Published September 04. 2026 02:45PM<\/p>\n
Carbon County officials, after hesitating on their votes, approved the annual in-lieu-of-taxes payment for thousands of acres of land spanning several municipalities that are owned by the Bethlehem Water Authority.<\/p>\n
The county commissioners approved the payment of $20,357.59 for the 2026 tax year for the property, located between Penn Forest Township and Towamensing and Lower Towamensing townships. Broken down, Carbon County receives $6,118.10; Jim Thorpe Area School District, $8,528.30; Palmerton Area School District, $5,046.86; Penn Forest Township, $355.34; Towamensing Township, $304.29; and Lower Towamensing Township, $4.70.<\/p>\n
Commissioner Wayne Nothstein, who visibly hesitated before casting a yes vote for the payment, said that his hesitation was because those amounts for that land have not increased in decades.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has not changed since I\u2019m here,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s ever been changed and the amount of land that Bethlehem Water Authority has in Carbon County is huge.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nothstein said that on the land, there are two separate dams and reservoirs that Bethlehem uses as its water supply.<\/p>\n
According to a Bethlehem Water Authority GIS mapping webpage, Bethlehem owns approximately 22,000 acres between Carbon and Monroe counties.<\/p>\n
Of that, there is approximately 12,500 acres in Carbon and includes the Wild Creek Reservoir and half of the Penn Forest Reservoir.<\/p>\n
Nothstein said that the amounts paid instead of taxes, which the authority is exempt from paying, have not increased as property values increase.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you look at what Lower Towamensing Township is getting, that\u2019s $4.70 a year. What are they going to do with that? Yes, it\u2019s only a small area, but the municipalities respond to incidents on the roads around the dam,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Commissioners\u2019 Chairman Mike Sofranko said that something has to change, however it means getting the state legislators involved.<\/p>\n
He pointed out that earlier in the meeting, Joanie Findle, a Bear Creek Lakes residents in the Penn Forest Township area, attended to talk about protecting natural resources with regards to plans or a data center on Route 903.<\/p>\n
\u201cPenn Forest is out there debating each side of that and spending taxpayers\u2019 money to preserve a natural resource, which is obviously water,\u201d Sofranko said. \u201cLet\u2019s face it, Bethlehem Water Authority, who has the most to lose (in the data center water fight), doesn\u2019t even seem to come to the table. … So I agree with Commissioner Nothstein that this has to change.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201c(The data center project) say they use maybe 3 to 5 million gallons of water a day,\u201d Nothstein said. \u201cBut do you realize how many gallons are taken out of those reservoirs every day by Bethlehem? It\u2019s far greater than that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Commissioner Rocky Ahner added that Bethlehem uses this water to sell to its residents and he feels the compensation doesn\u2019t reflect the true value of the property in today\u2019s figures.<\/p>\n
Carbon County has been receiving the same amount in payment in-lieu-of-taxes from the Bethlehem Water Authority since at least 1985, the last record that could be found that had been reported by the media.<\/p>\n
The orange represents the land owned by the Bethlehem Water Authority in Carbon and Monroe counties. BETHLEHEM WATER AUTHORITY GIS MAPPING PAGE<\/p>\n
An outline over a map of the area owned by the Bethlehem Water Authority in Carbon and Monroe counties. BETHLEHEM WATER AUTHORITY GIS MAPPING PAGE<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published September 04. 2026 02:45PM Carbon County officials, after hesitating on their votes, approved the annual in-lieu-of-taxes payment…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279187,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154],"class_list":["post-279186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}