The water treatment process described below is specific to the Water Filtration Plant of Sellersville, PA. Other treatment processes may operate in a slightly different manner. The water for a municipality (borough, town, or township) in our region of Southeastern PA comes from a reservoir and three deep wells. Several municipal wells are owned by each town in our school district. While some individual home owners and businesses also have private wells, we will concentrate here on water supplied by a municipality.

Water filtration plant located at 627 Catch basin Road in Sellersville, PA. The filtration plant capacity is 16,000,000 gallons. The water in the background is the reservoir.		Ground level water storage tank located on Ridge Road in West Rockhill Township holds 1,100,000 gallons. This new tank was added when new laws required the cleaned water to be covered.

Water from the reservoir needs to be filtered to remove impurities. The first step of filtration is the sand filter process. In this process, water is drawn from the impounding basin(reservoir)at 480 gallons per minute. From there, it is pumped into a mixing chamber. Here, aluminum sulfate (alum), carbon (used to control odor and improve taste), cat floc (which helps the alum work beter), and chlorine are combined with the water. This mix flows into the rear of the basin where the floc collects impurities which then settle out in the settling basin, while the chlorine kills bacteria in the raw water.

After this, the water passes through two sand/gravel filters and into a well beneath the water filtration plant. Lime (to adjust the pH) and more chlorine (to kill bacteria) are added in this well. Then the water runs through a water main to the water storage tank, which is located about a mile from the plant. Water is then pumped to the community through a piped water distribution system.

Sellersville also has 3 deep wells which supply 40% of the borough's water. This water does not need to be filtered. Chlorine is added to kill bacteria, and the water then goes directly to the water distribution system. This photo shows the pump house for well #5 on Ninth Street.