Great Barrington — Members of the town’s Board of Health discussed the board’s role in the handling of water quality problems with Housatonic Water Works (HWW) at the group’s meeting on Tuesday, July 23.
According to town Health Agent Rebecca Jurczyk, over the past two weeks, the board has received 16 emails from HWW customers complaining about water quality. The emails were not made publicly available before the July 23 meeting.
After requesting the documents, Jurczyk said that The Berkshire Edge would have to submit a public records request through Town Clerk Joshua Risen to obtain copies of the email, and that “we can get you those records within a set period of time.” The Berkshire Edge has not received those emails as of press time.
Jurczyk told the board she received a phone call from a resident concerning HWW’s water quality two weeks ago. “Someone said, ‘Hey, there’s all this activity on Facebook about brown water,’” Jurczyk said. “The caller said, ‘Have you heard about it?’ And at that point, I said no. This is the first time hearing of this recurring issue coming back for customers. I [told] this person for folks to contact the Health Department because we don’t monitor Facebook. And so that’s just what folks did, and [the board received] a number of complaints, or, should I say, observations, of what customers have experienced in the last month.”
Board member Ruby Chang asked Jurczyk if she forwarded the emails to the state’s Department of Environmental Protection. “No, only the ones that had photos or were specific about brown water,” Jurczyk said. “Some of the emails that [were received] were about water quality, but also about what the Board of Health could do. MassDEP did not get those.”
Jurczyk said that the town has not received any comments from MassDEP concerning HWW’s water quality. “We haven’t received any notices of noncompliance or recent administrative consent orders from MassDEP from the last month,” Jurczyk said. “They have not taken any corrective action against HWW, as far as we know. Just in practice, Housatonic Water Works doesn’t send [data] to the Health Department. We get communications from MassDEP if there’s ever a violation or some sort of corrective action being taken on their part.”
Members of the board did not discuss specific water-testing results and at times seemed confused about whether or not recent testing information was available.
There is a link for Disinfection By-Products Haloacetic Acids (HAA5) test results on the Housatonic Water Works website. Elevated HAA5 levels in the company’s water system have been a recurring issue for quite some time. Over the years, the company has had instances of noncompliance with the state-regulated levels of HAA5 in its system.
The most recent test for HAA5 compliance, according to the company’s Disinfection By-Products Rule Quarterly Compliance Worksheet that was submitted to MassDEP, was on May 14. The water samples for the test were taken from 10 Depot Street and 314 North Plain Road. According to the worksheet, the Depot Street water sample contained an HAA5 level of 52 parts per billion (ppb), while the North Plain Road water sample contained 47 ppb. MassDEP, along with the Environmental Protection Agency, has set a limit of 60 ppb for HAA5.
However, during the tests for HAA5 on February 13, the Depot Street water contained an HAA5 level of 79 ppb, and the North Plain Road water sample contained 73 ppb.
Later on in the meeting, residents asked members of the board for more advocacy on behalf of HWW customers, including scheduling a meeting between the Selectboard and the Board of Health. “The Board of Health is responsible for all health-related issues in Great Barrington,” Chair Michael Lanoue responded. “But the devil is always in the details. When you get into a public water supply, we are not the specific regulatory authority. To say that we are responsible for Housatonic Water Works customers—generally speaking, you could say that. But it comes down to specific regulatory language in the code. We are not the specific regulator for the water supply.”
“That’s not what [Selectboard Chair] Stephen Bannon said in his letter,” resident Michelle Loubert said. “What is happening? I feel like a child in a bad divorce.” Loubert was referring to a written statement Bannon read at the beginning of the Selectboard meeting on Monday, July 22.
“The Great Barrington Selectboard is responsible for representing HWW users in the Department of Public Utilities rate case in attempting to figure out a solution to this long-term problem,” Bannon said at the July 22 Selectboard meeting. “The Great Barrington Board of Health is responsible for the safety of the Housatonic Water Works users. When citizens were concerned about the discoloration and safety of their water, I suggested that they report their concerns directly to the Board of Health. The Great Barrington Selectboard is extremely concerned, but the regulatory authority in control of this is the Board of Health. The Board of Health is forwarding all complaints and concerns on to MassDEP.”
Lanoue told Loubert that he had read Bannon’s statement. “[Over the winter] we asked for guidance from our association, the Massachusetts Association of Health Boards,” Lanoue said. “They sent out two representatives. We had a joint meeting and, if you remember, they didn’t go into very detailed specifics. But they said that under general nuisance laws, [the Board of Health] has broad authority, which is true. But you have to get into specifics.”
Lanoue said the board continued to have meetings with representatives from the Association of Health Boards to obtain guidance on its handling of HWW. “Their guidance was, as a Board of Health, [we have] congruent authority with MassDEP to oversee [HWW] and to regulate, but we don’t have specific authority to regulate,” Lanoue said. “And no Board of Health has ever taken action like this before. So you’d be setting a precedent, which is why, during the budgetary process, we asked for money for possible legal fees. And I don’t want to get into the budgetary needs tonight. They gave us a possible avenue to pursue. They said you could issue an order requiring the water company to do testing. That’s all they said. They had no guarantee of what would happen next, and what the process is after that. It was an open-ended possible avenue to go down.”
“There was nothing that indicated how we can enforce that,” Board of Health member Chang added.
