WASHINGTON TOWNSHIP — Contractors were installing a fence on Ge Fangyuan’s Old Route 100 farm when crews unknowingly hit a sewer pipe and shot raw sewage into the air.
The workers had called the state hotline that provides information about utility placements, as required, and were told there was no problem. But there was. The punctured pipe covered Fangyuan’s pasture and wooded land with sludge and revealed infrastructure that Washington Township officials say no one knew was there.
The force main pipe — which uses pressure to move sewage — was never logged by the township with the hotline, PA One Call. The municipality also said it didn’t have records authorizing the pipeline on the private property.
In the immediate aftermath of the Nov. 6, 2024, sewer break, the township repaired the pipe and cleaned the unnamed tributary’s embankment. It was soon issued violations by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) for the unpermitted discharge of 8,000 gallons of raw sewage and for failing to notify the agency about the break for nearly two days.
Officials said the record mishap was an accident and defended their response.
“The township has been working to remedy the situation,” Solicitor Joan London said during a March 11 phone interview. “There was an error going back to the 1990s that unfortunately presented itself, and we are doing our best to remediate the problem and prevent it from happening again.”
But Fangyuan and his wife, Qiu Wenhuan, are frustrated that they are still waiting for the township to move the pipe and come to a financial settlement that covers the damages. He claimed township officials initially tried to apply incorrect records to his property to claim he was trespassing when he installed the fence.
The rupture also revealed additional missing records related to the sewer system, leading to community concerns that something like this could happen again. Wastewater contains pollutants and pathogens that can harm human health and aquatic life, and when it’s illegally discharged, it can seep into the ground, impacting aquifers and tributaries that feed drinking water sources.
Resources like water and air “are finite, and they are interconnected. The enforcement of these things matters because when things go wrong, it affects other people,” said Emma Bast, an attorney at environmental nonprofit PennFuture. Government regulation on these issues ultimately came about because people died, she added.
“DEP has to enforce these things so that it’s fair to everyone, so nobody gets special treatment, and everybody has to follow them.”
The sewer pipe
Fangyuan and Wenhuan moved from El Paso, Texas, to the Berks County community in 2021 after serving in the U.S. Army — he was a combat medic and she was a cook. Wenhuan had friends in metro Philadelphia, and the couple wanted a small farm to raise livestock and enjoy their retirement.
Located about an hour and a half outside Philadelphia in a small town of about 4,500 people, the Old Route 100 property is idyllic. The setting, the environment, and the long history attracted the couple to the parcel, which boasts 15 acres and a farmhouse. All they needed was a fence, Fangyuan told Spotlight PA.
“Both of us are disabled veterans, so we are just trying to enjoy our retirement life,” he said.
When contractors hit the pipe, municipal officials told Fangyuan a 1994 sewer easement for adjacent vacant land applied to his property, he said. These agreements give public utilities the right to access parts of private properties, and can prevent owners from building fences or planting trees on that land.
That meant Fangyuan was trespassing, he said officials told him. The municipality did not comment when Spotlight PA asked if it made this accusation.
He searched titles and found no such easement record. It wasn’t until Fangyuan hired an attorney that municipal leaders backed off their claims, he said.
Municipalities are required to notify DEP within four hours of a pollution incident. Washington Township did so at 8 a.m. on Nov. 8 — nearly two days after the rupture.
For that reason, DEP issued a notice of violation — the first level of enforcement the department pursues. Expected response times range from 10 to 30 days, and the notice doesn’t carry a fine. If issues are more serious or go unaddressed, DEP can pursue a consent order of agreement and assess civil penalties.
Despite that notice, London, the township solicitor, told Spotlight PA, “There was no delay in reporting the incident.”
“The first priority was to stop the flow of sewage from the force main and prevent further property damage or any environmental harm,” she said in a statement.
She added: “Washington Township has been fully responsive and transparent about the 2024 incident, acted promptly and in accordance with accepted practice to prevent damage, and is working expeditiously within the DEP framework towards a permanent repair which removes the line from the owners’ property.”
Since 2025, township officials have gone back and forth with Fangyuan’s attorney to reach an agreement that compensates him for the damages to his property, meeting minutes show.
The unresolved issues have prevented Fangyuan from finishing the electric fence — meant to keep various animals on his property — and have curtailed his small farm operations. He said he’s lost animals due to the limited space he has to keep them.
Fangyuan and his wife’s disabilities have gotten worse because of the extra labor they must do to keep the farm running, he told Spotlight PA. He said they have been forced to change plans and downsize their number of livestock.
The couple is still waiting for the township to relocate the pipe off their property. An email sent by a DEP employee, obtained by Spotlight PA, shows township officials and agency representatives had a conference call in March 2025 to discuss the municipal sewer system and move the force main.
However, the township didn’t file for a necessary permit until Oct. 13, after DEP prompted it to. The agency provided the permit on Dec. 17, and the Berks County Conservation District let the township know they could move forward with the plan on March 20.
London said sewer work can often take as long as 18 months to plan due to permitting, surveys, design work, and other requirements. On April 23, the township selected a contractor for the work, which is expected to cost nearly $126,000.
Once a contractor is hired and the weather cooperates, construction likely will take 30 to 60 days to complete, she estimated.
The township’s Board of Supervisors on March 26 debated whether it would be cheaper to relocate the force main in-house using the municipal highway crew rather than put it out to bid. This stoked concern among Fangyuan and his allied neighbors that the township would cut corners or skirt rules, based on past negative experiences with officials and the DEP notices.
Fangyuan said it feels like no one with the township is following the rules: “We are the people who follow the rules, but now we have to suffer from this.”
Missing records and oversight questions
The 2024 incident also revealed Washington Township is missing other sewer line records, underscoring the consequences of not knowing where these systems are placed.
DEP sought records related to four additions to the system permitted through the Water Quality Management, or WQM, permit process. The state department oversees permits for public and private storm, waste, and drinking water systems.
These records are important to maintain so local governments know where “municipally-owned pipes are located,” said John Repetz, a DEP spokesperson. “The township would need to utilize these records to address or prevent unpermitted sewage discharges from their sewage collection system during construction or maintenance activities.”
Between 1993 and 2012, the Washington Township Municipal Authority owned and operated the sewer system, until the township’s Board of Supervisors appointed themselves to the body and dissolved it of responsibility for the public sewer system. It applied for all four permits associated with DEP’s request for missing records. However, the township could not locate documentation for three of those permits.
The township says some of the facilities and sewer lines were privately installed and never turned over to the municipality, which is why it doesn’t have the records. London, the township solicitor, said the municipal authority often applies for the DEP permits, but the projects are “managed by the private developer.”
“There is probably a legal agreement” for that, she said.
Regardless of ownership, development and construction typically go through a planning process, which is usually reviewed by township engineers and planners, said Dave Cunningham, a vice president and director of water/wastewater at Keller Engineers. If the building will be served by municipal sewers, the community’s Act 537 plan is updated to reflect that, he said.
If the sewer lines or pump station will eventually be turned over to the municipality, Cunningham said a Water Quality Management permit is required from DEP.
London said Washington Township started developing geographic information system mapping of its sewer system; the township improves these as information in the field is gathered.
“GIS mapping is far more accurate than the prior mapping techniques and is being performed on an ongoing basis to protect the system and allow for accurate information to be passed along to contractors making the required PA One-Call,” she said in a statement.
Separately from the sewer break, DEP had raised concerns about another incident in which the township did not promptly notify it of an issue with the system.
During an August 2024 inspection of the wastewater treatment plant, DEP inspectors discovered the township hadn’t notified the state about part of the system being offline for over a month.
As a result, Washington Township received three notices of violation: failure to maintain treatment units in operating condition; high levels of ammonia during site testing; and 11 pollutant violations between November 2022 and September 2024, according to a DEP inspection report.
London said an engineering firm worked with DEP to address the concerns found during the August inspection.
“In my experience, it is common for a facility to have at least one Notice of Violation during any 5-year permit cycle,” a response from the engineers provided by London on March 11 said. Engineers argued DEP usually doesn’t take enforcement action against a facility or municipality “unless they see repeated violations.”
Repetz said the department uses discretion when moving to an enforcement proceeding, but noted that municipalities are expected to promptly respond to notices of violation.
There are various types of violations, some of which are excused if it’s an unavoidable event, like a disaster, he said, adding that it’s difficult to generalize or compare different facilities and the issues they face.