Public sewer plans move to next step

Beekeepers group buzzes in while project goes to outside agencies

Plans to extend the public sewer system into the Morwood section of the township took the next step with the Franconia Township Board of Supervisors’ Sept. 19 decision to send the plans to outside agencies, including the Montgomery County Planning Commission, for review.

It won’t be the last step, though.

“Make sure everyone is aware this is not a final vote,” board member Robert Nice said following the decision. “This is to move the paperwork forward.”

The proposed expansion would be done in phases, Franconia Township Sewer Authority Executive Director George Witmayer said during discussion prior to the vote.

“Phase one is where we would be looking at in the near term,” he said. “I think the engineer has it set up as within the next five years, three to five years, something like that.”

The second phase is expected to be completed in five to 10 years, he said.

The Sept. 19 decision keeps the plan on schedule for the projected completion date, Nice said.

“Moving it ahead tonight probably gets us within the three- to fiveyear window. It’s not like this is going to happen in three months,” he said.

An informational meeting about the plans was held earlier this year. Additional public meetings and hearings are required before final approval. In other matters: • The next in the series of quarterly public meetings to review township finances will be 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 29, at the township offices on Allentown Road.

• Montgomery County Beekeepers Association apiary steward Walt Fitzgerald said the group is looking for a new meeting place for its educational programs for new beekeepers.

“We’re looking for a meeting place with, as near as possible, a place to place an apiary,” he said.

Eight meetings a year are held for the first-year beekeepers, with the meetings starting in the apiary, then moving into a meeting room, so the group would like to have the apiary and meeting room within walking distance of each other, he said. There are usually 30 to 40 people attending the meetings, but it could be up to 50, he said.

The group would like the township to consider allowing the apiary to be built in the park next to the township building and police station and using the township meeting room for the group’s meetings, he said.

Unlike wasps, hornets and yellowjackets, honeybees are not aggressive, he said.

“The honeybee is defensive of its young. You have to molest the hive somehow before it even comes out and buzzes you,” Fitzgerald said.

Another difference is that the other three can sting multiple times, while honeybees can only sting once, then dies, he said.

“It knows it’s going to die, so it doesn’t want to sting you,” Fitzgerald said.

The apiary would be placed in an area away from the public, he said, and would have a fence around it.

“We would provide the fence. Cyclone fence, locked gate,” he said.

“What people don’t know right now is, in the country, there is a honeybee crisis,” board Chairman Grey Godshall said. “They are dying off left and right. People are spraying pesticides right when the flowers are blooming and that knocks them right off.”

Additional factors leading to the decline in the honeybee population include a mite from Asia, Fitzgerald said.

At this point, the group is just looking for information on a new meeting place and it would be at least next year before it would start having meetings and make the apiary in Franconia if an agreement was made, he said.

Board members said they would agree to it if the group decides to hold its meetings there.