NEWTOWN, PA — The six members of the Newtown, Bucks County Joint Municipal Authority voted unanimously on Tuesday to sell 17 acres of land on Lower Silver Lake Road initially envisioned for a future sewer treatment plant.
Following a brief executive session, authority members approved a sales agreement with Deluca Newtown LLC for $11.5 million, the same amount the authority paid for the land two years ago when it condemned the property for the sewer plant.
The agreement includes a standard due diligence and contingency period, which it will have to successfully navigate for the eventual sale to go through.
"At this point, it's on them to do what they're going to do with the township, if they're going to submit a (land development) application and see where that goes," said authority chairman Jerry Schenkman.
Before the vote, solicitor Jessica L. VanderKam, Esquire, said the authority has been working "diligently" for the past eight weeks to negotiate the best agreement of sale possible for the land, located between Holy Family College and the new Wawa along the township's southern border with Middletown Township.
"As a byproduct of those negotiations, we do have an agreement of sale that we are hopeful will end in a successful settlement and move us forward and away from what was originally envisioned," said VanderKam.
A judge cleared the way for the sale in June when he granted the authority permission to move forward with the listing and sale of the land.
The authority had condemned the property in 2024 with the idea of building its own sewer plant at the site to contain future sewer rate hikes, which are forecast to rise significantly as a current wholesale customer of the Bucks County Water & Sewer Authority.
With the operation of its own treatment plant, authority members had argued it could operate independently from the BCW&SA and the Philadelphia Water Authority, chart its own future, and avoid rate hikes projected well into the future to fund the current system's costly infrastructure needs.
Residents living near the site of the treatment plant and in neighboring Middletown Township, however, protested plans for the plant, eventually forcing the authority to halt planning for the proposed facility a year ago. The authority eventually dropped its plans altogether after it lost the support of the Newtown Township Board of Supervisors.
Under the eminent domain law, the authority was obligated to offer the land back to the original owners for $11.5 million, the price the authority paid to acquire the land. The former owners had 90 days to respond to the authority's offer, which expired without a response, the authority confirmed in June.
During public comment at Tuesday's meeting, several residents urged the board to lower rates using the proceeds from the property sale.
After acquiring the land, the authority raised rates by 47 percent, 26 percent of which was to fund the property acquisition.
The board, which is made up of appointed representatives from Newtown Borough and Newtown Township, has not made any decisions regarding what it would do with the proceeds from a sale of the property.
"When the deal is complete, and we have closing, and we have secured the funds from the sale, we will determine what we can do as far as reducing rates going forward," said authority chairman Jerry Schenkman. "That's all I know at this point."
He added, "I don't know how much money we're going to have on hand. We don't know how much it's going to cost us to complete this transaction. There are a lot of unknowns, but we will consult with our financial people to see what we can do in terms of lightening the load."
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