The tour doesn’t take long.

Pennsylvania American Water’s plant at the foot of the Glade Bridge in Warren is a small facility.

There’s a one million gallon storage tank, five wells with associated pumps and vacuums, a laboratory, and not much else.

Warren’s water is clean and abundant. That works out well for Pennsylvania American Water.

The company gets all the water it needs from the ground.

With abundant water and geology that filters it, there is no need to use surface water. There are five wells on site and another three nearby – a full groundwater system.

Water is pulled up from four of the wells by a vacuum system – low pressure at the top forces the water to move up – and pushed by high-service pumps for the others.

The raw water comes in through green pipes and the treated, potable water moves out through blue pipes. “In the water industry, everything has a color code,” Northwest Pennsylvania Production Superintendent Jon Natale said.

The wells supply about 1.7 million gallons per day through 91 miles of main to 5,456 local customers in Warren and portions of Conewango, Mead, Glade, and Pleasant townships.

The water moves up from the ground and almost immediately out into the system. The water age in the system is typically one day or less. There is about the same amount of storage at the plant as the average daily usage.

There is no extended treatment process.

“We add two chemicals,” Natale said, “chlorine and zinc orthophosphate” – a corrosion inhibitor widely used in water treatment facilities. The company does not “typically” add fluoride, Natale said. However, the element is so common in the earth’s crust that there is very little water anywhere that is not naturally fluoridated.

The plant hasn’t used surface water since at least the early 1970s. A photo of the plant taken in or around the 1950s that is on display at the facility shows there were filters and sedimentation tanks in the system.

“You are very lucky here in the Warren area,” Natale said. “The quality of the water is very good. We don’t treat because the water quality does not require it.”

That water quality is due to the geology of the region. The ground acts as a natural and very effective filter.

Warren’s wells are only about 100 feet deep – another testament to the source.

Many communities rely on much deeper wells, Natale said.

While the Warren plant does not require much in the way of treatment, the water goes through various processes in the lab to make sure quality remains high.

“We do a lot of testing,” Natale said.

The company tracks how much water moves in and out of the system and measures the amounts of the two chemical additives in the water, its turbidity – how much material is suspended in the water, pH, temperature, alkalinity, and conductivity, among other things.

Monitoring these factors “will tell us how well the well’s reacting” to external forces, Natale said. “Any variation in those parameters gives a lot of information.”

Everyday data is recorded digitally, but the second back-up record is recorded by hand.

Bacteria testing is handled off-site. If contaminants are found, the company has a number of options.

“We do plan for that,” Natale said. “We have a lot of storage capacity in the system.”

“We have the resources and the expertise to handle it,” he said.

The company has testing facilities and can bring in treatment units as needed.

“We’re able to test for an unbelievable amount of conditions,” Natale said. “The advantage you have with Pennsylvania American Water is our size and the availability of resources.”

That flexibility goes beyond testing and includes “projects that would be extremely cost-prohibitive if you were a stand-alone company,” Natale said.

According to External Affairs Manager Gary Lobaugh, the company performed $3.2 million in pipe replacement work in this community between 2009 and 2014.

Sometimes, main replacement in this area results in ductile iron pipe replacing pipe made of wood.

The plant has not always been run by Pennsylvania American Water, but, since the 1880s, “there has always been a water treatment plant of some sort on this footprint,” Lobaugh said.