If you’ve driven Goshen Road lately, passed through West Chester Borough, or live in surrounding communities, chances are you’ve seen Aqua Pennsylvania crews and contractors with orange cones and heavy equipment.
What you’re seeing on those streets is mission-driven maintenance: It’s a projected $29.3 million water main replacement program that embodies our mission to protect and provide Earth’s most essential resource. We are planning to replace 8 miles of aging water pipe in 2026, following the replacement of 8 miles in 2025. It’s PENNVEST-funded customer-owned service lead line removals at more than 500 homes. It’s PFAS treatment at Highland Glen and Friendship Wells. When you see our crews on your street, you’re seeing your water utility at work. And we believe you should know exactly what that looks like.
Make no mistake – not all drinking water service is equal. Your water bill funds far more than the water coming out of your tap. It supports crews available around the clock for maintenance and emergency response — the people who show up on holidays, in snowstorms, and during heat waves to keep service running. It funds sophisticated water quality testing conducted by certified chemists, biologists, and lab technicians who are specifically trained to detect contaminants like PFAS, lead, and bacteria. It supports the capital programs that keep aging underground infrastructure from failing quietly beneath your feet. Safe drinking water doesn’t happen on its own — it takes a full team of specialists working every single day to make it possible.
Most of that work happens is out of sight and, if we’re doing our jobs right, out of mind. You open the tap and trust that your drinking water will be there. But that doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because someone replaced a 70-year-old main before it failed, because a team surveyed 11,500 homes to identify lead and galvanized customer-owned service lines, and because engineers and field crews planned and executed a replacement on Goshen Road so that families along that corridor don’t have to think twice about what’s coming out of their tap.
Two of the most pressing water quality challenges facing Chester County right now are lead service lines and PFAS — the “forever chemicals” showing up in drinking water sources across the country. In West Chester, we completed PENNVEST-funded lead and galvanized service line replacements — more than 500 lines replaced — at no direct cost to homeowners, supported by state grants and loans we applied for and secured specifically to keep your family protected. We already treat our water to prevent lead from entering your water supply, but replacing the old lines is an extra layer of protection. In short, we don’t settle for “good enough” when we can do better.
We are not alone in sounding this alarm. The American Society of Civil Engineers gave the nation’s drinking water infrastructure a C- in its most recent Report Card — flagging aging systems, underfunding, and emerging contaminants as urgent national concerns. The American Water Works Association estimates that meeting the country’s water infrastructure needs will require $2.1 to $2.4 trillion over the next 25 years, with an annual funding gap of roughly $56.6 billion. This much is also true of the pipes under your streets.
These projects are a direct reflection of our investments in Chester County and the dire need for infrastructure investment across the nation. Aqua invested more than $381 million in capital improvements statewide in 2025 and we have $1.85 billion in planned investment through 2029. We actively pursue PENNVEST grants and low-interest state loans to offset what would otherwise fall entirely on customers. When we can soften the impact, we do. When we can’t, we’re honest about it and we show our work.
So, the next time you see our crews on your block, please know they are upgrading your infrastructure to ultimately make good on our commitment to our neighbors, their children, and grandchildren.
Learn more about how we protect your water every day at aquapa.com/protecting-water.
Marc A. Lucca is the president of Aqua Pennsylvania, an Essential Utilities company.
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