Industry Borough residents express frustrations with Municipal Authority over water issues

INDUSTRY BOROUGH, Pa. — Tempers flared at the Industry Borough Municipal Authority Board meeting Tuesday night as water issues in the borough begin to reach a boiling point.

“Wait, wait, wait. Time out,” called out Vice Chair Andy Zachodni, trying to calm the crowd.

More than a dozen borough residents attended the meeting to express their frustrations with the board and its handling of water issues, like poor pressure and brown color. Those residents said they brought these issues to light in November.

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Paula Bloor Camp was among the meeting’s attendees.

She was there advocating for her elderly father and mother, who had a liver transplant and is unable to drink her own water.

“The have horribly brown, sediment-filled water and they have zero water pressure,” said Bloor Camp.

They are not alone.

More than a dozen community members shared similar complaints.

Board members said they began looking into the issues in November and had the water tested.

They believe manganese combined with chlorine could be causing the issues and say the authority is putting a plan in place to fix them.

“There have been multiple things done to rectify this. This is not going to get cleared up overnight. It takes time,” explained Zachodni.

The municipal authority says it is having its wells cleaned within the next month, as well as its tanks.

After that, it will flush the water lines, but doing so right now could cause water main breaks, according to Zachodni.

“The issue is we can’t do flushing at this time because of the weather,” he said. “It would be foolish and asinine to go start flushing the system.”

Even so, community members are growing impatient. They want to see their water tests results.

Some have even filed “Right to Know” requests with the borough.

They’re asking for transparency both in their water and from their municipal authority board.

“I want them to tell the truth. I want them to figure out what the problem is. And I want them to fix the problem,” said Bloor Camp.

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