UP, UP AND AWAY
Water authority’s ‘Hillcrest Tank’ hoisted atop tower
On Monday afternoon, the newest addition to Lansdale’s skyline, such as it is, was lifted into place.
In a field on Frederick Road near Clear Spring Road, North Penn Water Authority officials looked on as contractors hoisted the sphere-shaped bowl to the top of NPWA’s newest water storage tank.
“This doesn’t happen every day. It is a big milestone,” said NPWA Executive Director Tony Bellitto.
Beginning in July 2018, the water authority first publicly presented plans to replace a 70-yearold water tank located at the same site, citing the need to meet more stringent water quality requirements while upgrading what had been the oldest tank in the authority’s network.
Those plans for what NPWA dubbed the “Hillcrest Tank” were finalized in late 2018, the older tank was dismantled and taken away throughout 2019, and the arrival of COVID-19 in 2020 had little impact on the overall schedule, Bellitto said Monday.
“The whole pandemic situation did not negatively impact the construction schedule for this, fortunately,” he said.
“We had a little bit of a delay in getting started, but made up some time. The plan was always to get construction completed by the end of summer, so we’re on target for that, do the painting inside and outside in the fall, and it should be up and running
“This doesn’t happen every day. It is a big milestone.”
— NPWA Executive Director Tony Bellitto
and put in service by December.”
Water authority customers in the area shouldn’t notice any problems once that tank does go online, but should feel one big benefit.
“The whole point of the tank, that people will notice, is much more consistently reliable water pressure in the area. That was one of the drivers for why we had to construct this tank, and build it in a different way than we did before,” Bellitto said.
The new tank is 140 feet tall, more than twice the height of the previous 60-foottall tank, and cost estimates for refurbishing the old tank or building anew were both roughly $1 million each.
“This will allow us to utilize gravity, which is much more dependable and economical than the prior tank, which was operated using pumping,” said Bellitto.
“What the customers n the area will see is, much less pressure fluctuations, and much more reliable, constant pressure — and what we hope they never notice, but in case there is a need for it, is much more reliable fire protection as well,” he said.
No changes will be needed to water lines in the area, according to the director, so the only remaining work after the tank goes operational this winter will be final site cleanup around the base of the tank. The older one, built in the 1940s and removed in 2019, had a capacity of over one million gallons, and the new tank has roughly one-quarter the capacity, about 250,000 gallons, but should yield much higher quality water.
“We have much better, what we call turnover, of the water in the tank, much better circulation of the water in the tank. It used to be that we had about a million gallons that essentially served as the superstructure for the remaining volume,” Bellitto said.
“We didn’t get as much turnover in utilizing the existing water that was in the tank. With the new water quality regulations that did not exist many decades ago, we need this kind of circulation, so smaller tanks sometimes work better in terms of turnover of the volume in the tank,” he said.
Once assembly is done, according to Bellitto, the new tank will be painted in a similar style to the roughly 2 million-gallon tank near Third Street in Lansdale, with a white base color containing a dark blue stripe, and the logos of Lansdale Borough on one side and of the water authority on the other.
“It’ll be a great way to really put the focus back on the community’s identity,” he said.
For more information on the project visit https:// npwa.org/Lansdale HillcrestTank/