The City of Aberdeen may tap into a vast source of water right next door ? filtering water from the Chesapeake Bay at Aberdeen Proving Ground and distributing it throughout the area.
Aberdeen is negotiating with the Army and the Maryland Department of the Environment to build a high-tech filtration plant at the Proving Ground that would tap into the brackish water of the Bay, said Aberdeen City Council President Ron Kupferman.
“This is going to give us an inexhaustible source of water,” Kupferman said.
While rivers and creeks have limits on how much water can be drawn out, the Bay is affected by ocean tides, making its supply nearly limitless, he said.
The City of Aberdeen had previously gotten its water from a system of wells, while Aberdeen Proving Ground draws water from Deer Creek and filters it at the Chapel Hill plant the city has been operating for five years.
The city had provided water and sewer services to the Proving Ground, but could not guarantee it would have enough water in the future, Kupferman said.
“In periods of drought when you need the water most, you can?t take it, because the water level?s low,” said Aberdeen City Council Member Michael Hiob. The plant would filter approximately 6 million gallons of water per day.
The proposed filtration plant at the Proving Ground would open in four to five years, and would use new “reverse osmosis”and membrane technologies to filter out salt and impurities, Kupferman said.
A mothballed filtration plant on the base would be stripped of its equipment and refitted with the new technology.
The water would be drawn from the Bay, but it would be close enough to the fresh water of the Susquehanna River that its salinity would be low, Hiob said.
The city would have to negotiate with MDE. However, the new plant would bring them out from under the regulatory authority of the Susquehanna River Basin Commission, he said.
“It?s a big undertaking, but it?s the long-term solution for a source of safe, potable water. ? It?s going to supply what we need now and in the future,” Hiob said.
Aberdeen also has worked with officials from Bel Air and the Harford County government on the possibility of a regional water system, which would allow other towns to take water from Aberdeen if their own supplies dry up.
