ClearSource Merges
With Wissahickon
Water Company

Clear Source, Inc., which bottles Randolph Center water from a bottling plant on Route 66, has merged with the Wissahickon Water Co. of Pennsylvania.

Wissahickon is a family-owned water company that has been in business since 1926, according to its website. Like Clear Source in Randolph it bottles individual bottles of individual size or quart size.

But like Vermont Pure, former owner of the Randolph plant, it also sells water in water cooling bottles for office dispensers.

It maintains several water springs in Pennsylvania and New York.

Wissahickon’s company offices in Pennsylvania aleady answer the phone with the greeting, "ClearSource."

The company’s chief financial officer, Mike Pessiki, was in Randolph this week to confer with officials of the Randolph plant. Jim Morgan, who was previously the president and chief spokesman for the company, is no longer with the firm at all, however.

ClearSource purchased the Randolph water company in 2004 and doubled its capability, investing more than $8 million in new equipment. The improvements included a facility to manufacture 18 million of its own bottles per month, a new bottling line, and a capability to add flavors.

During that time, employment at the Route 66 plant increased from 64 to 110.

The Randolph plant gets about half of its water from two springs it owns in Randolph and about half from a spring in Stockbridge, officials said in 2006.

The company is currently involved in an Act 250 process regarding the number of trucks per day that may be used to pick up water from its spring on Rogers Road.

It also owns a 25-acre parcel of land just uphill from the current plant, and has discussed the possibility of building a large warehouse or other facility on the site.

It is believed that the newly-merged company intends to keep the Randolph plant in operation, but that could not be confirmed. Calls to Wissahickon owner Jay Land went unanswered this week, and ClearSource officials here were reluctant to comment.