BELLEFONTE — A judge has rejected a local attempt to force a municipal takeover of a troubled private water company in rural Centre County.
Without additional relief, the ruling means Rock Spring Water Company customers who’ve endured more than a decade of unreliable service will have to wait for state regulators to decide whether to force a sale.
Now, Pennsylvania’s Office of Consumer Advocate is urging regulators to provide emergency relief to prevent “irreparable” injury.
Centre County President Judge Jonathan Grine on Wednesday denied an emergency request — filed by the private company’s own lawyers last month — to let the neighboring State College Borough Water Authority take over operations as attorneys tried to negotiate a final sale.
He dismissed the case, siding with a lawyer for the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, who argued in court last week that the statewide regulator has jurisdiction over the matter. A two-day hearing before an administrative law judge is slated for April.
“We knew we had an uphill fight, but something really, really needs to be done,” said attorney James Bryant. He was hired by Rock Spring owner J. Roy Campbell last fall after the Bureau of Investigation and Enforcement, an independent division within the utility commission, launched a review of the business — a lengthy process with no guaranteed outcome.
A June Spotlight PA investigation found that Rock Spring, state regulators, and elected officials have failed the roughly 1,000 customers in Ferguson Township who rely on the 20-mile system, which needs $13.5 million in repairs, according to a 2022 engineering report. Efforts to find new ownership have gone nowhere, while years of neglect have led to crumbling infrastructure, low water pressure, regular outages, and sometimes lengthy boil water advisories.
On Thursday, the Office of Consumer Advocate asked the PUC’s administrative law judge to let another utility handle Rock Spring’s operations until regulators reach a formal solution to improve service, writing in its filing that emergency relief aims to protect customers’ “health, safety, and welfare.”
The utility commission has appointed a receiver in emergency situations in the past when a utility is unable to provide safe and reliable service to its customers.
“Without water service, the public health and safety of Rock Spring customers will be compromised,” Melanie Joy El Atieh, deputy consumer advocate, wrote in the filing.
The Office of Consumer Advocate identified three possible utilities capable of taking over Rock Spring’s system: the municipal-run State College Borough Water Authority, and Pennsylvania American Water Company or Aqua Pennsylvania, which are privately owned.
The office’s primary concern, however, is that Rock Spring’s customers “receive service immediately from a capable provider.”
In October, Campbell said he’d rather sell Rock Spring and avoid a lengthy process by state regulators to force an acquisition. In December — after persuasion by his attorneys, according to legal filings — he signed a letter of intent to sell to the State College authority for $65,000.
Campbell’s lawyers say he stopped cooperating with them, so they filed an emergency request in Centre County. They thought the local action was the quickest path to relief, Carolyn Larrabee, Rock Spring’s other attorney, told Spotlight PA last month.
The company has racked up dozens of regulatory violations and tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid civil penalties as part of an ongoing legal battle with the Department of Environmental Protection over excessive water loss.
Bryant and Larrabee argued in court that the company’s poor management and deteriorating infrastructure should justify handing over operations to the municipal authority. They added that the state regulators had ample opportunity to hold Rock Spring accountable for hemorrhaging water and failing to pay at least $40,000 in fines.
The attorneys plan to file a request to let the State College authority take over Rock Spring’s operations with the administrative law judge overseeing the state proceeding, Bryant said.