Great Barrington — After an over-one-hour executive session at the beginning of their special meeting on Tuesday, September 10, and after a subsequent 90-minute public hearing, the Board of Health decided to uphold its Order to Correct against Housatonic Water Works (HWW).
The board first issued the original order on August 22 after three public hearings. As expected, however, the long-troubled company appealed the Order to Correct at a board meeting on September 5.
Before the September 10 meeting, HWW attorney Ashley Barnes of Boston-based law firm Bowditch & Dewey sent a list that featured several suggested alternatives aspects of the Order to Correct. The list sent from the company to the board was not made available to the public. Instead, the list was reviewed by the board, along with Town Counsel David Doneski and Michael Hugo, director of policy and government relations at the Massachusetts Association of Health Boards, in executive session.
Attorney Barnes reviewed several of the alternatives proposed by the company during an open session in the meeting. As part of the Order to Correct, the company must provide customers within Great Barrington with “an alternative supply of safe, potable water, through the distribution and supply of bottled water in containers larger than ‘single-use containers’” daily at the company’s expense. The water supply must be “equal to or no greater than 1.5 gallons per day, per inhabitant in each such household.” The Board of Health “deems a violation as to any one household on any day to be a separate violation, subject to a separate penalty for each such household.”
At the September 5 meeting, however, Barnes said that the company could not abide by the order and complained that the “$1,000 fine per day for each household to which HWW fails to provide 1.5 gallons of bottled water to each inhabitant” is too expensive and would “put the company out of business within days.” “In lieu of distributing bottled water directly to residents, we propose that the company installs a water filter on a tap in the town’s Community Center,” Barnes said. “If the DPU (Department of Public Utilities) approves of this, we propose that the company will pay for and install the filter at this location, and we’ll cover the cost of the water supplied at this location through the end of October, which is when the [water pipe] flush is planned to take place this season.”
As for manganese testing, Barnes said that the company would be willing to increase the number of water-testing sites from six to 10. “We would be open to negotiating the locations of the additional sites with input from our consultant as to where they believe would be most prudent for this increased testing,” Barnes said. “We would also propose to increase to weekly testing and bring it more than 30 days through the end of October when the [water system] flush is anticipated to occur.”
When asked by Chair Michael Lanoue, Barnes could not provide the name of the consultant who is working with the company. She also said that, while the company conducts a “comprehensive flushing program of its entire system in the spring and fall,” the flushing program does not include “certain private roads that don’t have hydrants or blow off [hydrants] and cannot be flushed until the owners install them.”
Members of the board were not satisfied with the suggested alternatives made by the company, including board member Ruby Chang. “I hate to push for this, but I feel that if the sincerity is there [by the company] to provide clean water for the residents, the flushing can occur more often and during those episodes [of bad water quality],” Chang said. “The water company would be able to provide drinking water during those episodes so that they could have healthy water to drink while they’re trying to clean out the pipes.”
“I think providing and distributing bottled water to residents is something that would be pretty much impossible for the company to do, which is why they have proposed installing this filter in the Community Center,” Barnes said in response.
“I beg to differ,” Chang countered. “I feel that if you cannot provide clean water that people are paying for, you should be able to provide bottled water.” Chang suggested that the company provide bottled water at a main distribution site, such as the Housy Dome, where residents could pick up the bottles.
However, Barnes said she could not agree to Chang’s suggestion without consulting with her clients.
Further into the hearing, Barnes requested that the board extend the hearing once again for the company to negotiate with the board, which would involve a further stay of the penalties outlined in the order.
During the public comment portion of the hearing, members of the public responded negatively against HWW’s proposed suggestions. “I am absolutely opposed to [HWW] being allowed to choose to have any input whatsoever in the schedule of testing or in determining the testing locations,” resident Kate Van Olst told the board. “For example, another area that [the Board of Health] manages is restaurant sanitation. These inspections are done randomly and by surprise because you don’t want to catch people on their best behavior. You want to catch problems. Letting the company determine when, where, and how often testing is done is absolutely inappropriate. I can only see that as an intentional act to evade accountability.”
Resident Jack Taliercio told the board that he took issue with Barnes’ insistence during the September 5 public hearing that HWW has “done nothing wrong.” “Housatonic Water Works has done a lot wrong for decades, selling brown water is all wrong,” Taliercio said. “This is a private company with no competition, abusing a monopoly and laughing all the way to the bank. Because of [the company], life in the town of Great Barrington in the village of Housatonic is not normal for our families.”
“I think we’ve heard a pretty consistent and loud message from the residents of Housatonic,” Board of Health Chair Michael Lanoue said after the public-comment portion of the hearing was closed. “They’ve lived with this problem for many years, decades. I also share their feelings about [the company’s] proposals for an ‘alternate’ water supply.”
Lanoue said he also has reservations about the company’s proposals for water testing. “I think the spirit of our order was that the Board of Health would be primarily in the driver’s seat, making use of a professional consultant that we agreed to hire,” Lanoue said. “I think the proposals that were given to us just prior to tonight’s meeting largely fall short of not only the spirit of our order but some of the specifics [of the order]. I think the bottled water not being provided to people is a major problem for me, and I think the inadequate response concerning testing is also a major concern for me.”
The motion to modify the Order to Correct, as suggested by Town Counsel Doneski, adjusted the penalty provision, making it so that the company would now be subject to a penalty of up to $1,000 per day for any violation.
Town Counsel Doneski additionally suggested that the board should add to the order, in regards to water testing, that “in the absence of a declared weather-related emergency or permission of an agent of the board, the schedule for testing shall be complied with.”
The board eventually passed the suggestions made by Doneski in a motion by member Peter Stanton and seconded by Chang.
The revised Order to Correct will not go into effect until it is formally served by the town to the company.
