Water filter service in Bethlehem, PA

What is in the water in Bethlehem

Bethlehem is served by City of Bethlehem Water and Sewer Resources .

Source water: Entirely surface water from two reservoirs well outside the city. The Wild Creek Reservoir sits in Towamensing Township, Carbon County, on a 22 square mile watershed. The Penn Forest Reservoir spans Penn Forest Township in Carbon County and Polk Township in Monroe County. Both lie in the Pohopoco Creek watershed, with Tunkhannock Creek in Monroe County available as a supplemental source. Combined capacity is around 10.3 billion gallons, and twin transmission mains can carry roughly 47 million gallons a day down to the filtration plant in Lehigh Township. Boating and public access are not permitted on either reservoir. The distance involved is worth noting: this is water collected in Carbon and Monroe counties and carried south to Lehigh County, so the land that determines its quality is not land most Bethlehem residents ever see or vote on. Reported by Bethlehem Authority for 2024.

The infrastructure here is a genuine piece of engineering history. Wild Creek Reservoir, a chemical treatment building, two one-mile rock tunnels and 21 miles of 30 inch mains were begun in December 1938 and finished in January 1941 at a cost of 4.1 million dollars. Growing demand led to Penn Forest Reservoir being built just upstream in 1958, and its replacement dam, constructed between June 1996 and November 1998, is the largest roller-compacted concrete dam by volume east of the Mississippi. For a household the practical point is that this is a long gravity-fed system from protected upland catchments, which generally means stable water quality and few surprises through the year. One consequence of drawing from two reservoirs in adjacent catchments is redundancy: a problem affecting one, whether a spill, a drought or a treatment fault, does not take out the whole supply. The supplemental Tunkhannock Creek source adds a third option again. For a household, a system with that much built-in slack is less likely to issue the kind of short-notice advisory that sends people out to buy bottled water.

These figures describe the distribution system. Your own tap can differ, and for lead it very likely does.

We do not yet hold a sourced figure for every field on this page. Where something is missing it is left blank rather than estimated, because an unsourced number here would look like information.

Buildings and plumbing in Bethlehem

PFAS in Bethlehem

Source protection here is unusually extensive and it is the reason a supply this size manages on relatively conventional treatment. The Bethlehem Authority owns roughly 13,600 acres around Wild Creek and Penn Forest and about 9,000 acres around Tunkhannock Creek, managed under conservation easements with sustainable forestry certification rather than left open to development. Upland forested catchments with no public access and no development pressure are about as favourable a starting point as a public water supply gets in this region. That lowers the odds of an industrial contaminant appearing; it does not remove the need to look. The measured results in the current city report are the thing to check before deciding whether any point-of-use treatment is warranted.

Source: Bethlehem Authority, 2024. More on confirming and treating this on our PFAS page.

What this means in practice

• Chlorine and chloramine taste. Confirm with free and total chlorine test strip, plus the utility report for the disinfectant type.
• PFAS. Confirm with certified laboratory analysis using an epa-approved pfas method.

Filters that apply here

• PFAS reduction systems. Reverse osmosis or a certified activated carbon system aimed at per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances.
• Under-sink carbon filters. A carbon block cartridge on the cold line under the sink.
• Reverse osmosis, tank. A membrane system under the sink that produces treated water to a dedicated tap and stores it in a small pressure tank.
• Whole-house filtration. A filter plumbed into the main line where water enters the building, so every tap, shower, and appliance downstream is fed treated water.
• Sediment filters. A mechanical filter that captures sand, silt, rust flakes, and other particles.

Installation in Bethlehem

• Free water testing. Typically 45 to 60 minutes.
• Whole-house filter installation. Typically 3 to 5 hours.
• Under-sink reverse osmosis installation. Typically 2 to 4 hours.
• Repair, any brand. Typically 1 to 3 hours.

Renters, co-ops, and businesses

• Options for renters
• Co-ops and condos
• Offices and commercial sites

Local programmes

• Bethlehem Authority reservoir and watershed information. The authority publishes details of both reservoirs and the conserved land around them. Because the catchments are closed to public access, the land management decisions made here are effectively part of the treatment process.
• City of Bethlehem annual water quality report. The yearly results table for the system, including the disinfectant residual and any detected contaminants with the year each figure refers to.

Nearby areas

• Allentown, PA , Lehigh County
• Reading, PA , Berks County
• Philadelphia, PA , Philadelphia County
• Upper Darby, PA , Delaware County
• Scranton, PA , Lackawanna County
• Lancaster, PA , Lancaster County

Sources

• Bethlehem Area Public Library, 2024.
• Bethlehem Authority, 2024.
• Population: US Census Bureau sub-county population estimates, Vintage 2024 (POPESTIMATE2024).