Chester CountyPRESS
Covering Avon Grove, Chadds Ford, Kennett Square, Oxford, & Unionville Areas Volume 149, No. 26
www.chestercounty.com
60 Cents
Wednesday, July 1, 2015
INSIDE Chester County Press Proudly Presents...
Freedom Fest Nottingham County Park
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Your guide to Freedom Fest
Landenberg Junction Trail opens ...............1B
Martial artist Jeff Speakman comes to Kennett Square ‌.. 9A
By Richard L. Gaw Staff Writer Right now, a docket that could determine the future of water distribution in southern Chester County lay tucked in a drawer in the office of the Delaware River Basin Commission, waiting to be opened, discussed and ruled on. The docket, numbered D-2002-034 CP-4, concerns the application of Artesian Water Pennsylvania, Inc. for a water withdrawal permit that, if approved by the Commission [DRBC], will allow the Delaware-based water company to activate a pumping station that is expected to withdraw as much as 288,000 gallons of water per day, at a rate of 200 gallons per minute, and over 100 million gallons projected over the course of one year. For now, though, everyone with a stake in this still-undecided issue will have to wait until Sept. 15, when the final ruling is expected to be handed down by five DRBC commissioners, each
representing Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, New York and the federal government. However, David Kovach, a DRBC geologist and project review section supervisor, said that given a backlog of other applications that he and the DRBC commissioners are scheduled to review at the Commission’s September meeting, a final decision may not be reached until it meets again in December. In the mean time, those opposed to Artesian’s presence in southern Chester County are not sitting idle. Rather, citizen action groups like the Save Our Water Committee have taken to a letter-writing campaign to state officials, in an attempt to hammer home their opposition. Leading that charge, to no one’s great surprise, has been Sen. Andy Dinniman who, in a May 20 letter sent to The Hon. John Quigley, acting secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection [DEP], raised a number of questions about Artesian’s application.
Since the first trumpet horn of Artesian’s application was heard well over a year ago, it has been shuffled through an alphabet soup of regional and state agencies, each of whom have added its own layer of authority on the application’s way to eventual approval or rejection. So, who is in charge? In his letter, Dinniman asked Quigley to explain, based on press reports at the time, what changes have been made in the approval process between Artesian’s current application and the one it submitted back in 2002 -- the year that Artesian first applied for the right to activate the Broad Run Well -- that now might relinquish the DEP from its responsibility to give Artesian the permission to activate the well. “It appears from press reports that in 2002, the Department took into consideration the potential environmental impact that withdraw from this aquifer would have on Continued on Page 3A
Photo by John Chambless
Matt Cummiskey with his wife Kathy and daughter Abby.
Oxford woman’s hair appointment may have saved her life By John Chambless Staff Writer A routine hair appointment may have saved the life of an Oxford mother of three in March, and now she and her family are dedicating themselves to raising money for melanoma research. On Saturday morning, Kathy
Cummiskey and her husband, Matt, sat on the back porch of their Oxford home and looked back at a tumultuous four months that has refocused their lives. Kathy’s hair appointment was on Friday, March 13, she noted with a wry smile. When stylist Deedree Erlichman of Texture Salon Continued on Page 6A
Supervisors give ‘OK’ to submit grant proposal to clean Somerset Lake By Richard L. Gaw Staff Writer
An expression of love for Camp Dreamcatcher........4A
INDEX Calendar of Events.......5B Opinion..........................7A Obituaries.......................8A Classified......................8B
The New Garden Board of Supervisors gave approval at their June 22 meeting to a grant proposal process, the potential funding of which will help pay for the restoration of Somerset Lake in Landenberg. In a presentation before the board, Somerset Lake Corporation members Pete Scilla and Donna Lewis introduced the tenets of what will be their proposal to Growing Greener Plus, a grant program established by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection that invests in projects that protect and restore the state’s watersheds from impairment due to source pollution. Scilla said that the grant proposal stemmed from a study on the lake done in 2013 by Dr. F.X. Browne, a professor of watershed management at Villanova University, which the township sponsored to look into the overall healthiness of the lake.
Balloon festival caused no problems By Uncle Irvin
Photo by Richard L. Gaw
Somerset Lake in Landenberg.
Sharing the results of his three-year study of the lake and its nearby watershed in Oct. 2013, Browne told an audience gathered at the New Garden Township Building that the lake is exceedingly high in phospho-
rous and chlorophyll A, and its high level of blue-green algae is giving off dangerous toxins that can be harmful to both humans and pets at its current levels, with the potential to be fatal. In water samples collected
in June, July and September 2011, it was discovered that the lake is “hyper-eutrophic,� meaning that it is exceedingly high in sediments and nutrients caused by erosion and runoff Continued on Page 2A
Fourth of July weekend begins with First Friday in downtown Oxford
The 24th annual Freedom Fest takes place on Saturday, July 4 By Steven Hoffman Staff Writer
Š 2007 The Chester County Press
The Fourth of July weekend with be extra festive this year, with the First Friday event in downtown Oxford kicking things off Friday evening and the popular Freedom Fest in Nottingham highlighting the holiday weekend. In addition to the music, food, and art that are staples of every First Friday throughout the year, the July 3 event will be
highlighted by a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new addition to the Oxford Public Library that is planned for 6 p.m. The ribbon-cutting is taking place just eight months after the groundbreaking ceremony for the $1.3 million expansion that transformed the look of the library and added about 4,000 square feet of space. Oxford Mainstreet, Inc. is also planning a celebrity bike race that will include town officials, business owners,
and other well-known citizens in the area. A few of the people expected to participate
include Geoff Henry, the mayor of Oxford, Betsy Brantner, the Continued on Page 3A
Multi-million dollar real estate opportunity By Uncle Irvin According to the office of Chester County Sheriff Bunny Welsh, a $1.7 million Kennett Township home will go under sheriff sale on Thursday, July
16 at the Chester County Justice Center. The home is located at 115 Hidden Pond Drive, and is owned by Rick H. and Lynne M. Romero. (Uncle Irvin’s column is his opinion only, and is not a news story.)
Uncle Irvin has lived less than half a mile from the New Garden Flying Field on Newark Road, north of Old Route 1, for more than 40 years, and has never had a negative experience with traffic or noise. In fact, no one who lives close to the Flying Field has ever made a formal complaint to the New Garden Supervisors like Christine Witherspoon’s prepared statement that was read to the supervisors at their recent meeting. Witherspoon is, or was, the wife of former New Garden Supervisor Warren Reynolds, who is serving a jail term for child pornography. Witherspoon will also be a beneficiary of a $2 million open space land easement on her farm -- one that dates back several generations in the Reynolds family -- that was recently approved by the New Garden Township Board of Supervisors. Witherspoon’s criticism of the Balloon Festival and the airport had no other sponsors. Her characterization of “natural noise amplification by the quarry� and the alleged “terrorizing of dogs and horses� is demonizing the Balloon Festival, and is nothing but a self-serving harangue that had no part in a public meeting and has absolutely no merit. (Uncle Irvin’s column is his opinion only, and is not a news story.)