Yes. Our drinking water is absolutely safe and consistently meets or exceeds ALL quality standards for drinking water established by our regulatory authorities: the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Since RS&W provides drinking water for public use (as opposed to a private water well, for example), we are required to meet the same stringent drinking water standards as any another other public water supplier in the state. We test our water on multiple schedules as mandated by law (daily for some parameters; quarterly and annually for others). An independent third-party accredited laboratory performs all water testing. This laboratory submits all results directly to the PADEP and to the EPA. As a point of information, RS&W’s 2015 budget for water and wastewater testing is $35,000, the same as it was in 2014.

Since 1999, RS&W has submitted every Water Quality Report by direct mail to all homeowners in the Hideout. RS&W has had zero violations and is 100-percent compliant with all PADEP and EPA drinking water requirements.

At RS&W’s November 20, 2014 Board of Directors Meeting, a member of the community presented very inflammatory and highly misleading information that he had copied from a website. This website/organization encourages/promotes bottled water services for homes and businesses. The organization lists Alhambra, Belmont Springs, Hinkley Springs, Mount Olympus, and several others as providers of bottled home delivery water on the site.

We investigated the information on this website with senior officials at both the Pennsylvania Rural Water Association (PRWA) and the American Water Works Association (AWWA) and found that it had no merit. We were advised that the owners of this business, in its efforts to sell bottled water, are skilled at misrepresenting public drinking water system information to alarm consumers into making unnecessary purchases of bottled water.

Shortly after we received this water quality report at the November Board Meeting and after investigating this website, the site become “unavailable”. It continues to be unavailable to date (February 6, 2015).