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Residents fight to keep water flowing after authority’s move

Mirror photo by William Kibler Neighborhood resident Jennifer Ferguson tends to watering two plots she and her mother-in-law care for a community garden near Providence Presbyterian Church.

A recent move by the Altoona Water Authority to stop the Fire Department from supplying free water to a community garden near Providence Presbyterian Church has complicated the church’s management of the project.

With 46 raised beds about the size of children’s sandboxes, half tended by members of the congregation and half tended by neighboring residents, the garden has been soaking up about 1,500 gallons a week from a trio of nearby plastic tanks, according to officials.

Stopping the firefighters from filling the tanks from pumper trucks, then refilling the trucks from hydrants reflects the need for the authority to keep its “unaccounted-for” water to a minimum — and to bill for the water it provides, according to Marla Marcinko, city manager and authority board member, and authority General Manager Mark Perry.

The city supports such tracking and billing by the authority — although the city also supports community gardens and efforts like the church’s, Marcinko said.

Still, it’s been causing a hardship for the church, according to Beth Futrick, an ombudsman with the Blair County Conservation District, and Nancy Woomer, 75, who manages the garden for the church.

“I’m scrambling, trying to keep our tanks full,” Woomer said. “I wish they would change their mind.”

An authority representative met with garden managers recently to discuss alternative ways of obtaining water, and the church for now has adopted one of those alternatives — a hose connected to a faucet at the church and dragged across the alley that separates it from the garden.

The church previously used less than the minimum 1,600 gallons a month that its basic payment to the authority entitles it to, so for at least some of the water that would go onto the garden, there would be no additional charge, Perry said.

A member of the congregation from Ebensburg who lives on a farm with an artesian well and a tank mounted on his truck brought water down once, but filling a tank on site bucket-by-bucket was lots of work, Woomer said.

The Conservation District is beginning to explore yet another alternative — capturing runoff water from roofs with hoses and cisterns. But that would require engineering studies, a filtration system and significant expense, according to Futrick, who is managing a $46,000 grant to provide technical assistance for the development of an urban agriculture program, with hopes of helping six new community gardens take root next year.

Until recently, the demand for water for community gardens was slight, and it didn’t seem to be a problem for the fire department to provide that water, Marcinko said.

But this year, the demand escalated, and it became hard to ignore, she said.

The Providence project is the only community garden in the city, but all its beds are full this year, unlike last year, according to church Pastor Dennis Braun.

The firefighters were “wonderful,” Woomer said.

By contrast, the authority has done the city “a disservice” by closing the tap, she said.

She understands the need for the authority to collect revenues but still thinks the agency squandered “a perfect opportunity for (it) to do something for the community.”

“I don’t want to appear to be the big, bad naysayer,” Perry stated.

But the authority gets lots of requests for free water from nonprofits and from individuals, he said.

“We just can’t be determining this one gets it and this one doesn’t,” he said. “Our policy is we just take a straight line — account for it and bill accordingly.”

The exception is the city itself, which the authority doesn’t bill, he said.

As of early this year, the city owns the water-producing facilities the authority operates, while the authority pays rent to operate those facilities.

With three city officials — Marcinko, the city finance director and a councilman — on the five-member authority board, the city also controls the authority more or less directly.

Still, decisions like the one related to watering community gardens are best left to the authority staff, Marcinko indicated.

“I don’t think from an operational standpoint, the board necessarily wants to be involved in those kids of decisions,” she said.

The church obtained the property where the gardens are located a couple years ago, in case it needed additional parking, then razed two blighted homes on them, according to Pastor Braun.

The church started the gardens as an “outreach,” using funds from the church and from the Presbytery and help from Home Depot, he said.

A few days ago, neighborhood resident Jennifer Ferguson was on site watering the peas, squash, zucchini, tomatoes, watermelons and pumpkins in two plots she and her mother-in-law care for.

A sign on one of the water tanks explained the new situation and asked the gardeners to conserve.

The garden is especially important because it’s located in a so-called “food desert,” where those without a car don’t have easy access to healthful food from a supermarket, according to Woomer.

It’s heartening to see the cooperation between members of the congregation and neighbors in a spot where there used to be drug sales, Woomer said.

She doesn’t plan to let the water problem cause the project to go down the drain, she said.

“I was sad about it, I was angry about it, but now I’m not going to let anything happen to the garden,” Woomer said.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 949-7038.

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