MEET our MEMBER
Roberts Filter Group By Marcella Peyre-Ferry Contributing Writer
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oberts Filter Group is a fifth-generation family business that has been making water safe for the community since 1889. “The story passed down from generation to generation is that my great great grandfather’s family was living in Philadelphia,” explained Roberts Filter Group President Matt Roberts. “Typhoid and cholera were rampant in Philadelphia at that time. He lost his family members to typhoid or cholera. Charles Roberts was a young engineer and decided to make it his life’s work because of that loss. In 1889 he patented a stone filter with the U.S. patent office. It was a household filter— it predates municipal water works. It was a stone filter you could buy and take home and run water though this stone. It was a diatomaceous earth filter. They didn’t know it at the time, because it predated microscopes and germ theory, but it had a molecular knife in this diatomaceous earth that would clean and disinfect the water.” Matt Roberts added, “At the time we couldn’t have known how it worked. Maybe it was a good guess or based on knowledge that when we drink water that runs
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through this stone people don’t get sick.” Diatomaceous earth is still being used in water filtration systems today, but Roberts Filter Group has gone on much farther to address new problems facing water providers today. “The company, just like the country, grew from individual wells and non-treated water. As municipalities formed and started offering tap water to citizens, the company offered municipal filtration,” Roberts said. Today, Roberts Filter Group serves everything from small rural communities using as little as 50 gallons of water per minute to large units in major cities around the world. Clients include the cities of Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, Denver and Tokyo. Local clients include Aqua PA and Pennsylvania America Water. The primary mission of filtration is to make water safe for communities. Along the way, Roberts Filter Group can also help with improving water taste and odor if the clients choose. “I think from an environmental standpoint we prefer regulations because that’s what keeps our drinking water safe. Drinking water quality standards require that water providers remove lead and modern chemicals. As regulators discover the health risks of these new contaminates, our filters remove them and it helps Chester County,” Roberts said.
2022 • Volume 11——
