Welcome to Lower Saucon Authority

The Meadows Road Pump Station became operational on January 8, 2026, bringing a 25-year project to completion. The new pump station replaces the old Creekside Pump Station (located at the triangle intersection of Route 412 and Springtown Hill Road). The new station is located behind the billboard on the east side of Route 412, between the McDonald’s and Giant Shopping Center.

The new pump station will serve the Giant Shopping Center… for now. It was built to have capacity to serve the areas surrounding Springtown Hill Road and Polk Valley Road, as well as any commercial development that would be built along Route 412 in that area. We currently can not serve those residential customers until the Township updates its sewer service master plan (known as an Act 537 plan.) Once that is done, and approved by the state DEP, the Authority will know what areas the Township will be permitted to have the system expanded into for public sewer service and how these extensions will be paid for. Design and plan approvals will be needed before we can construct any sewer extensions and provide service to new customers.

A very brief history of the station might be in order… When the Giant Shopping Center was proposed in the late 1990s, their engineers designed a pump station (which would pump sewage flow to the Bethlehem Sewer Treatment Plant.) Authority management at the time was not happy with the design and instead built a temporary pump station. From about 2000-2012, the Authority explored “gravity” solutions which would not need a pump station to send the flow to the treatment plant. We explored options through Hellertown, along the Saucon Creek and along what is now the Saucon Rail Trail, but none were acceptable. From about 2012 to 2016, we were busy designing and building two master water meters which were unexpectedly forced upon us by the DEP. Once those were finished, we focused our energies on the new pump station.

It took several years to locate and purchase the ideal property. A few more years of station design and regulatory approval. In 2020, we were ready to begin work. Our schedule called for engineering approvals in April 2021 and project construction for the station being fully operational by December 2022. Then the bridge happened.

Northampton County decided to rebuild the Meadows Road Bridge. Their plans (and new location of the bridge foundations) forced us to relocate our water lines and sewer lines which ran under the Saucon Creek. As these sewer lines were a critical part of the new pump station system and design, we had to adjust our schedule. With MUCH more regulatory hoops to jump through, we finally started work on moving our water and sewer lines under the creek in the summer of 2024. The bid was awarded in February and work began was done in April and was completed by the end of May.

Once the stream crossing work was done, we could finally focus on the pump station proper. We had acquired the land and easements in August and September of 2022 and finally had all of regulatory approvals by summer of 2024. We put the project out to bid and awarded the bid in November of 2024. An error by a newspaper in advertising the bid forced us to re-bid the project, which was awarded again in January of 2025.

Construction began in July 2025, with the major equipment (pumps, electrical equipment, generator and building) being delivered in the Fall. Construction was due to be completed by December 31, but due to delays in the delivery of equipment and materials, we were not up and running until January 8.

The entire project was completed at a cost of $3,050,000. We received a grant and funds from the original developer, which were invested over the years. At the end of the project, only about $980,000 of the cost came out of Lower Saucon Authority general funds. As always, we try to minimize our costs, so that we can keep our rates as low as possible.

To follow up on that… Just as a point of reference, our current cost of residential sewer service ($105/quarter) is less than it was in 1995 ($135) and only slightly above what it was in 1999 ($100) and 2009 ($102).