Great Barrington — A study on the potential costs for the town’s acquisition and operation of Housatonic Water Works has been delayed until October, according to Town Manager Mark Pruhenski.
At a December 12 Selectboard meeting, Chair Stephen Bannon announced that the town would investigate acquiring the long-troubled company. The board subsequently instructed Pruhenski to conduct a study on the potential costs for the acquisition and operation of HWW, along with the potential revenues, expenses, and capital needs for the water system that would be operated on an enterprise-fund basis.
At the January 17 Selectboard meeting, Pruhenski said that the town hired DPC Engineering from Longmeadow and Harwich Port to evaluate the potential operation and acquisition of HWW. The total cost for the study is estimated at $26,235.
At the Monday, July 22 Selectboard meeting, Town Manager Pruhenski relayed that the company is behind schedule. “The data that we needed from Housatonic Water Works to keep this report on track [to be completed in] late June, unfortunately, was not provided [by the company] despite our requests,” Pruhenski said. “The updated schedule, with DPC gathering the information from as many publicly available sources as possible, has [DPC] hosting a public information session in October with a final report to this board in late October. So the good news, if there’s any good news in this, is that the cost of the study will not increase as a result of the additional time that DPC will need to gather this information.”
Pruhenski added that the study “is the final step in gathering data before we can bring an acquisition proposal before voters for consideration at an upcoming town meeting.”
Before the meeting on July 22, Eileen Mooney, publisher of the NEWSletter, broke the news that HWW received a grant of $350,000 from the Environmental Protection Agency and the state’s Department of Environmental Protection on June 13.
When asked about the grant during public comment, Bannon said, “We read Eileen’s comments this afternoon and have not had a chance to digest [the information] yet.”
During the Selectboard meeting, just like at previous meetings, members of the board and the public took turns criticizing the company. “It’s very frustrating dealing with this situation,” said Selectboard member and HWW customer Eric Gabriel. “[It’s frustrating] not
only dealing with the discoloration [of water] constantly at my place, but also knowing as I walk out my door that most of my neighbors are all dealing with the same issue. My neighbors have to drive out to shop to [buy] smaller bottles because they can’t pick up bigger bottles. Then they have to pay a water bill after that. It makes me shake when I think about this stuff. It makes me shake that this has gone on for so long and how people are more concerned over their bottom lines and level of greed than the community good and their hometown.”
In May 2023, the company filed its annual report for 2022 with the Department of Public Utilities. The report shows that company President and Clerk Frederick Mercer and Treasurer James Mercer each made $114,148 in 2022, an increase of $3,325 from their 2021 salaries of $110,823 each. Over six years, since 2016, both Frederick Mercer’s and James Mercer’s salaries have increased by $18,551.
As of press time on Tuesday, July 23, the company has yet to file its annual report for 2023 with the DPU.
“Going through this whole rate case has been the most frustrating thing I’ve had to deal with sitting on this board,” Gabriel said. “It’s so slow-moving like most things are in government. No one takes discolored water, bad water, horrible service, cancer water, lightly. I know it’s frustrating, but I’m frustrated too and everybody here is.”
“This board is incredibly aware of what Housatonic residents are going through,” said Selectboard member and HWW customer Ben Elliott. “I know that awareness is great and action is better, and it’s frustrating. I also wanted to kind of just voice some of my frustration with the system that we’ve been kind of forced to operate in. One of the most frustrating things about this process is that in the eyes of the [Environmental Protection Agency] and the DPU, the sludge that we get in our water is essentially okay. It’s considered a cosmetic or aesthetic problem, and it’s regulated under the secondary maximum contaminant levels, which are nonenforceable guidelines because, in theory, they don’t pose a hazard to consumer health. That takes a bit of the workload off of the staff at these agencies so they can focus on what they consider more pressing issues. But I would say that in a case like this, where we are facing water that is so regularly discolored, just unusable at such a regular rate, that this is a pressing issue.”
Meanwhile, as of press time, the DPU has yet to rule on the rate increases proposed by HWW. If approved by the DPU, the proposal would increase HWW customer rates by over 90 percent over a five-year span. The settlement would also include a capital project list, including a manganese filter system, an interconnection with the Great Barrington Fire District, a new water storage tank, and a main replacement.
