Ambler residents were asked to cut their water use in half, he said.

For 11 sweltering days in July, Robert Seneca and Stephen Stahl went without water. The taps in their New Hope apartment had coughed up a few gasps of air and then stopped altogether on July 2. Seneca and Stahl live only a few hundred feet from the seemingly endless torrent of the Delaware River, but the well they share with two neighboring buildings just off Main Street no longer reached the water beneath the town. "We had to buy our water in plastic jugs for almost two weeks," Seneca said.

With one last opinion about the availability of water, seven months of hearings on a plan to build 360 condominiums on 96 acres near the Great Marsh came to a close last week in East Nantmeal. The township supervisors have 60 days from Tuesday's final hearing to decide whether to accept the plan put forward by Hastings Investment Co. of Lionville and opposed by the East Nantmeal Planning Commission. Held sometimes as often as two or three times a week since spring, hearings had become a way of life for some residents, who listened to testimony while June bugs flew through the windows in the summer and who kept up with all the arguments while huddled in sweaters in the cold township building at the 28th hearing last week.

In East Bradford Township, where the majority of homes use well water, more than 60 residents told the Board of Supervisors they are concerned about the township's underground water supply. At a meeting Tuesday night, the residents said a study should be done of the township's water table and an independent water study should be done before a proposed subdivison, Winchester, is approved. The water table study, proposed to be conducted by the Brandywine Valley Authority, would determine areas of the township that could not handle increased development, said Supervisor John H. Spangler.

Two expert witnesses supported East Nantmeal residents' worst fears about the impact of a proposed high-density condominium project on a fragile marshland and traffic safety. The expert commentary came Wednesday night, at the 19th in a series of hearings conducted since March. Attending were 34 residents, the township supervisors and applicants David H. Moskowitz and Robert MacMinn of Hastings Investment Co. Geologist Andrew T. Rowan, who was hired by the Planning Commission, said the planned withdrawal of 125,000 gallons of well water a day by the development was not possible.

By the rules, any crime demands punishment Monica Yant Kinney's column "After 16 years in prison, time for clemency" on Jan. 12 is a reminder of why I read The Inquirer: to gain prospective on the liberal point of view and to firm up my own views. The woman killed another human being. End of discussion. Would you rather open all the cell doors and let the "poor misunderstood" go free? I would submit that if you did that, The Inquirer would be the first to exclaim that we are not being protected by the government.

Though the hearings and discussions about a proposed quarry expansion took years, it took township supervisors only 10 minutes to tell quarry owners their expansion plans were halted. Tuesday night, the supervisors unanimously rejected James D. Morrissey Jr.' s request to expand the 158-acre quarry on Route 611 by another 83 acres. The audience of about 50 people, many of whom had been following the issue since its inception, applauded politely. Thomas Guinan, who served as the attorney for the quarry, said that because the township had rejected the expansion, the quarry would have to mine deeper for rock.

Question: Last winter, after a snowstorm followed by heavy rain, for the first time in more 100 years, our basement flooded with four to five inches of water. Every time I would pump it out with a portable sump pump I purchased, it filled again. It took almost two weeks to finally dry up. Our plumbing company said it was because the water table in our area rose five feet. Everyone in the area was having the same experience, so the plumber is probably right. Every time we have heavy rain now, we can see various spots on the cellar floor getting damp, and sometimes by the bilko door, it actually gets a puddle.

Long before the rest of us started thinking green, Siri Hurst collected books on the subject and kept files of ideas for creating environmentally conscious spaces. She accumulated, and waited. When she and husband, Gerry, thought of building a home for their "gray" years, they searched in Bucks County, but found it too pricey. So they decided to explore the offerings in Lower Moreland, close to the Glencairn museum in Bryn Athyn, where Siri Hurst worked for years. One day while driving through the area, she got to the end of a lane and - like Dorothy taking in the poppy fields of Oz - spotted the most beautiful garden and creek and a house just beyond.

By the rules, any crime demands punishment Monica Yant Kinney's column "After 16 years in prison, time for clemency" on Jan. 12 is a reminder of why I read The Inquirer: to gain prospective on the liberal point of view and to firm up my own views. The woman killed another human being. End of discussion. Would you rather open all the cell doors and let the "poor misunderstood" go free? I would submit that if you did that, The Inquirer would be the first to exclaim that we are not being protected by the government.

Plants, animals and people: Their competing demands on a major aquifer beneath the Pinelands have sparked a multiyear study of how those demands will affect South Jersey's water supply and the environment in coming years. The Kirkwood-Cohansey aquifer is the primary water source for the Pinelands and provides "potable water for hundreds of thousands of people in the southern part of the state," said John Stokes, assistant director of the Pinelands Commission. "It helps define the ecological character of the Pinelands," he added.

Since Hurricane Floyd destroyed the Kirby's Mill Dam here more than a year ago, Camp Dark Waters' name has become something of a misnomer. The 15-acre camp rests alongside Haines Creek, just upstream from where the dam once was. The creek, formally used for canoeing and swimming, has dropped nearly four feet over the past year. "It's very pretty here when the river is up," said Reid Bush, an assistant camp director who has worked there for 40 years. "You can't use it [the river]

State officials took over cleanup of the deadly Hanover Township chemical plant explosion yesterday, accusing Concept Sciences Inc. officials of dragging their feet and risking the leaching of hazardous chemicals into the water table. Negotiations between the state Department of Environmental Protection and the chemical manufacturer broke off after Concept Sciences officials refused to sign a consent order to speed the cleanup, DEP spokesman Mark Carmon said. DEP officials said they have found extremely acidic runoff from the building wreckage, leveled in the Feb. 19 blast that killed five people and injured 14 others.

For 11 sweltering days in July, Robert Seneca and Stephen Stahl went without water. The taps in their New Hope apartment had coughed up a few gasps of air and then stopped altogether on July 2. Seneca and Stahl live only a few hundred feet from the seemingly endless torrent of the Delaware River, but the well they share with two neighboring buildings just off Main Street no longer reached the water beneath the town. "We had to buy our water in plastic jugs for almost two weeks," Seneca said.

Msgr. James Dubell loves water, but for the last five years, he has found it in all the wrong places. As director of cemeteries for the Trenton Diocese, Msgr. Dubell has had the task of finding a tract of land in Burlington County suitable for a new diocesan cemetery. "I must have looked at dozens of tracts of land, but as soon as I'd do a few test probes, I'd find water three feet down," said Msgr. Dubell, who is a priest at St. Paul's Church in Burlington City. "With the water table so high in so many areas of Burlington County, it's been difficult finding a suitable piece of ground.

"When the well is dry, we know the worth of water. " The quote from Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac was prominently displayed Monday in Owen J. Roberts Middle School, where about 125 people attended an emotionally charged meeting. To some, it was the opening skirmish in a David-and-Goliath fight between northern Chester County residents and corporate America - specifically, the Perrier Group. The company has drilled a 192-foot bore hole to prepare for a possible expansion of its water-pumping plant.