City of South Bend receives more than 14 million dollars for water projects

SOUTH BEND, Ind. --The city of South Bend is launching a more than 14-million-dollar upgrade at water filtration plants to keep toxic contaminants like PFAS and lead out of faucets.

The city has received more than 14 and a half million dollars from the Indiana Finance Authority, from low interest federal equivalency loans. The money will be used for multiple projects, one of which involves modernizing the Edison Road water filtration plant.

"It pumps about 9 and a half million gallons a day of water, centrally located in South Bend. A lot of that equipment is original equipment, it's well past its useful life, and so we're replacing pumps, and pipes and filter stuff, just to make sure we've got reliable source of water, and capacity to have good safe drinking water," says Eric Horvath, South Bend director of public works.

In addition, lead service lines in the northwest part of the city will be replaced. In keeping with the goal of safe drinking water all over the city, Horvath says addressing PFAS is a big priority.

"We have PFAS in a lot of our wells here in South Bend. it's something we need to get ahead of on the regulatory compliance requirements that are coming up, and so we're actively designing a treatment system at our north station to remove PFAS," says Horvath.

Despite some wells in South Bend having PFAS, Horvath tells ABC57 the city's water is still up to code. Still, the job isn't done yet.

"Right now, our water is still meeting water quality standards, because we're pumping from wellfields where we don't have PFAS or where we already have treatments. These are projects that we need to do to make sure that we've got a reliable drinking water source, and that we continue to provide safe, clean drinking water for our residents, and we want to do that, and we have to do that not 99% of the time but 100% of the time," says Horvath.

The lead line removal process will begin this fall, and work on the Edison plant starts next month, and should be completed by early 2027.